Solana’s native token, SOL (SOL), rose 8% on March 19 as investors turned to riskier assets ahead of US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks. While interest rates are expected to stay unchanged, analysts anticipate a softer inflation outlook for 2025. Meanwhile, key onchain and derivatives metrics for Solana suggest further upside for SOL price.

The cryptocurrency market mirrored intraday movements in the US stock market, suggesting SOL’s gains were not driven by industry-specific news, such as reports that the US Securities and Exchange Commission may drop its lawsuit against Ripple after clinging to it for four years.

Russell 2000 small-cap index futures (left) vs. SOL/USD (right). Source: TradingView / Cointelegraph

On March 19, the Russell 2000 index futures, tracking US-listed small-cap companies, surged to their highest level in twelve days. Despite a broader slowdown in decentralized application (DApp) activity, Solana stands out. 

Solana’s TVL continues to rise

Solana’s onchain volumes dropped 47% over two weeks, but similar declines were seen across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Tron, and Avalanche, highlighting industry-wide trends rather than Solana-specific issues. The Solana network’s total value locked (TVL), a measure of deposits, hit its highest level since July 2022, supporting SOL’s bullish momentum.

Solana total value locked (TVL), SOL. Source: DefiLlama

On March 17, Solana’s TVL climbed to 53.2 million SOL, marking a 10% increase from the previous month. By comparison, BNB Chain’s TVL rose 6% in BNB terms, while Tron’s deposits fell 8% in TRX terms over the same period. Despite weaker activity in decentralized applications (DApps), Solana continued to attract a steady flow of deposits, showcasing its resilience.

Solana saw strong momentum, driven by Bybit Staking, which surged 51% in deposits since Feb. 17, and Drift, a perpetual trading platform, with a 36% TVL increase. Restaking app Fragmentic also recorded a 65% rise in SOL deposits over 30 days. In nominal terms, Solana secured its second-place position in TVL at $6.8 billion, ahead of BNB Chain’s $5.4 billion.

Despite the market downturn, several Solana DApps remain among the top 10 in fees, outperforming larger competitors like Uniswap and Ethereum’s leading staking solutions.

Ranking by 7-day fees, USD. Source: DefiLlama

Solana’s memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, decentralized exchange Jupiter, automated market maker and liquidity provider Meteora, and staking platform Jito are among the leaders in fees. More notably, Solana’s weekly base layer fees have surpassed Ethereum’s, which holds the top position with $53.3 billion in TVL.

SOL derivatives hold steady as token unlock fears subside

Despite a 27% decline in SOL’s price over 30 days, demand for leveraged positions remains balanced between longs (buyers) and shorts (sellers), as indicated by the futures funding rate.

SOL futures 8-hour funding rate. Source: CoinGlass

Periods of high demand for bearish bets typically push the 8-hour perpetual futures funding rate to -0.02%, which equals 1.8% per month. When the rate turns negative, shorts are the ones paying to maintain their positions. The opposite occurs when traders are optimistic about SOL’s price, causing the funding rate to rise above 0.02%.

The recent price weakness was not enough to instill confidence in bears, at least not to the extent of adding leveraged positions. One reason for this can be explained by the reduced growth in SOL supply going forward, similar to inflation. A total of 2.72 million SOL will be unlocked in April, but only 0.79 million are expected for May and June.

Ultimately, SOL is well-positioned to reclaim the $170 level last seen on March 3, given the resilience in deposits, the lack of leverage demand from bears, and the reduced supply increase in the coming months.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Crypto regulations must be enacted through an act of Congress to become permanent and meaningful pieces of legislation, according to former Congressman Wiley Nickel.

In an exclusive video interview with Cointelegraph’s Turner Wright, Nickel urged bipartisan collaboration to push through comprehensive crypto regulations. The former Congressman added:

“I think it’s really important for anybody who cares about this issue to step back and realize that if you want lasting change in Washington, you must move legislation through Congress. Otherwise, if you’re talking about executive orders, it will just go back and forth.”

“You don’t want to have the mess that we saw just months ago with Gary Gensler’s SEC — you need to get legislation through Congress,” Nickel reiterated.

