Analyst: FTX could be “sell the rumor, buy the news” for SOL

• Solana is one of the cryptocurrencies to struggle the most in the market since FTX imploded in 2022.
• FTX liquidators have approval to liquidate $3.4 billion worth of crypto assets.
• The collapsed exchange holds $1.2 billion in SOL, Solana’s native token.

The native Solana token SOL, which makes up a significant percentage of the bankrupt crypto platform FTX’s portfolio of assets, has found it difficult to break higher since the sharp decline registered from above $36 in November last year.

With volatility largely on the downside for most assets, the last few days had sentiment for SOL mostly negative. However, a top crypto analyst says SOL could be primed for a “sell the rumour, buy the news” outlook.  

SOL price and FTX liquidation

Solana is trading around $19.10 on Friday morning, up 1.5% in the past 24 hours. The slight gains come in a week where collapsed crypto exchange FTX received the court’s go ahead to liquidate $3.4 billion worth of crypto assets as part of its claims plan.

FTX holds $1.2 billion of SOL, but most of that is staked/locked up as per various contracts. Only a fraction will be released monthly, suggesting little impact on price as markets have largely priced in this scenario.

FTX gets approval to sell $3.4B in #Crypto assets & CPI data comes in worse than expected

Markets aren’t falling down that much, and not much should be happening from it.

The Solana, which corresponds to $1.2 billion of the assets of FTX, is mostly staked and can’t be sold.👇… pic.twitter.com/uKG9XefCzy

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) September 13, 2023

In his comment on the price of Solana after FTX received the court’s nod, Michael van de Poppe said:

“The Solana, which corresponds to $1.2 billion of the assets of FTX, is mostly staked and can’t be sold. Now, what’s next?

First of all, FTX can sell up to $200m of assets on a weekly basis for their corresponding clients so the liabilities could be erased. This can add some additional sell pressure on the markets, but that’s probably already priced in. The major fact is that we should be seeing a case of Solana being sold off massively, but as an anticipation, Solana was already sold off entirely in the past week and could result into a ‘sell the rumour, buy the news’ type of thing.”

The analyst notes that most of the SOL that FTX holds cannot be sold and that of the amount that could hit the market, it’s “mostly sold already.”