Whale Bets on Solana Surging to $400 by February’s End

On January 20, a client of the OTC platform Paradigm executed a “large” options trade on Solana, poised to profit if the price surpasses $400 by February 28, according to CoinDesk.

An unnamed institutional investor initiated a so-called bull call spread: simultaneously buying a call with a strike price of $280 and selling a call with the same parameter at $400.

This strategy yields the greatest profit when the underlying asset’s quotes are near or above the short call’s expiration ($400).

In other words, the trader is betting on a 55% rise in Solana’s price from its current value of $257 in less than a month.

According to Greg Magadini, Director of Derivatives at Amberdata, the breakeven level for the trade is $300.

The position was opened amid statements from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong about plans to develop the Solana ecosystem.

We have the Solana backlog triaged, and transactions should generate quickly again. If your transaction got canceled you can retry it now — apologies for the trouble.

It’s clear we need to step up our game on Solana, scale our infrastructure, and provide native support for…

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) January 22, 2025

“Our goal is to support Solana on par with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Base,” he wrote.

The head of Coinbase responded to user issues on the platform regarding SOL transaction processing, which arose due to high market activity.

On January 18, Solana reached a historic high of around $270. The growth driver was the launch of the “official” TRUMP meme token by U.S. President Donald Trump on the network.

The following day, a token from the politician’s spouse — MELANIA was introduced.

As a result of the on-chain activity surge, Solana users experienced “the craziest weekend.”

Between January 23-25, the deadline for the preliminary decision by the SEC on Solana-ETF applications from VanEck, 21Shares, Canary, Bitwise, and Grayscale approaches.

Previously, several experts expressed confidence in the product’s emergence by the end of 2025.

According to JPMorgan, inflows into potential spot exchange-traded funds based on SOL and XRP could surpass those of Ethereum instruments within six months of launch, reaching $3-6 billion.