Last week, there was a buzz around the Saga smartphone created by Solana Labs. On December 14, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal announced that sales of the device had increased tenfold in the past two days. However, on 15 December, due to high demand, sales were suspended. The reason is the airdrop of 30 million BONK, a memecoin on Solana, which is available to every Saga buyer.
Over the last month, BONK has also grown nearly tenfold and received listings on Binance and Coinbase. At peak values, the worth of the airdrop exceeded the cost of a smartphone in dollars: $900 and $599, respectively.
What Saga is: a web3 Solana’s Android smartphone without much demand
On April 13, 2023, Solana Labs unveiled a "crypto-first Android device", a powerful Web 3-focused smartphone. It has an in-built mobile non-custodial wallet that allows making transactions on Solana using the user's biometrics.
In addition to the usual app store, there is a "Solana dApp Store" installed, which provides a catalogue of the main dApps on Solana with a device-adapted interface.
The initial price of the device was $1,000, and sales started in May. However, due to low demand, the company decided to lower the price of the device to $599 on August 9. According to the recent Unchained podcast with Solana's co-founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, about 2,200 units were sold as of December 5. Over a week later, interest in Saga has grown though.
BONK's favourable drop, or why interest in Saga has grown
BONK is a dog-themed memecoin (like SHIB or FLOKI) on Solana, launched in December 2022 at a time of crypto market decline after the FTX crash. As with many similar projects, the initial issuance is huge: 100 trillion tokens. There are now almost 61 trillion tokens in circulation.
A large percentage of the issue was distributed as an airdrop to Solana's active participants: developers, users, artists. Also, every Saga smartphone buyer is entitled to an airdrop in the BONK: 30 million tokens for installing the BONK app from the Solana dApp Store.
On September 15, BONK price was $0.0000002063, and the worth of airdrop was about $6.2. As of December 15, the drop in dollar terms was about $900. Thus, buying a smartphone costs $599, and for the sale of the received tokens, the user gets a $301 profit. This is what has led to an increase in demand for Saga over the past few days.
Anatoly Yakovenko suggested raising the price of Saga. However, they have not raised prices yet — sales were suspended on the same day due to a sold-out first in the US and then in Europe.
BONK memecoin on Solana has shown phenomenal growth
Throughout 2023, judging by the movement of its price, the token has not attracted the attention of market participants for a long time.
From November 15 to December 15, the price rose 951% (1,408% at peak) from $0.0000023 to $0.0000243839. ATH was December 15: $0.000035.
Since the beginning of November, against the background of the growth of the entire crypto market in general and SOL in particular, the price of BONK and the hype around it have increased manifold. If your eyes are tired of counting the number of zeros, let us tell you that this was more than a tenfold increase.
All of the growth is accompanied by listings on the top exchanges, such as Binance and Coinbase.
However, by the end of Friday, December 15, the price began to correct and has fallen almost 42% from ATH to around $0.00002 by December 18.
Be careful when investing in BONK and other memecoins. They are very volatile and may have no real utility and only speculative purposes.
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