- Solana price has done well in the past few days.
- Visa announced that it was expanding its stablecoin processing capability to Solana.
- This is a major move because Visa is the biggest fintech company in the world.
Solana, one of the best-performing big cryptocurrencies this year, jumped sharply on Tuesday after the latest moves by Visa. The SOL token soared to a high of $20.60, 8% above the lowest level this month.
Visa expands USDC use in Solana
Solana price jumped after Visa announced its next moves in financial settlements to facilitate cross-border payments. In a press release, the company said that it was expanding its stablecoin settlement capabilities to Solana.
Visa has been at the forefront of the blockchain industry, through its VisaNet product. In particular, the company has been using stablecoins to boost its financial processing capabilities in a bid to create real-time authorizations.
The idea behind this move is relatively easy to ordinary users but a bit complicated behind the scenes. When users pay via Visa cards, they benefit from instant authorization. At the same time, Visa’s treasury and settlement systems ensures that the funds move from the customer to the seller. In a statement, Cuy Scheffield, the head of Crypto said:
“By leveraging stablecoins like USDC and global blockchain networks like Solana and Ethereum, we’re helping to improve the speed of cross-border settlement and providing a modern option for our clients to easily send or receive funds from Visa’s treasury.”
The announcement provided a major boost to Solana, a blockchain company whose reputation was tarnished because of its relationship with FTX and Alameda Research.
There are two main reasons why Visa expanded its USDC capabilities to Solana: speed and cost. Unlike Ethereum, Solana handles thousands of transactions per second, making it highly scalable. It does this while charging a few cents per transaction.
Meanwhile, activity in Solana’s DeFi ecosystem has been recovering. Data by DeFi Llama shows that Solana now has a TVL of over 52 million SOL tokens, a major improvement from the year-to-date low of 25.3 million tokens. The biggest players in the ecosystem are Acumen, Fabric, Almond, and Solanax.
Solana price prediction
Turning to the 4H chart, we see that SOL price bottomed at $19.81 in August. It has formed a major support at that price and failed to move below it several times since August. Solana is also oscillating at the 25-period and 50-period moving averages.
At the same time, the price is hovering at the 61.8% Fibonacci Retracement level. Therefore, the outlook for Solana is neutral with a bearish bias. In this case, the key support and resistance levels to watch will be at $18.91 and $22.20, respectively.
