Solana’s native SOL token continues its meteoric rise this year as it traded near $100 for the first time in 20 months during the early trading hours of Dec. 22, according to CryptoSlate’s data.

However, the asset’s value has since retraced to around $91 as of press time.

The upward price movement liquidated approximately $20 million from crypto traders speculating on the digital asset’s price. Data from Coinglass showed skeptics betting against further SOL price increase lost $12 million while long traders were liquidated of around $8 million.

Over the past year, the price of SOL has been gradually rising thanks to several notable events happening in its ecosystem. Solana established significant partnerships with global financial entities such as Visa and Shopify. These collaborations leverage the blockchain network technology to speed up their payment processes.

Besides that, the hype surrounding the Solana-based BONK memecoin and the resurgence of decentralized finance (DeFi) activity on the smart contract-enabled blockchain network has further bolstered its recent growth.

SOL’s market cap briefly flips BNB

During the reported period, Solana briefly overtook the Binance-backed BNB token to become the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

This move was reminiscent of how SOL’s market capitalization flipped that of Ripple’s XRP earlier in the week.

Data from CryptoSlate shows that SOL’s market capitalization reached $42.24 billion before dropping to its current value of $39.35 billion.

However, BNB has since regained its position as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, with a valuation of $41.2 billion.

The brief flipping further indicates the robust growth the network has seen this year.

Solana’s Saga phone

Meanwhile, interest in Solana’s blockchain-enabled Saga smartphones has reached fevered heights as the network reported that it saw an “overwhelming demand” for the device last week and would be unable to fulfill orders due to an “inventory management issue.”

In a Dec. 22 post on X (formerly Twitter), Solana Mobile explained that:

“In working to fulfill orders, we learned of an inventory management issue with our third-party distributor that resulted in an inaccurate representation of our inventory. Given this, we are unfortunately unable to fulfill orders that were placed after inventory ran out. In addition, we canceled orders that were flagged for suspicious activity due to excessive device orders or payment risk, as we work to get Saga in the hands of as many users as possible.”

CryptoSlate previously reported that the smartphone had sold out thanks to the frenzy surrounding the Bonk memecoin.