Solana Price Forecast - SOL-USD Crashes Toward $130 After $59M Long Liquidations Shake the Market

Solana Price Forecast - SOL-USD Crashes Toward $130 After $59M Long Liquidations Shake the Market

SOL-USD trades near $134 after breaking below its EMA cluster, with leverage wipeouts, the first SOL ETF outflows in weeks and Trump’s Europe tariff threats putting $130–$125 support and a $145–$150 rebound zone in focus | That's TradingNEWS

TradingNEWS Archive 1/19/2026 9:09:20 PM
Crypto SOL/USD SOL USD

Solana (SOL-USD) Price Under Pressure After Leverage Flush and Tariff Shock

Spot Picture and Macro Backdrop for SOL-USD

Solana (SOL-USD) is trading around $133–135 after a sharp intraday selloff that drove price from the mid-$140s toward a session low close to $130. The move comes alongside a broad risk-off swing driven by Trump’s new tariff threat on multiple European economies tied to the Greenland dispute, which hit equities, crypto and high-beta altcoins together.
Despite the drop, the medium-term tape still reflects strong institutional participation. Digital-asset funds just booked about $2.17 billion of weekly inflows, the largest since October 2025, with the US contributing roughly $2.05 billion and Europe and Canada adding tens of millions more. Within that basket, Solana attracted around $45–47 million of fresh capital over the week even as the spot price slipped below $135, confirming that larger players are still willing to buy structural exposure into weakness.
At the same time, the very latest daily readings show stress. One set of ETF data captures around $15–16 million of net Solana outflows over the last 24 hours and another source shows a negative daily print of about $2.2 million shortly before that, marking the first red numbers after roughly six weeks of continuous inflows. Weekly flows are still positive, but marginal appetite has turned cautious right as the chart structure breaks down.

Short-Term Technical Structure: SOL-USD Breaks Its EMA Shield

SOL-USD has lost its short-term bullish platform. Price has broken decisively below the 20-day and 50-day exponential moving averages clustered around $137–$138. Earlier, that band acted as a support shelf; now it is an overhead cap. Today’s candle effectively sliced straight through the cluster, turning what was support into resistance.
Immediate support now sits near $130–$133, which lines up with the lower boundary of a falling wedge drawn from the September swing high around $250 down through the December and early-January price action. Below that, the market is watching the December base at roughly $125, a secondary liquidity pocket near $118–$120, and the prior pivot low around $116–$117 as the deeper demand zones. A daily close under $130 would confirm a clean wedge break and open a run toward that $118–$120 region.
On the upside, the broken EMA band at $137–$138 is the first resistance that bulls must reclaim. Above it, a dense supply zone sits around $145–$149, which has capped SOL-USD multiple times. Within that band, the 100-day EMA near $148–$149 and the broader resistance zone up to roughly $149.5 are the key levels. Further out, the 200-day EMA around $159 and the range highs near $170 remain the obvious medium-term upside objectives if buyers regain control.

Momentum and Volatility Signals for SOL-USD

Daily momentum indicators confirm that the downside is not just noise. The MACD has crossed below its signal line with the histogram turning negative, signalling that bearish momentum is strengthening rather than fading. The daily RSI has rolled down from bullish territory toward the mid-40s, consistent with a transition from an uptrend to a neutral-to-bearish regime.
On intraday charts, the selloff has been violent. On the 30-minute timeframe, RSI crashed to around 19, well below the conventional oversold threshold of 30. That sort of reading rarely persists without some kind of reflex rally, which is why short-term traders should expect sharp counter-trend bounces. Those bounces, however, do not fix the structural damage on the daily chart unless they carry price back above the $137–$140 band with convincing volume.
Other oscillators tell the same story. On a 4-hour view, Chaikin Money Flow sits near -0.09, reflecting persistent net outflows of capital from SOL-USD. Bull-Bear Power is deeply negative around -13, the most intense bearish impulse since early January, indicating that sellers remain firmly in charge of near-term price action. Awesome Oscillator on the daily chart has flipped from green to red bars while still above the zero line, highlighting that positive momentum is fading and could invert if selling persists.

