Solana’s native token, SOL, has experienced a sharp decline in price just days after announcing a promising partnership with payments giant Visa. SOL is currently trading at $18.40, down 5.5% against Bitcoin.
The dramatic price drop comes despite initial gains for SOL following Visa’s plans to leverage the Solana blockchain for faster settlement of transactions in USDC stablecoin. Visa’s endorsement was seen as a major vote of confidence in Solana as a leading Ethereum competitor.
However, the deal’s impact on SOL’s price momentum now seems short-lived. The altcoin market at large is facing bearish sentiment currently. While Bitcoin and Ethereum have remained relatively flat, other major altcoins like Cardano and Dogecoin have posted declines in the past week.
SOL’s underperformance against top altcoins is notable given the recent Visa hype. This signals the partnership has failed to sustain bullish momentum for the Ethereum rival amid the broader skittishness among altcoin traders.
With a market cap now reduced to $7.56 billion, Solana will be looking to regain ground lost over the past week. However, the prevailing macro conditions pose strong headwinds for the altcoin market in the short term.
