Solana Flashes Buy Signal, but $14.85M SOL Looms: What’s Happening?

Solana (SOL) price has retraced back into the range it had been held for more than a month. However, the signals are mixed, with a whale potentially offloading even as the price action flashes a buy signal.

While the altcoin has been showing mild strength, it seems not to be making significant moves. The trend patterns show that an accumulation pattern is in progress.

Does this behavior mean Solana crypto is not yet ripe to break the extended bear market structure and move to the upside?

Solana Price Prints a Buy Signal: Is It Time to Go Long?

On the 4-hour chart, Solana price action printed a bullish signal at around the $85 zone. As per Ali Martinez, the altcoin’s TD Sequential indicator suggested a rebound was on the way. This came after six consecutive sessions of price dropping from $92 to $85.

However, from a broader perspective, SOL price has returned to the sideways consolidation that has held the altcoin since February. Before briefly surpassing $90, SOL was trading between $79 and $89.

While the signal is positive, the outcome could be different since the earlier breakout has been invalidated. That would mean that SOL price was likely to continue ranging until enough bullish momentum is attained.

This could be termed as “in progress” since consolidations always precede both bullish and bearish breakouts.

However, the several breakouts to the upside could indicate sellers were weakening. Furthermore, failure to break below $79 indicated bulls were strongly defending the demand zone.

What’s Adding Strength to SOL Price?

Adding to the potential repeat of last week’s bullish strength in Solana price were the fundamentals. For instance, SOL outpaced Ethereum (ETH) to lead all other blockchains by number of developers.

As per SolanaFloor, Solana had 10,864 developers, while ETH had 9,017, and Polkadot (DOT) wrapped up the top three with 8,995.

This indicated that Solana was experiencing more development activity than all other chains. This explains its large liquidity pools and rising integrations. For instance, tokenization was growing faster on the chain, indicating institutional adoption.

The chain led not only in development activity but also in DEX volume and revenue. It consistently dominated on a daily, weekly, and monthly scale. Its readings from the three were $1.597 billion, $12.357 billion, and $59.944 billion, respectively.

Solana was followed by Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain (BSC), Base Chain, and Polygon (POL), respectively. While the price action, data sets, and fundamentals are pointing to a bullish projection, a particular whale’s move was in contrast.

Why Is A Whale Unstaking SOL Then?

While Solana price action was flashing a ‘buy signal,’ a whale was preparing to sell. A whale unstaked 170K SOL, valued at $14.85 million at the time. They then transferred the tokens to their Kraken exchange wallet. Usually, this move hints at a looming sell-off.

But what could have led to this decision? This decision likely occurred due to the high odds of the SOL price dropping below $60 on Polymarket. Traders had bet that the likelihood of such was at 68% when writing.

However, the whale was not entirely bearish. They were probably taking profits for the SOL tokens earned during their staking period.

Another 457,937 SOL worth $38.9 million was still in the staking pool. This indicated there was still more confidence that SOL could turn around the bearish structure.

Only a decisive break and sustained move above $90 would confirm a market structure shift. That would set SOL on track to reach $100. Otherwise, the consolidation continues.