Should You Forget Bitcoin and Buy Solana?

The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) The market index has had a total return of 25% in 2024. This is a great year for the stock market, but it can’t hold a candle to the crypto market.

According to CoinMarketCap, the market value of each cryptocurrency was $1.65 trillion by the end of 2023. The combined market capitalization is up to $3.30 trillion as of December 19, doubling in less than 12 months

Pioneer of cryptography Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) it gained 138% over the same period. Smart contracts innovative solana (CRYPTO: SUN) showed a gain of 101%, just ahead of the crypto sector as a whole.

But the picture changes if you zoom out a bit. As of the December 2022 plateau, Solana is head and shoulders above Bitcoin and the stock market with a 2,000% price gain:

Solana price chart — Price Solana data for YCharts

Therefore, Solana has a recent history of outperforming Bitcoin, even though the largest cryptocurrency enjoyed a pretty fantastic performance in the same time period. It would be pretty incredible if this two-year trend could continue into 2025 and beyond.

Is this a good time to rebalance your crypto holdings, pulling out of Bitcoin to buy more Solana?

First, let me point out that Solana’s recent price increase started from a very low point.

Caught in the financial crisis of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange, Solana had recently fallen from $259 to $10 per token in about a year.

It’s not easy to recover from a drop of this magnitude, but it’s still an easier task than shooting from a higher starting point. Bitcoin also suffered the FTX debaclebut its drop in prices was much smaller than that of Solana. In other words, Solana’s stellar summer 2022 earnings were aided by an artificially low starting price.

Upstairs, Solana is ready for action. Cryptocurrency remains a top performer when it comes to executing smart contracts in a hurry, which is good for automating financial transactions and other asset-based exchanges.

In particular, Solana’s high-speed contracts are useful when managing a large volume of these decentralized programs at once in a time-pressured situation. Mobile gaming comes to mind, along with blockchain-based trading platforms and non-fungible token (NFT) sales. Someday, you might even buy gum and gas with a quick Solana transaction. This is the kind of thing that a cryptocurrency can do with smart contracts and fast settlement of transactions.

So Solana’s return to the top 10 list of big and popular cryptocurrencies makes sense. Owning some Solana is probably a good idea in 2024, as it seems likely that the token will be widely used in real-world applications over the next couple of years.

But can Solana beat Bitcoin right now? Maybe, but I’m not so sure. Bitcoin has too many growth catalysts in place:

Bitcoin recently updated its economic function for the fourth time, halving the amount of coins that are issued when a new block of Bitcoin transaction data is processed. Historically, such halvings have led to impressive price gains a year or so later, and there’s no reason to believe this cycle will be any different.
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on current Bitcoin prices are about a year old. Its introduction was expected to bring a lot of new capital to the crypto market, using tools already familiar to any stock investor. About 5.2% of all Bitcoins have found their way into Bitcoin ETFs so far, led by the massive iShares Bitcoin Trust (NASDAQ: IBIT). Capital inflows picked up pace in November, even as disappointing economic reports this week led to the biggest single-day outflows yet. Even Bitcoin and its ETFs are still quite volatile.
November’s Bitcoin enthusiasm referenced the election results. The incoming Trump administration brings a more cryptocurrency-friendly attitude to the Capitol and the White House, and the president-elect included cryptocurrency support in his campaign. Among other things, this regime change could lead to the creation of a national Bitcoin reserve, which would increase the price of the cryptocurrency by making it even scarcer on the open market.

I could go on, boring you to tears with technical data and promising market trends, but you get the idea: Bitcoin doesn’t stop. Solana will have to work hard to beat this giant in the long run.

It may sound funny, given Bitcoin’s long history of wild price swings and ongoing volatility, but digital gold is becoming a solid value asset. There are no “safe bets” in the crypto market, but Bitcoin comes pretty close. An abrupt turn of events could turn Solana into a footnote in crypto history, but a major change is needed to make Bitcoin obsolete.

As a long-term investor, I would rather have a large Bitcoin holding and a smaller, speculative Solana investment than the other way around. To be clear, I have a bit of both. Still, future Bitcoin price trends will make a much bigger difference to my nest egg than Solana’s.

And that’s how I like it. Your mileage may vary, but Bitcoin seems like the strongest investment idea to me.

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Anders Bylund has positions in Bitcoin and Solana. The Motley Fool has positions and recommends Bitcoin and Solana. The Motley Fool has one disclosure policy.

Should You Forget Bitcoin and Buy Solana? was originally published by The Motley Fool

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