A bold prediction from Multicoin Capital, a crypto investment firm, claims Solana, a massive blockchain ecosystem, could one day surpass giants like the NYSE and NASDAQ. Their detailed report, “The Solana Thesis: Internet Capital Markets,” explains why they believe Solana (SOL) is poised to dominate the global financial landscape.
Solana’s Rise to the Top
Multicoin Capital has been backing Solana since 2018. They highlight Solana’s explosive growth, outpacing Ethereum in key metrics like trading volume and daily users. With Solana now a $100 billion asset, the firm shares its outlook on why it’s a strong investment, even at this high market cap.
Why Solana Could Beat Traditional Finance
Multicoin’s main argument is that Solana’s design drastically cuts transaction fees (by 90-99%), while simultaneously allowing it to rake in massive profits. Unlike traditional stock exchanges that only charge for trades, Solana’s decentralized nature lets it profit from numerous financial apps built on its network.
While near-zero transaction costs (around $0.001) attract users and merchants, the real money isn’t in those small fees. Instead, the report emphasizes the viral nature of payments—each transaction brings in new users, boosting liquidity and profits for DeFi apps on Solana.
A key innovation highlighted is “conditional liquidity” (CL). CL lets market makers offer better prices by only allowing trustworthy sources to access liquidity. This mirrors strategies used by traditional firms like Robinhood, resulting in better prices for everyone.
Solana’s upcoming “Multiple Concurrent Leaders” (MCL) framework promises even faster transactions. By distributing leadership across the network, MCL reduces delays, leading to potentially more efficient price discovery than centralized exchanges.
Beyond Trading: A Global Financial Platform
Multicoin envisions Solana not just as a decentralized stock exchange, but as a global platform for all financial services. This includes derivatives, lending, real estate tokenization, and even traditional stocks. They also see potential for entirely new asset classes, like fractionalized real estate or tokenized collectibles.
A significant revenue source for Solana is “maximum extractable value” (MEV)—the profit validators make from transaction ordering. As more financial apps and markets move onto Solana, MEV is expected to become a major revenue driver. The report states Solana earned over $800 million in revenue (minus inflation) in the last quarter of 2024, a huge jump from almost nothing a year prior.
Solana’s Advantages
Solana’s decentralized structure offers several key advantages over traditional exchanges:
- Lower fees and better liquidity: Significantly cheaper transactions and more efficient trading.
- Faster transactions: Near-instant settlements across the globe.
- Wide asset support: Trading and management of various tokenized assets.
- New financial products: Innovative and interconnected financial tools.
- Easy development: A simple platform for building new applications.
The Big Gamble
Multicoin believes Solana’s growth will spark a wave of innovation that traditional systems can’t match. However, success depends on factors like regulatory approval, technological advancements, and mainstream adoption of blockchain technology. At the time of writing, SOL was trading at $249.50.
