Bonk Frenzy Drives Sales Surge for Solana’s Saga Phones, Resulting in Eightfold Increase Over Retail Cost: Details
Every Saga smartphone purchase includes a complimentary airdrop of 30 million Bonk tokens, a factor widely cited as one of the key drivers behind the remarkable sales success of the Saga phones.
The crypto market experienced significant gains in December, with particular prominence in the Solana ecosystem. Solana’s native cryptocurrency SOL demonstrated strong performance, and NFTs based on Solana saw rapid sell-outs, indicating a robust recovery for the ecosystem. Adding to this positive trend, a relatively recent addition to the Solana ecosystem gained considerable popularity. This newcomer, named Bonk, is a memecoin built on the Solana blockchain.
In a recent development, Solana’s Saga smartphones are reportedly fetching substantial prices on online marketplaces in global markets.
Over the weekend, a Solana device sold for $5,000 (roughly Rs. 4.14 lakh) — which is approximately eight times its original launch price of $600 (roughly Rs. 49,795) on eBay. Another unit of the Saga was up for grabs at $3,316 (roughly Rs. 2.75 lakh) and many others were traded for over $2,000 (roughly Rs. 1.65 lakh), a report by CoinTelegraph said.
Significantly, each Saga smartphone purchase includes a complimentary airdrop of 30 million Bonk tokens, a factor widely reported as a key driver behind the remarkable sales success of the Saga devices.
In the past few days, Bonk has surpassed the recent memecoin standout, Pepecoin, in terms of market capitalization. Over the last 30 days, the price of the Bonk token surged from $0.0000028 (approximately Rs. 0.00023) to $0.000012 (approximately Rs. 0.0010), reaching a valuation of $762 million (approximately Rs. 6,353 crores).
According to Solana Mobile’s official X handle, the Saga was completely sold out on December 16.
The Saga is SOLD OUT!
Words cannot describe how much we appreciate your support. We are nothing without this amazing community 🫂
While these past few days will be cemented in our history, we’re excited for the future 🫡
Stay tuned ✨ pic.twitter.com/KJje8lBDLL
— Solana Mobile 🌱 (@solanamobile) December 16, 2023
Buyers of this handset automatically get 30 million Bonk tokens, the value of which as per the current rate of the token, would amount to $638 (roughly Rs. 52,977). Saga buyers are also seemingly betting big on Bonk price to escalate even further, which needs to spike by at least 620 percent for them to see any real profit.
With the Saga phone now becoming a frenzy in itself, some unrelated crypto projects are also lining up airdrops for these phones.
Memecoin project called Samoyed Coin, for instance, has announced an airdrop for Saga in the weeks to come. GenesysGo, a decentralised storage provider is also set to let its native Shadow (SHDW) be mined via an app on the Saga phone.
Debuting in April 2022, Solana’s Saga smartphone was heralded as the introduction of the inaugural generation of smartphones dedicated to crypto and Web3. The Saga phone comes pre-equipped with the Solana Pay crypto payment app, and it features a ‘seed vault’ designed to securely store all private keys associated with the device, as stated by the company.
