US House Financial Services Chairman French Hill has commented on the negative impact that the TRUMP coin has on the proposed crypto legislation. This came as he described the president’s involvement in crypto as a distraction from the work that the US Congress has put into creating a regulatory framework for the industry. French Hill Describes TRUMP Coin as a Distraction From Crypto Legislation According to a Bloomberg report, the US congressman said that President Donald Trump’s involvement in crypto, through the TRUMP coin and other ventures, has complicated the work in Congress, which they have made to pass legislation that has been in the works for years. French Hill explained that the Trump family’s engagement has made the work more complicated because it has distracted those in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, from what they need to do. He noted that they have worked for five years, especially in… Read More at Coingape.com
Coinbase SOL Updates:- In a good news for the crypto users and investors, Coinbase has announced the much anticipated upgrade in its Solana infrastructure.
These updates are particularly soothing to the users who had faced significant struggles on Coinbase exchange and its wallet during January.
While announcing the upgrades, the exchange said that it has been working very hard to scale its Solana infrastructure since then.
Notably, Solana’s memecoin trading-driven surge has pushed the exchange’s Solana stack to ten times higher than its actual throughout.
What are the new Upgrades in Coinbase Solana Infra?
In early 2025, Coinbase users took to social media to vent our their frustration in the exchange’s long transactions time for Solana.
A user had reportedly said that two transactions from a Solana wallet to coinbase took him more 10 hrs – to get completed.
Now in order to solve this, Coinbase as part of its new updates has shifted to asynchronous transaction handling.
This means that its systems can now process transactions blocks in parallel. Previously, transaction blocks were processed sequentially, which created bottlenecks under heavy load.
According to the largest US exchange’s X post, this will improve its block processing throughput by 5 times.
This change alone is expected to slash wait times for transaction confirmations. This means that high‑volume periods will no longer compromise user experience or liquidity flows.
Coinbase Shifts to Bare‑Metal Machines and Enhance liquidity
In addition to software tweaks, Coinbase has migrated critical components of its Solana stack onto dedicated bare‑metal servers rather than virtualized cloud instances.
Virtual machines (VMs) run on top of something called a hypervisor, which is like a middleman between the software and the actual computer. This middleman uses up some of the computer’s power (CPU and memory), which can slow things down.
But the newly adopted bare-metal servers skip that middleman. According to IBM, they let the software run directly on the hardware, so Coinbase’s systems can use 100% of the server’s power.
In simple terms, this means faster processing, quicker responses from the system, and smoother handling of Solana transactions.
According to the exchange, this shift can deliver roughly a four‑fold improvement in remote procedure call (RPC) speed – allowing faster queries and state reads on the Solana ledger.
Further, Coinbase has also deployed back‑end optimizations to ensure better distribution of SOL liquidity across its order books and custody wallets. Its enhanced monitoring tools would now track on‑chain and off‑chain liquidity metrics.
These “operational changes” would give Coinbase’s operations team finer‑grained oversight to prevent order execution delays and maintain deep, frictionless liquidity for Solana assets.
Further, these updates to the exchange’s Solana ecosystem come as Canada approves and launches first Spot Solana ETFs this week.
Upgrade for Transaction Failures
To bolster resilience, the exchange has also introduced advanced failover augmentations. This will automatically reroute traffic in the event of node failures or network congestion.
The upgrade implements multi‑region redundancy and health‑check protocols that detect performance degradation in real time.
If a node underperforms or becomes unresponsive, traffic would immediately shifts to healthy nodes without manual intervention. This will help in guarding users against partial outages or cascading failures that have previously led to stalled transactions.
Bullish Market Reaction
News of the Coinbase Solana infrastructure improvements has already created ripple effects across the Solana markets.
As of writing, SOL’s price has climbed by 6% to its highest level in April – trading around $136 – today. This has ended up outperforming many top cryptocurrencies – XRP, BTC, ETH – as investors viewed the upgrades as a bullish signal for on‑chain activity and exchange confidence.
Notably, SOL Price is also driven by the Solana ETF approval in Canada.
SOL Price Today | Source: Coingecko
The upgrades become all the more important as Solana’s on‑chain trading continues to grow.
Particularly driven by the memecoin trading volume, its current state stands at over $15 billion in DEX transactions during the past seven days alone. Surprisingly, this has surpassed every other chain in this time frame.