President Trump’s Jan. 23 executive order establishing the Working Group on Digital Assets, which also prohibited the development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and the order establishing a Bitcoin strategic reserve alongside a separate crypto stockpile, were both examples of executive actions that can be reversed at a later date.

Former Congressman Wiley Nickel is pictured sitting second from the left at the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit. Source: Cointelegraph

Related: Congress on track for stablecoin, market structure bills by August: Blockchain Association

Both chambers of Congress rush to push through meaningful legislation

Rep. Tom Emmer, the majority whip of the United States House of Representatives, reintroduced legislation banning a CBDC in the US on March 6.

Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis also reintroduced the Bitcoin Act in March, which builds upon an earlier bill of the same title but allows the US to purchase more than 1 million Bitcoin (BTC).

Senator Lummis’ Bitcoin Act of 2025. Source: Senator Cynthia Lummis

Rep. Byron Donalds recently announced that he would draft legislation to codify the Bitcoin strategic reserve into law — shielding President Trump’s original executive order from being overturned by a future administration.

On March 12, the House of Representatives repealed the IRS broker rule requiring decentralized finance platforms to report information to the Internal Revenue Service in a 292-131 vote.

Speaking at this year’s Blockworks Digital Asset Summit, Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna said that Congress should be able to pass comprehensive crypto regulation in 2025, including a stablecoin bill and a market structure bill.

Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered

70% of crypto payments in the European Union go toward retail, food and beverage purchases, according to a report from Oobit, a cryptocurrency payments platform that surveyed its users’ spending habits.

The report, which denominated all transactions in US dollars, showed that the average payment size using the Oobit app was $8.36, while the average deposit into the app was around $85. After retail and food and beverage purchases, 26% of payments went to tourism-related activities such as lodging, travel and aviation. 1.5% went to government services and digital payments, while an additional 1.5% went to miscellaneous purchases like healthcare and entertainment.

Related: Transak, Uranium.io partnership lets users buy tokenized uranium with crypto

The report notes that the increased adoption of crypto payments is likely due to the growing acceptance of digital assets in the EU, with increased credibility coming from governments passing crypto legislation. However, 92% of payments came by using the USDt (USDT) stablecoin, which has run afoul of the MiCA regulation which went into full effect on Dec. 30, 2024.

Oobit’s report supplements data from Chainalysis, which showed that adoption of cryptocurrency in Central, Northern, and West Europe (CNWE) has grown 44% year-over-year. For transactions under $1 million, the stablecoin market in that region has grown at a rate 2.5 times faster than that in North America.

Related: Conflux Foundation commits $500M to fuel PayFi Web3 payments solution

Micropayments, stablecoins growing crypto use cases

Micropayments, which sometimes use stablecoins, have been a growing use case for crypto. Advances in technology like the Lightning Network, which has permitted quick micropayments in Bitcoin (BTC), and crypto debit cards which offer spending in crypto with “crypto-back,” have spurred this adoption. As Oobit notes in the title of its report, crypto is moving from memes to a means of exchange.

These changes have begun to spur worldwide adoption. In June 2024, Nubank brought the Lightning Network to 100 million Latin American customers.

In June 2023, IBEX partnered with Grupo Salinas to allow millions of Mexicans to pay for their internet bills with Bitcoin. On March 13, 2025, Ripple secured a Dubai license to offer crypto payments in the United Arab Emirates.

Then there are the stablecoins themselves like USDt and Circle’s USDC (USDC). According to DefiLlama, the stablecoin market cap has grown from $62.8 billion on April 1, 2021, to $229.6 billion on March 18, 2025, a percentage rise of 266%.

Stablecoin market cap from April 1, 2021, to March 18, 2025. Source: DefiLlama

These fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies are frequently used in developing countries where the local currencies are being devalued.

As Arthur Azizov, CEO of B2BINPAY, wrote in a February 2025 opinion piece for Cointelegraph, crypto payments may experience an evolution from 2025 onwards. Some key factors to watch out for are the debut of central bank digital currencies, which could push citizens to more decentralized options, and the mesh between crypto payment providers and traditional finance companies.

Magazine: Bitcoin payments are being undermined by centralized stablecoins