Derivatives Washout: $59M Longs Liquidated and Open Interest Falls

The derivatives market around Solana has just absorbed a textbook leverage flush. Over the last 24 hours, roughly $59–60 million of long positions in SOL-USD were liquidated against only about $1.4 million of shorts. A roughly 42:1 liquidation skew signals that positioning had become heavily one-sided to the upside and was forced out in a cascade once key supports gave way.
Open interest in Solana futures has dropped by about 7–8% to roughly $8.1–$8.2 billion. Combined with a sharp rise in 24-hour volume to around $13.3 billion, that pattern – OI down, volume up – is classic forced deleveraging, not calm discretionary selling. Longs were not choosing to exit; they were pushed out.
The long/short ratio has compressed to about 0.95, indicating that the broader market has shifted to a slightly short-tilted stance after previously being heavily long. Top Binance traders remain net long with a ratio above 3.5, which suggests that some sophisticated accounts are willing to maintain bullish structural exposure while the broader crowd retreats.
Funding rates around -0.0004% show a marginal advantage to shorts, but not an extreme. That combination – modestly negative funding, heavy long liquidations behind you, and lower open interest – implies that the most aggressive leverage has already been cleared out. There can still be more downside, but the risk of another equally violent liquidation cascade from the same starting point is lower unless leverage rebuilds quickly.

ETF Behavior and Institutional Positioning in Solana

Institutional positioning in Solana is sending a mixed but readable signal. Over the prior week, US-listed spot SOL ETFs attracted about $46.9 million of net inflows, and weekly flows across the broader fund complex show Solana capturing roughly $45–47 million of new allocations alongside significantly larger flows into Bitcoin and meaningful allocations into Ethereum and XRP. That confirms that institutional portfolios continue to treat SOL-USD as a core high-beta component of their crypto baskets.
However, the most recent daily readings show the first signs of stress. One dataset records about $15.46 million of net outflows from Solana ETFs over the last 24 hours, the first negative print after a six-week streak of inflows. Another tally shows roughly $2.2 million of outflows on January 16. Those are not huge numbers in absolute terms, but they do mark a shift from unbroken accumulation to at least partial de-risking.
The interpretation is straightforward. Longer-horizon players are still structurally long SOL-USD and have not reversed their view. At the margin, though, some of that capital is now trimming size or pausing fresh buying as the technical picture deteriorates and macro risk increases. If these outflows extend into a multi-week trend, they would argue for a more defensive medium-term stance. At this point, you are seeing an early warning, not a confirmed exit.

 

On-Chain and Ecosystem Drivers Supporting SOL-USD

Price is only one layer of the Solana story. The on-chain and ecosystem data remain constructive and explain why institutions are still allocating capital even into volatility.
The Solana RWA ecosystem has pushed its total value locked to roughly $1.12 billion, reflecting real capital committed to tokenized real-world assets on the network rather than just speculative trading volume. Forecasts calling for RWA TVL to expand toward $30 billion into 2026 may be aggressive, but the direction of travel is clear: Solana is positioning itself as a viable base layer for tokenized credit, treasuries and yield products, not just meme coins and NFT cycles.
Beyond RWA, Solana continues to host active DeFi, NFT and consumer application layers, all benefiting from the chain’s high throughput and low fees. The long consolidation of SOL-USD between roughly $100 and $250 over about 600 days has coincided with steady ecosystem build-out rather than collapse. Some analysts frame that horizontal structure as an accumulation zone rather than a topping pattern, arguing that the next major breakout – if it materializes – could target significantly higher levels, with the most aggressive projections throwing out numbers in the four-digit range over a multi-year horizon.
That long-term bullish ecosystem case does not remove the risk of a deeper drawdown from current levels, but it does provide fundamental justification for why large investors are still prepared to add SOL-USD exposure on dips while retail leverage is being flushed.

Whales, Flows and Microstructure Around SOL-USD

Individual large-holder behavior offers additional detail. One tracked whale address, for example, redeposited about 20,466 SOL to Kraken after previously staking the position and earning roughly 466 SOL in rewards. Despite the yield, the position is still under water in price terms, and the deposit suggests the holder is at least considering an exit or rotation rather than passively compounding.
At the exchange-flow level, spot markets have been net distributors over the last day. One dataset records about $2.37 million of net outflows from spot holdings, which – combined with derivatives liquidations – has thinned the bid side as SOL-USD approaches the $130 support band. When both futures and spot are pushing supply into the market at the same time, price normally follows through lower unless a new class of buyers steps in with size.
At the same time, SOL-USD still trades with robust liquidity. Daily trading volume around $7–13 billion means that even large repositioning can be absorbed without completely seizing the order book. The current problem is not a lack of liquidity; it is that liquidity is being used to unwind longs rather than build new ones at this exact moment.

