Solana outshines other cryptos, as resilient demand lifts altcoins from the depths of this week's slump

• Sol rose to a new record high of $216.47 on Thursday, outperforming the rest of the crypto complex.
• Other altcoins like ether, ada and dot also climbed after this week's slump.
• There is an "unending demand" for sol from retail buyers, Petr Kozyakov, CEO of Mercuryo said.

Solana's sol token hit a record high on Thursday, outperforming other cryptocurrencies, as altcoins bounced back from a slump earlier this week, thanks to retail investors jumping back into the market.

The coin hit an all-time high of $216.47 overnight, according to Coinbase. Sol was last at $209.53, up 30% by 06.38 a.m. ET. The coin has rallied by almost 400% over the last month, and has almost doubled in value so far this month.

Cryptocurrencies slumped on Monday and Tuesday, just as El Salvador made bitcoin an official currency. Traders took profit on their holdings, which snowballed to the point where many overleveraged investors were forced to liquidate their positions as prices fell. Bitcoin and ether lost almost 15% in two days, while the altcoins suffered even deeper losses. Dot and dogecoin fell 20% in that time, but sol actually gained about 18%.

"Traders have generally developed a thick skin to mishaps like the latest flash crash we saw. While the confidence of newbies may be tampered with, old traders are used to events like this and their confidence is likely not to be shaken," Petr Kozyakov co-founder and CEO of crypto payments platform Mercuryo told Insider.

"It is all a matter of restrategizing and entering the market at the right time to recoup losses," he continued.

Sol's resilience is partly down to the solana blockchain, which is one of the so-called "ethereum killers", because of its lower cost and transaction speed along with its ability to host decentralized finance applications and popular non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are essentially unique digital collectible items.

"The outperformance in the market today is more or less the continuation of its growth run in recent times. With more than two different NFT project launches and minting going on in the ecosystem per day, there is an unending demand for sol from retail buyers," Kozyakov said.

Sol is now the sixth biggest coin in terms of market capitalization, which is currently standing at $62 billion, while bitcoin is still the largest, at $867 billion, according to coinmarketcap.com.

Other altcoins bounced, with ether last up around 6.3% to $3,658.59, while cardano's ada was up about 10.7% to $2.59 and polkadot's dot rose 10.8% to $29.44.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, was last roughly unchanged on the day, around $46,095. It fell to as little as $42,830 on Monday, its lowest in around a month.

"For now, bitcoin remains consolidated in the $45,000-$47,000 region, but there is a lot of uncertainty as to what will happen next," Alexandra Clark, a sales trader at UK-based digital asset manager GlobalBlock, said.