Bitcoin vs Solana: $416 vs $307 From $100 Since 2022

Bitcoin turned $100 into $416 between 1 July 2022 and 26 October 2026. The same $100 in SOL, the coin of the Solana network, became $307.

SOL also fell further from its peak. Its biggest drop from a high was 79.3%, against 53.1% for Bitcoin. Both run on a blockchain, a shared public record of payments that computers around the world copy and check. They differ in how new coins are created and how the record is secured. Solana has also stopped processing payments for hours at a time, while Bitcoin's record shows no such stop since July 2022.

A coin is the unit that moves on a network. A block is a batch of payments added to the record.

Each Bitcoin block now pays 3.125 new coins. The reward halves every 210,000 blocks. About 20.1 million coins exist, which is 95.8% of the 21 million cap.

Solana also runs programs. SOL has no cap.

The network pays new SOL to the computers that run it. The rate began at 8% a year, falls by 15% of its level each year, then settles at 1.5%, according to solana.com. It stood at 3.57% on 8 November 2026.

Fees and speeds are readings on 8 November 2026. Source: bitcoin.org; Bitcoin Core code; Bitcoin block records; solana.com and Solana network data; Solana network status page; Bitwise; YX Insights

Solana produces blocks far faster and charges far less per payment.

Bitcoin uses proof of work. Computers called miners make guess after guess until one produces a number, a fingerprint of the block's contents, below a set target. Bitcoin's developer documentation says this makes changing old blocks costlier than adding new ones.

Solana uses proof of stake. Holders can lend their SOL to validators, the computers that build its blocks. Lending is called delegating, or staking.

Bitcoin adds a block about every 10 minutes. Solana divides time into slots, the turns in which one validator builds a block. Ten one-minute samples on 8 November 2026 averaged one slot every 0.22 seconds.

Bitcoin has no fixed fee, because senders bid for space in the next block. In the 15 newest blocks on 8 November 2026, total fees divided by transactions came to about $0.17, the average fee.

Solana sets a base fee of 5,000 lamports for each signature, the approval that authorises a payment. A lamport is a billionth of a SOL, so the fee is about $0.0004. Both dollar figures use 8 November prices.

Here, stopping means payments could not go through.

Solana's status page logs three incidents rated critical from 1 July 2022. On 30 September 2022, it says the network was not processing transactions until a restart on 1 October. On 25 February 2023, it says economic activity stopped until a restart on 26 February. On 6 February 2024, it says the outage lasted about 5 hours. That was its newest entry on 8 November 2026.

Bitcoin's record shows no stop since July 2022. Across 230,215 blocks from 30 June 2022 to 26 October 2026, the longest gap between two blocks was about 2 hours, on 7 January 2024.

On 15 August 2010, a bug created coins but did not stop the network. Block 74638 created 184 billion coins, according to the Bitcoin Wiki. A fix came within five hours of discovery.

We set both against SPY, a fund that tracks the S&P 500, an index of 500 large US companies, with dividends, the cash payments a fund passes to its owners, counted. Bitcoin and SOL pay none.

Chart 1 shows what $100 put in on 1 July 2022 became. Its scale is stretched so that equal heights show equal % changes.

By 26 October 2026, the $100 was worth $416 in Bitcoin, $307 in SOL, and $212 in SPY. As steady yearly rates, that is 39.1% a year, 29.6%, and 19.0%. SOL's $100 fell to $29 on 29 December 2022.

The start date changes the order. From 1 January 2023, SOL rose 908.6% against 381.7% for Bitcoin.

Chart 2 shows the return in five periods: 1 July to 31 December 2022, each of 2023, 2024, and 2025, and 1 January to 26 October 2026.

In calendar 2023 alone, SOL rose 920.0% against 155.7% for Bitcoin. SPY gained in all five periods, from 1.2% to 26.2%. Both coins lost money in 2022, 2025, and 2026.

We use daily closing prices, the last price of each day. A worst fall is the largest drop from a high close to a later low close, searched from 1 July 2022. Bitcoin's was 53.1%, from 6 October 2025 to 30 June 2026.

SOL's was 79.3%, from 13 August to 29 December 2022. The $100 stood at $142 on 13 August, so the fall exceeds the drop from $100 to $29. SPY's worst was 18.8%.

Chart 3 shows each day's distance below the highest close so far, with SPY as the blue line. SOL fell 10% or more on 20 days, against 3 for Bitcoin.

An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, trades on a stock exchange like a share. A spot fund holds the coin itself.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the listing of spot Bitcoin funds on 10 January 2024. Bitwise's filing records that its Bitcoin fund was listed on 11 January 2024. Our guide to the Bitcoin ETF covers them.

On 17 September 2025, the SEC approved a standard rule that lets exchanges list funds holding assets such as digital coins without first filing a rule change for each fund. The Bitwise Solana Staking ETF was listed on 28 October 2025, under the ticker BSOL, the short code for its shares.

We took each daily close from 1 July 2022 to 26 October 2026. SOL's closes come from a US crypto exchange, Bitcoin's from our own price record.

Crypto trades every day, so we used weekly returns for all three, Friday close to Friday close, 225 in all. We measured how far each weekly return typically strays from its average, the standard deviation. Multiplying by the square root of 52 scaled it to a year. Yearly volatility came to 48.9% for Bitcoin, 86.6% for SOL, and 15.1% for SPY.

Our Macro & Megacaps Systematic Portfolio includes a crypto sleeve, a small group of up to five crypto-linked names. SOL is one of its candidates. Bitcoin stays inside the portfolio itself. Multi-model Signals, our set of four trading models, covers Bitcoin.

Our comparison of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana adds ether, the coin of the Ethereum network.

Bitcoin swings less. Solana is faster. The winner depends on the start date.

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This explainer is part of the YX Insights Academy. Each one takes a single idea and checks it against real data.

The same approach runs through everything else we publish:

Good places to start on the website:

The data does not rank them, because the order depends on the start date. From 1 July 2022 to 26 October 2026, $100 became $416 in Bitcoin and $307 in SOL. SOL swung more, at 86.6% a year against 48.9%.

Yes. Bitcoin adds a block about every 10 minutes. Solana averaged one slot, the turn in which a validator builds a block, every 0.22 seconds in samples taken on 8 November 2026. Solana's status page also logs three critical incidents between July 2022 and October 2026.

No. Bitcoin is capped at 21 million coins, with about 20.1 million in existence. Solana has no cap. New SOL is paid out at a rate that began at 8% a year, falls by 15% of its level each year, then settles at 1.5%. It stood at 3.57% on 8 November 2026.

Yes. The Bitwise Solana Staking ETF was listed on 28 October 2025, under the ticker BSOL. A spot fund holds the coin itself and trades on an exchange like a share. Bitwise's spot Bitcoin fund was listed earlier, on 11 January 2024, a day after the SEC approved spot Bitcoin funds.

Yes, closely. From 1 July 2022 to 26 October 2026, the correlation of their daily returns was 0.75, where 1 means moving in step. On the 38 days when Bitcoin fell 5% or more, SOL fell on all 38. SOL fell further on average, by 9.5% against 6.7%.

DISCLAIMER: This article is intended for educational purposes only. Any information or analysis in this note does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Nothing in this note is intended to be investment advice, nor should it be relied upon to make investment decisions. Any opinions, analyses, or probabilities expressed in this note are those of the author as of the note's date of publication and are subject to change without notice.