As high as the price of an asset might look, it can always go higher. Especially in crypto, markets often make investors feel like they're too late to get exposure to a coin right when the next leg of growth is just getting started.
That brings us to Solana (SOL -1.50%), which is up by 46% (as of Sept. 24) in three months after a powerful summer run. Is the upside already exhausted for those who buy it now, or is there a lot more gas in the tank?
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A big rally doesn't imply the end of the road
The first thing for investors to recognize is that price action doesn't settle the debate about whether an asset is worth buying. A three-month rally in Solana tells you that momentum was or is real, not that the investment thesis for buying it has fully played out and is no longer valid.
The key here is that a specific new demand driver for Solana is on the scene, and it's likely to continue unlocking new investor cohorts and new use cases that lead to fresh capital flowing onto the chain. That driver, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, is one of the big reasons the coin has been gaining so quickly, and, excitingly for holders, is just barely scratching the surface of its potential to send prices higher over the long term.
As you may have heard, tokenization is the process of recording ownership of a traditional asset like a stock or commodity or piece of property on a crypto token so it can move, settle, and interoperate on certain blockchains. The reasons to tokenize an asset are that doing so usually means faster transfers, better auditability, and lower administrative costs compared with using the financial industry's legacy plumbing. The upshot is that if more financial assets live on a chain, it tends to generate persistent demand for that chain's native token, and liquidity thus tends to rise, which can support the value of its native token over time.
This market is rapidly growing, and nowhere close to its ceiling. Across public chains, tokenized assets now total more than $30 billion, up by roughly 10% during the past 30 days. Solana's slice of the pie today is about $671 million, growing roughly 35% over the same span. Let's unpack why that's so bullish for the future of this coin.
The brand new growth engine is already humming
Within real-world assets, equities (stocks) are stealing the spotlight, and it's also the segment where Solana is outperforming already.
Tokenized stock value recently climbed above $602 million across the crypto sector, rising by roughly 98% in a 30-day span. Solana is hosting about $69 million of that sum, and its ecosystem already has tokenized versions of household name stocks that eligible investors can hold in their crypto wallets and move through venues like the chain's decentralized exchanges (DEXes). Practically all of the value stored in tokenized stocks on Solana migrated in during the past three months, so the rate of growth has been incredible so far.
Under the hood, Solana's token extensions are enabling the chain to capture asset value. They let asset issuers enforce controls like allow lists, transfer hooks, and freeze authorities at the token level rather than rebuilding regulatory compliance tools from scratch, which makes the network a good a fit for regulated financial institutions that need predictable controls. And it's those features that make it very probable that asset managers, institutional investors, and financial institutions will prefer to use the chain rather than its competitors' if they decide to move their equity holdings to be tracked and stored on a blockchain.
For investors, this setup argues very convincingly that it isn't too late to buy Solana, as its future growth potential is, in theory, at least as vast as the entire value of all the stocks that are eligible for tokenization. Furthermore, the movement toward tokenized assets will absolutely not be finished overnight. During the next five years or so, the value that could accrue to Solana is gargantuan, and the latest rally is an expression of that possibility rather than a reason to be scared away.
