Galaxy Digital has shifted over $100 million from Ethereum to Solana amid ETH’s steep market correction and declining dominance.
Background:
- Galaxy Digital, a major player in crypto financial services, appears to have rebalanced its portfolio by converting a large chunk of its Ethereum holdings into Solana.
- According to onchain data shared by Lookonchain and sourced from Arkham, Galaxy deposited 65,600 ETH (~$105.48M) to Binance and withdrew 752,240 SOL (~$105M) over the past two weeks.
- Galaxy still holds about 55,760 ETH ($90.5M) and 171,315 SOL ($23.91M), but a notable portion of the recent SOL withdrawals has been moved to unidentified wallets.
- The strategic shift comes as Ethereum’s dominance in the overall crypto market briefly fell below 7% — marking its lowest point ever recorded.
• Since the start of 2025, ETH’s price has dropped 51.5%, while its dominance has slipped 43%, raising concerns among investors about its near-term outlook.
Why should you pay attention?
- Galaxy’s move highlights institutional skepticism around Ethereum's current market position and rising confidence in Solana as a scalable alternative.
- Ethereum’s DEX volumes have declined month-over-month, dropping from $82.22 billion in January to just $42.49 billion in March, signaling a migration of DeFi activity away from the network.
• Meanwhile, Ethereum-focused ETFs in the U.S. have seen eight consecutive weeks of net outflows, totaling over $909 million, adding to the bearish narrative.
• The shift to Solana coincides with broader industry trends where users seek faster, cheaper chains, while Ethereum continues to grapple with scalability and gas costs despite upcoming upgrades.
Who said what?
- Lookonchain, via X:
“In the past 2 weeks, Galaxy Digital deposited 65,600 $ETH($105.48M) to #Binance and withdrew 752,240 $SOL($98.37M) from #Binance.”
- Arkham Intelligence provided transaction data confirming the asset flows, showing a marked pivot in Galaxy’s crypto allocation.
- Meanwhile, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently proposed adopting RISC-V architecture for the EVM, aiming to improve execution scalability over the long term.
Zooming out:
- Ethereum is facing a storm of declining market sentiment, institutional divestment, and user migration to alternatives like Solana and Base.
- The upcoming Pectra upgrade on May 7 is intended to address some of these challenges — introducing improvements like account abstraction, increased staking limits, and support for higher blob counts to help scaling rollups.
- While Pectra could mark a turning point, market participants appear to be acting ahead of the upgrade, repositioning based on current network underperformance rather than future potential.