In a massive development, the CME Group has revealed plans to expand its derivative offerings with XRP futures. This provides a bullish outlook for the XRP price, as this move could pave the way for the launch of a spot XRP ETF.
CME Group To Launch XRP Futures
In a press release, CME Group announced plans to launch XRP futures on May 19, pending regulatory approval. The derivatives exchange revealed that market participants will have the choice to trade both a micro-sized contract (2,500 XRP) and a larger-sized contract (50,000 XRP).
Commenting on this development, Giovanni Vicioso, Global Head of Cryptocurrency Products at CME Group, said,
“As innovation in the digital asset landscape continues to evolve, market participants continue to look to regulated derivatives products to manage risks across a wider range of tokens. Interest in XRP and its underlying ledger (XRPL) has steadily increased as institutional and retail adoption for the network grows, and we are pleased to launch these new futures contracts to provide a capital-efficient toolset to support clients’ investment and hedging strategies.”
The exchange stated that they will settle the XRP futures in cash and based on the CME CF XRP-Dollar Reference rate, which serves as a once-a-day rate of the XRP price in USD and is calculated at 3 pm UTC.
The XRP futures will be the fourth crypto addition on the exchange. CME Group already offers Bitcoin and Ethereum futures and recently added Solana futures in March.
This development is significant as it could pave the way for the launch of a spot XRP ETF. The court in the Grayscale case ruled that there was no difference between the futures and spot markets. As such, the existence of a futures market means the SEC has no plausible reason to deny a spot XRP ETF.
As CoinGape reported, XRP and Solana are currently leading the ETF race over other altcoins. The launch of the futures contract further solidifies the altcoin’s edge in the ETF race. Meanwhile, the CME Group futures launch is also bullish for the XRP price.
Solana (SOL) price is at risk of losing the battle for dominance to Ethereum after the latter recorded a 380% surge in exchange netflows, suggesting that traders may be rotating capital from SOL to ETH. This capital rotation might have a negative impact on Solana and potentially trigger a massive crash.
Solana Price at Risk as Ethereum Inflows Surge 380%
Solana price is at the risk of trending downwards as on-chain data hints that retail traders may be shifting their attention from other altcoins to Ethereum, as the largest altcoin defends the support zone between $1,750 and $1800. This resilience has sparked a 380% surge in ETH exchange netflows in the last 30 days, per IntoTheBlock data, which is an indication that market interest is notably high.
Ethereum Netflows
Besides the surge in exchange netflows, large transaction volumes have also spiked by 133%, hinting that whales are also actively trading ETH as the sentiment around this altcoin changes to “mostly bullish.”
Data from Artemis also supports a bearish Solana price prediction and the thesis that the SOL price is losing its competitive edge over Ethereum after the latter ranked with the highest netflows in the last month. During the same period, Solana did not even rank among the top 20 coins in terms of network netflows.
30-Day Netflows
With the on-chain data favouring Ethereum, the Solana price may be on the verge of a massive crash and could soon lose its critical support level. Such a dip could shift the trend in the SOL/ETH ratio that has been on an uptrend for months after Ethereum underperformed against SOL.
What’s Next for SOL – Crash or Rally?
Despite the on-chain data favouring Ethereum and hinting that the price of Solana may crash soon, analysts have shared different views on the future performance. One analyst on X noted that if SOL fails to sustain the support zone between $140 and $145, it may fall to around $115, at which point holders will register losses. Meanwhile, popular analyst Ali Charts stated that the squeezing Bollinger bands on the four-hour chart hint at a parabolic rally for SOL.
The one-day chart appears to support the bearish thesis around SOL value today as the AO histogram bars turn negative, an indication that the bullish momentum is growing weak. If these bars cross below the zero line, it will confirm that a bearish momentum is at play, which may push the SOL price to $138, and if this level also fails, a crash to $100 may be imminent.
The RSI line is tipping south, albeit remaining above 50, an indication that the selling pressure is increasing, and this may push Solana lower if there is inadequate buying pressure. To invalidate the bearish thesis, buyers need to step in to absorb the sold coins and push SOL past $178, as this will spark an uptrend past $195 to $200.
SOL/USDT: 1-day Chart
Considering the ongoing capital rotation from other altcoins to Ethereum, the Solana price is at risk of a downtrend and could drop lower and possibly retest levels below $120. The declining RSI and red AO bars further confirm that SOL is at risk of a crash happening in the near term.
(@Shiba_King1991) 
