The Bull and Bear Case for Solana’s Next Price Move

Solana has risen up the ranks of the crypto market charts over the last few years, but the bear market has taken a toll—and the broader macro environment isn’t give SOL much of a tailwind.

Bitcoin is trapped between roughly $62,000 support and $67,000 resistance after a brutal early-August selloff, holding under $65,000, while Ethereum has pulled back to the $1,825–$1,850 zone after getting rejected at higher levels.

A weak tape across the two largest assets caps how far any altcoin bounce can run, and Solana, which trades as SOL, is moving with them, down 1.22% on the day at $75.06 and a $43 billion market cap.

There are some potential catalysts on the horizon, however, beginning with the coming Alpenglow consensus upgrade. The overhaul is meant to cut finality to 100–150 milliseconds and entered community validator testing and is targeted for mainnet activation in August. Traders have been positioning for the rollout, but the date is still a target, not a locked event. Until it ships, the chart is doing the talking, and it has SOL back on its 50-day average after a pullback from the $90 spike—the first line of defense for any recovery.

Another development to take into consideration is a recent tokenomics proposal. Validators are close to advancing SGP-0003, which bundles two changes aimed at tightening Solana’s supply: SIMD-0553 would introduce resource-based fees and lift daily SOL burns more than 10-fold—from about 650 SOL (roughly $48,000) to between 7,500 and 9,000 SOL (up to about $668,000)—while SIMD-0550 would double the annual disinflation rate to 30%, pulling the 1.5% inflation floor forward from 2032 to 2029.

Supporters include Helius, Jupiter, Drift, and Solana Compass. A supply-side squeeze like that is the kind of catalyst the chart can’t show.

SOL price: What the charts say

Solana is trading at $75.06 on the daily charts, down 1.22% on the day, after a late-August pullback from a spike near $90. Price is holding just above the average price of its last 50 days, back in the support that defines the current range.

Solana carved a steep downtrend from the mid-$90s in May to about $62 in early June, then staged a V-shaped August rally that peaked just under $85 before rolling over. The drop from that high to $75.06 is roughly a 17% retrace, and crucially it’s been absorbed right at the 50-day exponential moving average, or EMA, rather than slicing through it.

Exponential moving averages smooth out day-to-day noise by weighting recent closes more heavily, so the 50- and 200-day lines show where the medium-term crowd actually paid, not last tick’s panic.

If a market goes through a normal cycle change, these changes happen slowly, with both EMAs approaching over time after being almost stable for a bit. That’s the first step toward stabilization the bulls need—but the rally failed to hold above the 200-day EMA near $85, so the move still looks like a lower-high rejection off a major average, not a trend reset. A daily close back under the 50-day EMA would flip this from “holding support” to “losing it.”

The Relative Strength Index, or RSI, reads 50.5. RSI is a momentum gauge on a 0–100 scale: above 70 is overbought, below 30 is oversold. At 50.5, SOL is exactly on the midline—neutral, with no momentum edge either way.

Squeeze Momentum is on for three days and seems to point towards a recovery. A squeeze means volatility has contracted and a move is loading; this one carries a faintly positive bias, but +0.28 is barely off zero.

The Average Directional Index, or ADX, reads 11.9. ADX measures trend strength, not direction: below 20 means the market is directionless and choppy, so false breakouts and stop hunts are common. The directionality is also ever so slightly bullish, but with ADX this low the signal means little.

Myriad’s open SOL market frames the extremes. Traders there are pricing a dump to $40 at 69% and a pump to $160 at 31%, with the market open until the coin hits a target. The 69% lean toward $40 is basically a bet that stacks the current hold at the 50-day EMA against a deeper leg down.

For more information, or to participate, click here to place your prediction on Myriad.

The price chart doesn’t support a run to $160 from here: that would need a daily close back above the 200-day EMA near $85 first, and the death cross says the path of least resistance is still down.

Bull case: SOL holds the 50-day EMA and the 74.73–75.71 Fib green zone, then reclaims $77.50 (the resistance marked on the chart) and pushes toward the 200-day EMA near $85. A daily close back above $77.50 confirms the 50-day EMA held and reopens the August high.

Bear case: a daily close below $72 breaks the green zone and opens $70.58, then the early-July floor near $65.

All things considered, Solana is holding its 50-day EMA, but the 200-day EMA above and the death cross below still frame this as a bounce inside a downtrend, not a turn.