Solana, hit by a full sell-off bomb from Goldman Sachs, will it break through the $98 iron ceiling and revive?

▲ Solana (SOL)/AI generated image ©

A prominent blockchain asset, which had been facing price resistance due to the departure of major global institutions, is quietly raising its floor price amidst a long-term sideways trend, accumulating energy for a significant trend breakout.

According to the investment media TradingNews on May 20 (local time), Solana (SOL) is currently trading around $85.98 as of Wednesday. While it has been in a temporary correction phase, falling 9.15% over the past week, technically on the chart, it is clearly drawing a four-consecutive-higher-low pattern, with lows continuously increasing from $79, $81.50, and $82.70 to recently $84.20. The media evaluated this technical trend not as a structural impairment of asset value but as a typical precursor to a breakout, where upward compression is underway like a strong spring.

The repeated obstruction of the upward momentum has been attributed to the liquidation of positions by large institutions. Following Goldman Sachs' full sale of its SOL spot ETF holdings in Q1 this year, long-term whale investors have continuously poured $137 million worth of SOL into the market since 2025, exacerbating upward resistance. The persistent specter of legal risk from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which could classify the asset as an unregistered security, has also been an invisible wall preventing institutions from actively expanding their aggressive territory.

However, a clear trend of supply-demand turnaround from institutional investors is observed below the surface. In the U.S. spot ETF market, listed on the stock exchange, a net inflow of $2.06 million on Monday was followed by $3.78 million on Tuesday, marking two consecutive days of net buying dominance. Notably, according to recent reports, while Bitcoin (BTC)-related products experienced capital outflows in the overall investment product market, Solana-centric products saw a massive influx of $55.1 million in institutional funds, clearly demonstrating a unique path and differentiated appeal compared to other L1 assets across various categories.

Derivatives and on-chain data also support these medium-to-long-term bottoming signals. As weekly futures and options trading volume surpassed $20 billion, indicating active position setting by institutions, the perpetual futures funding rate, which had plummeted to minus 3%, turned positive to 0.0063% as of Wednesday, signaling that demand for bullish bets is beginning to drive the premium. Although Q1 on-chain trading volume and decentralized exchange (DEX) turnover sharply decreased by 56% compared to the beginning of the year, the fundamental strength continues to grow, with Q1 chain GDP reaching $342.2 million and the scale of Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization expanding by 43% to $2.01 billion.

In the short term, the immediate priority is to recover the Ichimoku Cloud baseline of $89.91 and the 100-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) of $92.96, respectively. Only by firmly surpassing this resistance band on a closing price basis can Solana break through the strong medium-term ceiling of $98, which it failed to breach four times since February, and activate a full-fledged major rally towards $115 and $130. Conversely, if the $78 support level, which is the final line of defense and lifeline in the technical structure, is breached downwards on a daily closing price basis, a head-and-shoulders bearish pattern would be finalized, potentially leading to a deeper plunge risk towards the $70 and $65 levels.

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