Solana retraces back to pre-Xmas prices as BNB retakes 4th spot

Solana has lost its place as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap after being overtaken by BNB.

Even though Solana's token had an amazing 120% monthly surge in December that saw its market valuation surpass Binance's BNB, the token's price fell in the days after Christmas.

over the retracement, Solana's price dropped below $100 and then hovered around $101 over the pre-holiday period for several hours. As of this writing, TradingView data shows that Solana is trading at $105, down around 14% from its yearly high of $123, which it reached on December 26.

However, an unexpected 9% uptick in the price of BNB has now seen the Binance-linked token reclaim its position as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

But since then, both memecoins have dropped more than 50% from their peak prices; they started to decline three days before Solana reached its annual high on December 26.

Concurrent with the significant rise in Solana's price was a surge in trading activity on the network, causing trading volumes on SOL-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs) to momentarily surpass Ethereum's for the first time.

According to DefiLlama data, Solana DEX activity has subsequently cooled off and dropped to $1.1 billion in the last day—roughly half of Ethereum's $2 billion. In the meanwhile, Ether just reported a 5% weekly rise, which has many analysts and traders thinking that it might soon begin to beat its rivals.