Solana Eyes $80 Breakout as ARK Invest Buys Staking ETF, Whale Back

SOL Price Today: Holding Above $77 as Volume Jumps 27% Solana (SOL) is up 1.24% today, August 18, trading above $77 at the time of writing. Trading volume has surged too, jumping 27% to $1.359 billion in the last 24 hours. The move comes as Cathie Wood's ARK Invest keeps adding to its $SOL ETF position, even as demand for spot $SOL funds cools off. Adding to the momentum, a dormant whale that sat quiet for two years has just bought back into Solana — a sign that institutional and whale-level interest is building on multiple fronts. Why Is Cathie Wood Buying Solana ETF Shares? ARK Invest bought 7,115 shares of the 3iQ Solana staking ETF on August 17, according to ARK's public trade tracker. The buy was split across two funds. ARKW picked up 3,830 shares, while ARKF added another 3,285 shares. This buying happened despite a rough patch for $SOL ETFs overall. Are Solana ETF Inflows Slowing Down? Data from SoSoValue shows $SOL ETFs have not seen any new inflows since August 12. That flat streak matches a broader slowdown across the crypto ETF market this month. Still, the picture isn't all bad. $SOL ETFs pulled in $10.26 million in net inflows during the week of August 10 to August 14, the best weekly total so far, per SoSoValue. So while daily flows have gone quiet, the weekly trend before that was actually positive. Dormant Solana Whale Resurfaces, Buys $3.6 Million in $SOL A Solana whale that banked more than $20 million in profit back in 2023 has resurfaced after two years of inactivity, purchasing $3.6 million worth of SOL. Blockchain tracker Lookonchain flagged the move, which comes as the altcoin trades roughly 74% below its January 2025 record high. The wallet, tagged GvHYQQ, bought 47,535 tokens in the latest transaction, adding to a position it first built during the 2023 dips. Back then, the whale accumulated 291,790 tokens for $6.82 million across the August and October slumps, averaging $23.37 per token, before SOL began its climb into late 2023. It later sold 191,789 tokens for $24.62 million at an average price of $128.36, locking in more than $20 million in realized profit, and the address went quiet for over two years afterward. According to Arkham data, the wallet still holds roughly 100,000 tokens from its original 2023 stack, and the fresh buy lifts that position to about 147,535 SOL, worth close to $11.1 million at current prices. As Lookonchain put it, the whale is buying the dip again after two years on the sidelines. Solana on the XRP Ledger: What's Going On? Wrapped Solana is now settling on the XRP Ledger's native decentralized exchange, bridged through Axelar.