Becoming a millionaire with Solana: How realistic is it?

Solana's future seems promising. Current predictions are optimistic. But how many coins would you have to own to become a millionaire? Three scenarios - from realistic to utopian.

In this article you will read:

• What course predictions there are for Solana

• What to consider

• How much SOL you need to make a million dollars

• How realistic the different scenarios are

There are many Bitcoin millionaires. According to the Crypto Wealth Report are about 85,000 worldwide, and that number is growing. So-called altcoins - all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin - have put even 87,000 investors into the category of the rich. Of the new cryptocurrencies, Solana is being hailed as an attractive investment. No surprise: since the FTX crash, this project has made more profits than almost all other major crypto currencies.

In 2023, Solana rose about 1,000 percent, from around $10 to more than $100. In 2024, there was a 100 percent increase. The current price is around $153. Some predictions for the crypto currency are even particularly optimistic: Coin Bureau crypto influencers expect a price of $650 this cycle, while popular crypto investor Raoul Pal predicts a price of more than $1,000. Asset manager VanEck even sees Solana rising to $3,500 by 2030. If Solana succeeds in becoming the long-term leading blockchain for everyday Web3 use, even higher prices are possible. Given these predictions and future potential: how much Solana would you need to become a millionaire with your investment?

What to consider at Solana

To figure this out, it is important to understand some basics about evaluating crypto currencies, and especially the specifics of Solana. New investors often look at the price per coin, in this case $150. But that is not the most important thing for the growth of the project; the market capitalization is much more important. This is the total value of all the coins combined. The larger the market capitalization, the more capital is needed to influence the price. Solana currently has a market capitalization of nearly $72 billion. By comparison, Bitcoin has a market capitalization of $1.2 trillion, about 1,600 percent more.

At Solana, the total amount of coins in circulation increases every year, meaning there is built-in inflation. This is justified because Solana has to pay the validators who keep the network running, and since the costs on the blockchain are so low, this is achieved through inflation. Inflation began at 8 percent per year and is reduced by 15 percent annually until a standard inflation rate of 1.5 percent per year is reached. By 2024, inflation will be 4 percent. Over the next 10 years, Solana will experience a total inflation rate of about 23 percent. At the current rate, the market capitalization would then already be $88 billion.

How much Solana do you need to become a millionaire?

Taking the various forecasts and factoring in built-in inflation, we arrive at the following scenarios. At a rate of $350 at the end of 2025, you would need to own about 2,857 Solana, an investment of nearly $428,000. The market capitalization would be $180 billion, slightly more than half of what Ethereum currently is. At a rate of $650, you would need 1,538 Solana, representing an investment of about $230,000. The market capitalization would then be $335 billion, displacing Solana as the most valuable smart contract platform. If the price really reached $3,500 by 2030, 285 Solana would already make you a millionaire, which would mean an investment of $42,000. The market capitalization would then be nearly $2 trillion, nearly double Bitcoin's current market capitalization. This would make Solana the seventh most valuable asset in the world, ahead of silver and directly behind Amazon.

How realistic are these scenarios?

$350 by 2025 seems almost inevitable. This is confirmed, for example, by a direct comparison with Ethereum. RWA, gaming, NFTs, and decentralized trading: wherever you look, Solana is gaining market share and now surpasses Ethereum in many statistics. Asset manager VanEck predicts that Solana could capture up to 50 percent of Ethereum's market share in the medium term, reaching $330. According to a report by the asset manager, Solana processes 3,000 percent more transactions and has 1,300 percent more daily active users, while costs are significantly lower. Yet Solana's market capitalization is only 23 percent of Ethereum's.

Solana is already attracting many small investors. Institutional investors are prediction to follow. For example, the project has partnerships with VISA and PayPal. However, there are concerns about the sustainability of the current growth. Some of the network's activity, such as high transaction volumes, is reportedly artificially inflated by bots and memecoins, as much as 90 percent, according to an article by Flip Research. The network also struggled with overloads several times this year.

Much depends on Firedancer

The rise to $650 predicted by Coin Bureau is based on technical analysis. Raoul Pal sees Firedancer, a planned update to the network, as the key. An early version of Firedancer was launched at the Solana event Breakpoint in Singapore on Sept. 21, 2024. This update should make Solana more secure and capable of processing up to a million transactions per second. This would make the blockchain faster than traditional networks such as VISA.

"Solana says this is fast enough for the entire security industry to run on it. VISA can only handle 24,000 transactions per second. You can run social media, high-frequency trading, basically anything on it," said Raoul Pal in an interview. However, he also admits: "Of course, I could be wrong and an idiot. But Solana could well become the Ethereum of this cycle."

That Solana will reach a share price of $3,200 by 2030, however, seems highly unlikely. For that to happen, everything would really have to go right: not only would Firedancer have to deliver as promised, but Solana would also have to aggressively capture market share in sectors such as gaming, DeFi and social media. Not just within crypto, but globally. It should become as big as Amazon is now.

What at least argues for a move in that direction is the possible arrival of a spot ETF. Several applications have already been filed, and while regulatory hurdles remain, they could disappear in the next few years. Market analysts believe that even a small portion of institutional capital flowing into such an ETF could lead to price appreciation of as much as 900 percent, breaking Solana's $1,000 mark.