Mark Weaden
Online trading platform eToro expands further into crypto trading by adding the higher popular blockchain asset Solana (SOL)
eToro users will now be able to access the SOL alongside all the currently available cryptocurrencies, bringing the total platforms’ digital currencies to 32. The exchange offers many popular coins, such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.
Solana was valued at just above $30 in July but has since gone on to an all-time high of above $194 in September. The attention the blockchain has gotten across major trading platforms like Binance and Coinbase has forced the hand of other platforms, including eToro.
What is Solana?
Purported to be the fastest blockchain in the world, Solana underpins some 400 projects across a range of crypto-based industries. Solana has been huge in the NFT space and a big part of the rising price and global attention it has garnered is due to this, as well as operating in the DeFi and Web3 sectors. With a huge community following, Solana has one of the fastest-growing ecosystems in crypto.
The SOL token is so fast that it is capable of processing almost 50,000 transactions per second. As a native layer-1 token built for scalability, Solana is a very appealing investment proposition.
Solana is particularly attractive to developers as it features a means to create fast applications that can scale as projects grow. This differs from other leading blockchains such as Ethereum that has had to release a 2.0 version of the blockchain, in order to keep up with the demand for Ethereum-based technologies soars.
In principal Solana is designed to allow a variety of transactions to scale proportionally to the available bandwidth. Solana offers users a decentralized clock for timestamp transactions, considerably faster than what we see with Ethereum and Bitcoin transactions. The long-term vision of Solana is unique and has drawn many developers to built technology on the blockchain.
What else is new at eToro?
Personal trading is on the rise, it’s only speculation as to whether the rise is directly related to the emergence of cryptocurrency. If we take a look at eToro, we can see that the number of users has jumped from 17.5 million in 2020, to 20.6 million in Q1 of 2021.
A significant jump in users, which could be related to the offering of crypto-related assets on the platform. Just last month, eToro added Filecoin (FIL) and Polkadot (DOT), as well as MAKER (MKR) and ENJIN (ENJ) earlier this year, to its cryptocurrency offering.
With major trading rivals like Binance offering over 500 cryptocurrencies across 180 countries, it’s important that multi-asset trading platforms like eToro appeal to the rising number of crypto traders as well. Expect to see more coins on the platform in the coming months.
