Solana Tokens Continue Steep Slide While Major Cryptos Stay Flat

Crypto markets slid a nominal 0.8% in the past 24 hours as broader equity markets grappled with renewed coronavirus fears stemming from China.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and Japan’s Nikkei 225 had shed 1% as of Asian afternoon hours on Thursday, while the Shanghai Composite fell 0.44%. Stocks fell amid weakened risk appetite on one of the final trading days of the year, according to Bloomberg.

The bearish sentiment, however, didn't seem to affect major cryptocurrencies, with bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and several other major tokens such as polkadot (DOT), binance coin (BNB) and XRP (XRP) seeing nominal change.

Solana (SOL), however, dropped as much as 10% in the past 24 hours, adding to a 20% slide over the past week. Selling pressure on the tokens came because of their close links to disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces charges of fraud and misappropriation of client funds.

Thursday's decline put SOL on track for nine straight days of losses, the longest run of declines since Sept. 17, 2021, based on Messari data.

Since 2020, Bankman-Fried has been a major proponent of the Solana network, launching the decentralized exchange Serum on the then-upstart network and investing heavily in the platform's projects.

Apart from prices, the value locked on Solana-based applications has declined 98% since November last year, DefiLlama data shows. Steep falls in Solana’s metrics came after the implosion of Terra network in May and a market-wide drop in July and after Bankman-Fried's FTX problems first came to light early last month.

Alternative currencies outside of the top 20 tokens by market capitalization saw slight changes as well, except for toncoin (TON), which fell 5% over the past 24 hours, and luna classic (LUNC), which dropped 7%.

Meanwhile, premarket futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500 both inched 0.5% higher, pointing to possible gains when the U.S. markets open on Thursday.

UPDATE (Dec. 29, 10:03 UTC): Adds SOL's streak of declines in fourth paragraph.