TLDR
- SOL trades near $104 after bouncing off $100 twice in October, on the 15th and the 18th.
- The Alpenglow upgrade cut finality to about 150 milliseconds, but SOL fell 5.2% the next day.
- Solana ETFs saw a $585,000 inflow on October 21, ending a streak of outflows that began October 5.
- Analyst BitGuru sees $101 as key support, with $112 and $120 as upside targets.
- xStocks says VIDAx recorded twice the Solana trading volume of traditional stock exchanges over 30 days.
Solana (SOL) trades near $104 after a 2.4% drop over the past 24 hours. The price is down about 9.2% so far this month.
SOL bounced off the $100 level twice in October, first on the 15th and again on the 18th. Buyers stepped in each time, which has made the level a key support.
The Alpenglow upgrade went live on Solana’s mainnet on October 21. Developed by Anza, it introduced a new consensus mechanism that cut transaction finality to about 150 milliseconds.
Analyst Merlijn The Trader pointed to the speed gain in a post on X. He noted that Solana got 85x faster, moving from 12.8 seconds to around 150 milliseconds, yet SOL fell 2% and sits at $104 in what he calls the accumulation zone.
Solana got 85x faster yesterday.$SOL went down 2%.
12.8 seconds to ~150ms finality, and it’s still sitting at $104 in the accumulation zone.
Most won’t notice until the price does. pic.twitter.com/OYf7lfrVDA
— Merlijn The Trader (@MerlijnTrader) October 22, 2026
SOL did not rally after the launch. It hit $109 on October 21, then dropped 5.2% to about $103 the next day, a pattern traders call “sell-the-news.”
Support, Resistance and ETF Flows
Analyst BitGuru names $101 as the immediate support SOL must defend. If buyers hold it, he sees a move toward $112 and then $120.
A break below $101 could expose $96, according to BitGuru. His outlook does not factor in RSI, MACD or volume signals.
SOL’s 20-day and 50-day moving averages cluster near $110, and the price sits below both. That suggests sellers still have the upper hand.
A daily close below the October 18 low of $100.32 would break support. The next levels are around $95, where buyers stepped in on August 23, and $74, the July low.
Solana ETFs took in about $585,000 on October 21. That ended a run of daily outflows, though the funds pulled $12.7 million on October 16.
Cumulative net inflows fell from $1.61 billion on October 2 to $1.55 billion on October 21. That is net outflows of $59.1 million in under three weeks.
Market Pressure and Tokenized Stocks
Broader markets added pressure. The VIX stood at 17.3 on October 20, and the 10-year Treasury yield was 5.1%.
Bitcoin fell 2% to around $81,800, and about $430 million in leveraged positions were liquidated. Over the past month, SOL is down 9.6% while Bitcoin is down 2.3%.
On the network side, xStocks reported that VIDAx generated twice the trading volume on Solana compared with traditional stock exchanges over the past 30 days. The figure applies to VIDAx only, not all tokenized stocks on Solana.
Tokenization is outpacing traditional stock exchanges.
VIDAx by xStocks did twice the volume on @Solana than it did on traditional stock exchanges over the past 30 days.
More access, more volume, globally. pic.twitter.com/0eTr7WqsZY
— xStocks (@xStocksFi) October 22, 2026
SOL is still about 64% below its all-time high of roughly $293 from January 2025. Over the past 90 days, it has gained 41.2% from $74 on July 24.
To regain momentum, SOL needs to reclaim $110, where its moving averages meet. The most recent data shows the price near $104, just above the $101 support zone.
