Solana Overtook XRP as SOL’s Market Cap Reached $35.2 Billion

The verified market record

Solana’s SOL became the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by circulating market capitalization on December 20, 2023, overtaking XRP during a sharp one-day advance. CoinMarketCap’s historical ranking snapshot for the end of the December 20 UTC session placed SOL behind bitcoin, ether, tether and BNB, and immediately ahead of XRP.

The snapshot recorded SOL at $82.19, with 427,827,789 SOL in circulating supply and a market capitalization of $35,163,692,628.75. XRP was recorded at $0.6173, with 54,005,597,115 XRP circulating and a market capitalization of $33,338,679,639.91. On that dataset, SOL’s capitalization exceeded XRP’s by $1,825,012,988.84, or 5.47% relative to XRP.

CoinMarketCap also measured SOL’s return over the preceding 24 hours at 12.61%, compared with 1.96% for XRP. Reported 24-hour volume was $3.75 billion for SOL and $1.34 billion for XRP. Those are aggregated market figures rather than the results of a single exchange, trading pair or closing auction.

Contemporaneous CoinDesk reporting captured the crossover earlier in the session. At 11:33 a.m. Eastern time on December 20, it reported SOL near $81.04, up 9.14% over 24 hours, with capitalization around $33.7 billion. The differences from CoinMarketCap’s historical snapshot reflect different observation times in a market that trades continuously; they are not evidence that either figure was a fixed daily close across all venues.

Why the ranking mattered

The crossover marked a substantial change in relative market positioning. SOL had spent much of the period following FTX’s November 2022 collapse under pressure because the failed exchange and affiliated entities had accumulated large Solana-related holdings. By December 20, 2023, market participants were instead assigning SOL a larger circulating valuation than XRP, an asset that had occupied the upper tier of crypto rankings for years.

Contemporaneous coverage associated SOL’s advance with renewed activity in Solana-based decentralized finance and speculative trading in ecosystem tokens, including memecoins. That explanation was plausible market context, not a demonstrated causal finding. Price appreciation itself raises the dollar value of a token’s circulating supply, while changes in the estimated circulating supply can also alter capitalization and ranking.

The milestone therefore said something narrower than claims that Solana had surpassed another network in overall importance. Market capitalization does not directly measure transaction quality, decentralization, application revenue, developer activity, security, legal status or the amount of capital that could exit at quoted prices. Nor did the ranking establish that every data provider used identical supply estimates or venue-weighting rules.

Reading the snapshot carefully

CoinMarketCap calculates circulating market capitalization by multiplying its reference price by its estimate of circulating supply. Its historical listings documentation describes daily ranking snapshots as end-of-day UTC observations. The December 20 record consequently supports a precise claim: SOL ranked fifth on CoinMarketCap at the end of that UTC date.

It does not establish that SOL remained above XRP at every moment on December 20 or that the ordering would persist. Crypto trades around the clock, reference prices are aggregated from multiple market pairs, and circulating-supply classifications involve methodology and judgment. Rankings can consequently change without a discrete corporate or protocol event.

For the event-day record, the defensible conclusion is that SOL’s 12.61% 24-hour advance carried its CoinMarketCap circulating valuation to approximately $35.2 billion, enough to finish December 20, 2023 about $1.83 billion above XRP. The crossover was a visible measure of Solana’s market recovery, not proof of future performance or a comprehensive verdict on either network.