The current obsession with finding ‘the next big thing’ in cryptocurrency occasionally stumbles upon something… vaguely sensible. Right now, that something is Solana. Not because it’s inherently good, mind you, but because it might, just might, be less terrible than most. The idea is that if actual, real-world financial transactions – the sort involving actual money, not digital promises – start happening ‘on chain’ (a phrase that sounds suspiciously like a medieval dungeon), Solana could benefit. This is largely predicated on the growth of ‘stablecoins’ and ‘Real World Asset’ (RWA) tokenization. It’s a system built on trust, naturally. (Which, historically, hasn’t been a huge success for the financial industry.)
Solana, you see, is a ‘smart contract’ cryptocurrency – which is a fancy way of saying it can be programmed to do things. Like, theoretically, not lose your money. (No guarantees, of course. The universe operates on probability, and probability is rarely on your side.) If this tokenization thing takes off, Solana, with its alleged processing capabilities, could experience something approximating ‘growth.’ It’s currently one of the top ten cryptos by market capitalization, which is a bit like being one of the least objectionable options in a room full of particularly irritating people.
Solana’s Potential: Or, The Illusion of Speed
Solana’s main selling points are speed and low cost. It supposedly averages around 1,000 transactions per second (TPS). Which is… fast. Relatively. (Compared to a sloth attempting astrophysics, it’s positively warp speed. Compared to Visa, it’s… well, we’ll get to that.) They even managed 100,000 TPS in a test run. A test run, naturally. Because everything works perfectly in a test run. (It’s the real world that’s the problem. Always has been.)
It did, admittedly, have a few ‘technical difficulties’ in its early days. Outages, mostly. (Imagine the inconvenience. The sheer, existential dread of not being able to trade digital tokens for approximately five minutes.) They’ve been working on strengthening the system, which is a good thing. If they want financial institutions to trust them with tokenization and payments, reliability is… advisable. The ‘Alpenglow’ upgrade is focused on efficiency and resilience, which is corporate-speak for ‘we’re trying to stop it from falling over.’
Tokenization and Stablecoins: Or, The $4 Trillion Question
The recent passing of stablecoin legislation removed some of the barriers to tokenization and stablecoin adoption. (Which is a bit like removing a speed bump from a highway. It doesn’t necessarily make the journey safer, but it does make it faster.) Stablecoins are, essentially, a way of recording ownership of assets on the blockchain. Using on-chain representations of dollars could mean low-cost, round-the-clock, global asset transfers. (Or, more realistically, slightly faster and slightly cheaper ways for banks to extract fees.)
There are concerns, naturally, about the impact of this untested technology on the financial system. (Which is a perfectly reasonable concern, considering the financial system is already held together by duct tape and wishful thinking.) But major financial institutions and payment providers are looking for ways to integrate them anyway. (Because progress. Or, more accurately, the relentless pursuit of profit.)
Deutsche Bank estimates the market for U.S.-backed stablecoins could reach $2 trillion in the coming years. Real-world asset tokenization could reach another $2 trillion or more by 2030. (These numbers are, of course, projections. Based on… well, let’s not ask.)
Solana has captured around 4.5% of both the stablecoin and RWA market. It’s currently in fourth or fifth place, dominated by Ethereum (ETH 0.28%). Even if Solana doesn’t increase its market share, 4.5% of a hypothetical $4 trillion market would increase the value on its chain from around $9 today to $180 billion. (Which is a lot of money. Although, in the grand scheme of things, it’s roughly the cost of a moderately sized island.)
Solana’s Prospects: Or, The Hopeful Delusion
As of January 13th, Solana had dropped about 20% in the past year. (A sobering reminder that past performance is not indicative of future results.) However, it did set a new all-time high in 2025 and demonstrated its capabilities as a ‘serious’ Layer-1 crypto. (Which is corporate-speak for ‘it hasn’t completely imploded yet.’) There are no guarantees, of course, and Solana may experience new technical hiccups or other unforeseen circumstances. But it’s a ‘strong’ project. (Relatively speaking.)
Its speedy processing could be what the stablecoin industry needs. As a Bitwise report shows, it’s the only major cryptocurrency with the potential to compete with Mastercard in terms of transaction speed. (Which is a low bar, frankly. Mastercard has a considerable head start.) If stablecoins continue to surge, Solana will almost certainly grow with them. The bigger question is how much of the market it can take. (And whether anyone will actually notice.)
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2026-01-17 13:03