Yahoo Finance Solana leads crypto fall as bitcoin, ethereum slide
Cryptocurrencies started off the weak broadly down, led by solana, which had tumbled to fresh weekly lows over the weekend.
The crypto, dubbed the ethereum killer, was hit hard due to a high-profile distributed denial-of-service attack.
On Monday morning, Solana (SOL1-USD) was down 1.4%, to trade at $166 (£125). Bitcoin (BTC-USD) was down 0.2% to trade at $48,749. It is hovering below a key level of $50,000 and was down about 30% from its all-time high of $69,000.
Ethereum (ETH-USD), the second-biggest crypto by market cap, fell 0.6% and was trading at $3,988.
"The crypto market has been trying to partly recover as risk appetite gradually returns, but basic drivers such as security are weighing on some," Wael Makarem, senior market strategist MENA at Exness, told Yahoo Finance UK.
"Solana’s network suffered some outages last week and has come under attack underlining the importance of the network’s security and its ability to remain operational at all times. These events have created some doubts among investors regarding how secure solana is compared to its competitors."
Read more: Live crypto prices
This comes even as browser-maker Opera announced a partnership with Solana Labs to add native support for the popular blockchain.
Meanwhile Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Ava Trade, said miners have been successful in swiftly shifting their operations to North America after China’s regulatory crackdown, which is good news for bitcoin.
“The most important lesson to be taken from this development is that the future outlook of digital coins remains positive, as can be seen from the blockchain space not only surviving but rather thriving even after facing its biggest stress test.”
He explained that Beijing conducted its biggest crackdown on cryptocurrencies this year, forcing the largest migration of crypto miners from China to the US.
When the ban on crypto mining was imposed by Chinese officials, the hash rate — a measure of the computing power consumed by miners on the bitcoin network — dropped nearly 50%, and hence the blockchain space took a huge hit.
Aslam said at the time no one could project that bitcoin mining would recover in merely five months. Previously, mining in China constituted between 65% and 75% of global mining.
Read more: Elon Musk: Tesla founder's top tweets of 2021 that moved markets and crypto
In other bitcoin news, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi's Twitter account, which has 70 million followers, was hacked and a message sent out saying India had adopted bitcoin as legal tender.
The tweet sent out from the @narendramodi account, which was immediately deleted, said the Indian government had officially bought 500 bitcoin and was "distributing them to all residents of the country".
