Just days after a promising partnership announcement with Visa, Solana's native token, SOL, has experienced a sharp decline in price.
Currently trading at $18.40, down 5.5% against Bitcoin, the main Ethereum competitor has a market cap of $7.56 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $338 million.
This dramatic drop comes despite initial gains following Visa's announcement to use the Solana blockchain for settling transactions in USDC stablecoin.
Visa's crypto ambitions fail to sustain SOL's momentum
Earlier this week, Visa unveiled its latest venture into the crypto space, choosing Solana as its blockchain platform to facilitate faster payments in USDC, a leading stablecoin.
The global payments giant confirmed its plans to help merchants move millions in USDC transactions. Initially, this revelation spurred a 4% price gain for SOL.
The partnership was seen as a ringing endorsement of Solana as a legitimate Ethereum alternative, especially prized for its speedy and cost-effective transactions.
Bearish clouds over altcoin horizons
The downtrend is not confined to Solana; the altcoin market at large is also weathering a storm.
According to CoinGecko data, major players like Bitcoin and Ethereum have been mostly flat, while other noteworthy altcoins like Cardano and Dogecoin have reported declines of 2.3% and 2.4%, respectively, in the past week.
Litecoin and meme coin Shiba Inu are also down 4.4% and 5% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
However, the fact that SOL is underperforming the main altcoins despite the Visa hype is pretty damning for the key Ethereum rival.