Longer-Term Projections and the Role of SOL-USD in Crypto Portfolios

Some forward-looking projections for Solana are deliberately conservative. One set of 2026 price scenarios, anchored around a spot level of approximately $146.7 before the latest drop, proposed a range of $142.8–$178.1 over the year, implying around 23% upside from that starting point. Under that framework, Solana is not a 100x ticket anymore; it is a high-beta large cap with moderate return potential, especially after already regaining a top-10 market-cap position.
More optimistic paths tie upside to catalysts such as the Alpenglow mainnet upgrade and potential spot SOL ETF approvals, with ranges extending toward $250–$320 if those drivers play out cleanly and macro conditions cooperate. In that scenario, a breakout above the long consolidation band between $100 and $250 would mark the transition from range-bound accumulation to a new expansion leg.
Against that backdrop, the marketing of early-stage projects like BlockDAG – with presale pitches of $0.001 tokens listing at $0.05 on February 16 and promotional targets of 50x to 3000x – highlights the difference between speculative seed-stage bets and a mature layer-1 like SolanaSOL-USD is no longer structurally capable of those kinds of multiples without a complete repricing of the entire crypto market. What it can realistically offer is leveraged exposure to the broader digital-asset cycle with real infrastructure and real use cases behind it.

Risk Map for SOL-USD: Key Levels and Scenario Planning

From a pure price-action perspective, the map for SOL-USD over the next phase is tight and numbers-driven.
On the downside, $130 is the immediate line in the sand. It aligns with the falling-wedge lower trendline and marks the last real structural support before a slide toward the $125 shelf. Losing $125 increases the probability of a test of the $118–$120 band, which has already acted as a demand pocket, and below that lies the December swing low around $116–$117 and the psychological round number at $100. A daily close under $130 and then under $125 would confirm that the market is not just shaking out leverage but actively repricing SOL-USD lower.
On the upside, bulls need to recapture $137–$138 first. That would put price back above the 20- and 50-day EMAs and restore a neutral short-term posture. Next, SOL-USD must clear the $145–$149 zone that has repeatedly rejected advances. A sustained series of closes above $145 would unlock a path to $155 and then $170, levels already highlighted by market technicians as the next resistances in line. A break above $170 on strong volume would strongly argue that the current selloff was a consolidation event within a broader uptrend rather than the start of a protracted bear phase.
Macro adds another risk dimension. The tariff shock that sparked this move is political, not fundamental to Solana’s technology. If trade-war rhetoric escalates and global risk appetite weakens further, SOL-USD will trade like any other high-beta asset and could retest its lower range. If the shock fades and the broader crypto complex stabilizes, the combination of flushed leverage, still-positive weekly ETF flows and solid ecosystem data creates a platform for recovery once technical levels stop breaking.

Verdict on Solana (SOL-USD): Tactical Bearish, Strategic Buy With Strict Levels

Putting all the numbers together, the near-term stance and the medium-term stance on Solana (SOL-USD) are not the same.
In the very short term – the next days and possibly weeks – the structure is bearish. Price is below the 20- and 50-day EMAs, momentum has flipped negative, derivative markets have just endured a $59 million long liquidation wave with open interest falling and funding turning slightly negative, and institutional flows have printed their first daily outflows after a strong streak. As long as SOL-USD trades below roughly $137–$140 and especially if it cannot reclaim $145 on any bounce, short-horizon traders should treat the path of least resistance as lower, with $130, $125 and $118–$120 as the logical downside checkpoints.
On a medium-term horizon, the story is different. Weekly ETF flows remain strongly positive, the Solana ecosystem continues to grow with around $1.12 billion of RWA TVL and broader DeFi and application activity, and the price is still oscillating within a wide consolidation band between about $100 and $250 that has held for roughly 600 days. From that vantage point, today’s flush looks more like a high-volatility retest within a structural range than a terminal breakdown.
For a data-driven classification: tactically, SOL-USD is bearish until it regains at least the $137–$140 band and then the $145–$149 zone with strong volume. Strategically, for investors with a multi-month view willing to absorb drawdowns into the $118–$125 region and even a potential spike toward $100, Solana still screens as a speculative Buy, not a Sell, with upside skewed toward a retest of $170 and, on a cycle basis, another attempt at the $200–$250 range if the broader crypto market resumes its advance.

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