Weekend Wrap: SOL set for bronze, Bitcoiner fat fingers $100K fee and more

Solana ‘well positioned’ to be a big 3 crypto: Franklin Templeton

Solana SOLUSD — once thought “dead or forgotten” — is in a good place to become the third-largest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin BTCUSD and Ether ETHUSD, says investment manager Franklin Templeton.

Solana has dominated “in capturing the surge of activity in crypto from 2023 to 2024” and is “well-positioned to capture the next wave of crypto adoption, solidifying itself as the third major crypto asset,” the firm said in a May 2 market note.

Franklin Templeton pinned memecoins like Bonk (BONK) and Dogwifhat (WIF) along with “major airdrops” like Jito (JTO) and Pyth Network (PYTH) as kicking off a “wealth effect” on Solana which pumped token prices and boosted decentralized exchange volumes.

More expected airdrops over the next months and memecoin trading showing “no signs of slowing down” are set to keep that wealth effect in motion, the firm believes.

The “next wave of adoption” is likely decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs), compressed nonfungible tokens (NFTs), centralized limit order books (CLOBs) and payments — “especially micropayments” — which Solana is “uniquely qualified” to tackle, the firm wrote.

Franklin Templeton noted the blockchain’s congestion issues, saying current activity had “pushed Solana to its limit” but added its developers are working a fix with the Firedancer update slated for later this year.

“Crypto enthusiasts are wondering what the next big thing in crypto will be,” it wrote. “While we don’t know the precise answer, we’d argue there is a strong chance it happens on Solana.”

SOL is currently the fifth largest cryptocurrency with its market capitalization at $65.3 billion, according to CoinGecko. It is the fourth-largest blockchain with a total value locked of $3.99 billion, per DefiLlama.

Fat-fingered Bitcoin user seemingly pays $100K fee by mistake

A Bitcoin user appears to have accidentally paid a nearly 1.6 BTC transaction fee, worth over $100,000, to send less than $6.50 worth of the cryptocurrency.

On May 4, blockchain tracking X account Whale Alert posted about the likely fat-fingered error, writing “100,254 USD has just been paid for a single transaction.”

In all, the user spent 1.59 BTC to send 0.0001 BTC.

It’s unknown who owns the transacting and receiving wallets — Blockstream’s analysis put that the transaction was “possibly self-transfer.”

Some wallet apps allow users to denote the transaction fees they wish to pay. Higher fees mean faster processed transfers with the opposite true for lower fees for those happy to wait.

If this was a case of a self-transfer it’s likely the user erroneously swapped the input amounts in whatever wallet they used — putting nearly 1.6 BTC they wanted to send in the “fee” area and the $6.50 worth of BTC fee they wanted to pay in the “send” area instead of the other way around.

Former LA mayor, Biden adviser joins as Coinbase advisers

Former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Atlanta mayor and President Joe Biden adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms have joined paid positions on crypto exchange Coinbase’s advisory council.

Coinbase chief policy officer Faryar Shirzad said in a May 2 X post that Villaraigosa and Bottoms’ council roles are meant to help with “bridging the gap between policymakers and the American people.”