Altcoin
BitMEX Co-Founder Arthur Hayes Predicts This Altcoin Will Overtake Solana ($SOL)
The co-founder of popular cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, has set the cryptocurrency community abuzz with his prediction that Aptos ($APT) will overtake Solana ($SOL) as the second-largest Layer 1 blockchain ( L1) most important, behind only Ethereum, within the next two or three years.
Hayes, known for his keen market insights, offered this look into the future during a recent interview with macro analyst Raoul Pal on Coin Bureau’s YouTube channel. While details to support his claim remain scarce, Hayes promised a more in-depth explanation in September.
Solana rose to prominence in 2020 as it addressed Ethereum’s limitations in scalability, transaction speed, and costs. The boom came after Circle expanded its USDC stablecoin onto the Solana network, in a move that came shortly after the addition of Tether’s USDT.
The price of the cryptocurrency collapsed as prior to the collapse FTX had heavily supported the Solana ecosystem and was heavily invested in a number of tokens on the network, including SOL itself. The collapse hit the Solana association, but the network has steadily recovered.
Solana’s rise to prominence was further accelerated with the launch of memecoins such as BONK in December 2022 and dogwifhat (WIF) in November 2023. Solana’s ecosystem has seen growing adoption, with its Saga smartphone, which once had seen slow sales, recently sold out a profitable 30 million BONK token airdrop for every new phone owner.
Notably, Wall Street giant JPMorgan Chase did this expressed skepticism on the potential approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of a Solana spot exchange-traded fund (ETF), or on the approval of such a fund that offers exposure to other altcoins.
Aptos, unlike Solana which has suffered numerous outages, boasts a record of zero downtime since its launch, establishing itself as a reliable alternative in the digital currency landscape. Its foundation lies in “Move,” a new programming language for smart contracts made by engineers who previously worked on Meta Platforms’ Diem project.
Although Diem was eventually shelved, the expertise and technological advances were channeled into Aptos, suggesting its potential for commercial viability and widespread adoption. However, Aptos does not currently have a robust DeFi ecosystem or the type of memecoin activity that fueled Solana’s recent surge.
Featured image via Pixabay.