DeFi contagion fears and bearish technicals mean additional downside pressure on Solana price.
Solana (SOL) tumbled on June 16 amid a broader retreat across the top cryptocurrencies, led by the Federal Reserve’s 0.75% interest rate hike a day before.
Solana price rebound fizzles
Notably, SOL/USD plunged nearly 17% to $30 a token, wiping out almost all the gains from the day before. The SOL price volatility liquidated almost $10 million worth of contracts in the past 24 hours across multiple crypto exchanges, data from Coinglass shows.
SOL liquidation record since May 17. Source: Coinglass
The latest declines come as an extension to SOL’s broader correction, where it dropped by more than 90% after peaking out near $267 in November 2021. SOL also fell to its lowest level since July 2021 near $25.
In addition, a higher interest rate environment and the collapse of high-profile crypto projects like Terra have strengthened SOL’s downside prospects.
SOL paints “ascending triangle”
Solana’s pullback move on June 16 began after testing a horizontal trendline resistance near $34 that constitutes what appears to be an “ascending triangle” pattern.
Ascending triangles are continuation patterns, i.e., they tend to send the price in the direction of their previous trend. As a rule, breaking out of a triangle pattern in a bearish market, for example, sends the price down by as much as the structure’s maximum height.
If SOL breaks below its ascending triangle’s lower trendline then the bearish profit target will come below $22.50, as shown in the chart below.
SOL/USD four-hour price chart featuring “ascending triangle” pattern. Source: TradingView
Solana’s downside target is about 25% below June 16’s price and could be achieved by the end of June. Nonetheless, if SOL bounces after testing the triangle’s lower trendline as support, it would eye the $34–$36 range as its interim upside target.
Massive SOL exit
Over 27 million Solana tokens have exited its smart contract ecosystem since June 13.
The total value locked (TVL) inside Solana smart contracts dropped to 74.65 million SOL (~$2.25 billion) on June 16, down 27% in the last three days, according to data tracked by DeFi Llama. That amounts to nearly $840 million of withdrawals from the ninth-largest blockchain ecosystem by market cap.
Solana TVL performance since April 2021. Source: DeFi Llama
Solend, a lending platform functioning atop the Solana ledger, witnessed a 26.5% decline in its TVL in the last three days and was holding 9.66 million SOL (~$290 million) as of June 16. Nevertheless, it remains the leading platform by TVL within the Solana ecosystem.
Related: Liquidity provider asks platforms to freeze 3AC funds to recover assets after litigation
The outflows indicate that depositors do not want to keep their SOL locked in DeFi protocols, a sentiment common across the sector after Terra, an “algorithmic stablecoin” project, collapsed last month.
Contagion, another yield ponzi going down.
Seriously get your coins off anything like Celsius and BlockFi before they aren’t your coins anymore.
LFG, 3AC, Celcius etc all spread risk to each other and you pay the price for it https://t.co/cemFCvAeAz
— Pentoshi Powell Jr (@Pentosh1) June 16, 2022
Therefore, Solana’s path of least resistance remains skewed to the downside in the near term, particularly with no improvement in terms of macro and fundamentals.
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