Solana Price Forecast as Cathie Wood Boosts Exposure to 3iQ SOL Staking ETF

Solana (SOL) is up by 0.98% today, August 18, to trade at $76 at the time of writing, while trading volumes have also surged by 25% to $$1.38 billion. The rising price and volumes come as Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest increases exposure to the 3iQ Solana staking ETF despite fizzling demand for spot Solana ETFs.

Cathie Wood Scoops 3iQ SOL Staking ETF Shares

Data from the ARK Invest tracker shows that Cathie Wood purchased 7,115 shares of the 3iQ Solana staking ETF on August 17.

The fund manager purchased 3,830 SOL ETF shares through the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) and then purchased an additional 3,285 shares through the ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).

The purchases come amid weakening demand for Solana ETFs. Data from SoSoValue shows that SOL ETFs have not recorded any inflows since August 12, mirroring the trend across the broader crypto ETF market.

However, Solana ETFs had the highest weekly inflows of $10.26 million in the week between August 10 and August 14, as earlier reported by CoinGape.

Solana Price Prediction as Cup and Handle Pattern Appears

The price of Solana is trading within a cup and handle pattern on the one-day chart. This pattern usually suggests that the long-term Solana outlook is bullish as long as the price can move above the resistance at $76.

If Solana closes above the resistance at $76, the price could gain by 8.9% and reach $83. The RSI reading of 53 suggests that the momentum is still leaning bullish, and this could support the upward move.

However, Solana has not closed above this obstacle at $76 since July 20. This suggests that sellers are likely dumping tokens when the price nears this resistance at $76.

If the breakout above $76 fails again, Solana price could drop to the lower Bollinger band of $72 to find support before attempting another upward move.

Solana Network Activity Falls

Data from DeFiLlama shows that the Total Value Locked (TVL) on the Solana blockchain has dropped from $8.19 billion to $4.85 billion at the time of writing.

The TVL in terms of SOL value has also declined from 75 million SOL on June 7 to 63.84 million SOL at the time of writing, suggesting that network users have withdrawn 12 million SOL from various DeFi protocols that are available on Solana.

The total market cap of stablecoins on Solana has also dropped from $16.4 billion on July 25 to $15.3 billion, which also suggests that network usage is falling.

However, this drop mirrors the trend across the broader DeFi space, where the TVL across all blockchains has dropped from $114 billion to $75 billion at the time of writing.