Solana Price News: On Track to Hit Our $50 Target as Bearish Momentum Accelerates

Solana (SOL) has now shed nearly 50% of its value in 2026, as bearish momentum in the crypto market accelerated this week.

Investors’ sentiment turned to ‘Extreme Fear’ as analysts now expect a change in the Federal Reserve’s stance when it comes to monetary policy and interest rates.

Earlier this year, the baseline scenario was that the Fed would cut rates once or twice. At the beginning of the year, Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran prompted a change in that scenario to zero cuts in 2026.

Now, as the key inflation gauge tracked by the Fed, the PCE Price Index, landed at 3.7% in April, the narrative has taken a U-turn, and market participants are now giving 50% odds to a rate hike in September as the central bank probably wants to prevent prices from spiraling out of control.

As expected, risky assets like cryptocurrencies are taking a big hit. Paired with some notable whale sales like Michael Saylor’s small BTC dump and Arthur Hayes’ dumping key positions at HYPE, NEAR, and ZEC, we are witnessing the consequences of a strong wave of long liquidations.

Long Liquidations Spike Beyond $5.5 Billion in Just 6 Days

Data from CoinGlass shows that, in the last 6 days alone, over $5.5 billion worth of long positions have been wiped out from the futures market.

This has huge implications for the spot price of crypto assets, as a lower amount of outstanding futures contracts allows market makers to reduce their positions, as they no longer need to hedge their exposure to these crypto assets.

Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions are also adding more fuel to the fire, and we could expect further volatility down the road.

In addition to these headwinds, the top driver for Solana’s ecosystem growth, which is trading volumes from the meme coin segment, has dried up as a result of this recent bear market.

On-chain data from DeFi Llama shows that application fees had been progressively dropping for four months in a row, moving down from $470 million in January to $199 million in April.

Although the metric recovered last month to $224 million, that still implies a 50%+ drop in app fees.

In simple words: traders got burned during the bear market for speculating with meme coins, and they are not ready to come back to the table after they got roasted.

“Dead Cat Bounce” to $75 Would Give Traders a Second Chance to Short SOL

Heading to the daily chart, we recently shared a trading opportunity that involved shorting Solana after the token broke below the $77 mark. This was a major technical event as it meant breaking out of a long-dated consolidation pattern.

We hold a bearish outlook for the token and see a potential decline to $50. If you were paying attention, that position has already yielded some interesting returns.

The lack of diversification when it comes to ecosystem growth initiatives is also a significant risk that Solana needs to overcome. Otherwise, even if the market recovers, SOL may lag its peers in terms of performance, as it did during the latest bull market.

If you were late to this party, you might get a second chance to enter a short position, as the daily Relative Strength Index (RSI) just hit oversold levels.

Hence, we might see SOL rising back to $70 – $75 in the next few days. We would treat that as a “dead cat bounce,” and it could give traders the chance for a late entry. If the target for such a trade is set at $50, that would mean a potential 3x return.