Solana: Saga Smartphone Shortage Causes Price Surge and Speculation
Solana has announced a shortage of its Solana Saga smartphone. The company said that due to a surge in demand, the initial 20,000 units allocated for the US and EU markets have sold out. Solana does not have a clear timeline for when it will be able to restock the device.
Last week, we saw an overwhelming demand for Saga, with sellouts in both the US & EU on our limited inventory of 20,000 devices produced globally.
— Solana Mobile 🌱 (@solanamobile) December 22, 2023
In working to fulfill orders, we learned of an inventory management issue with our third-party distributor that resulted in an…
The price of the smartphone on eBay has skyrocketed to $5,500. Just days ago, most transactions were being completed for less than $3,000. Solana has also rejected some orders for the Saga, citing suspicions of speculative intent.
The smartphone was released in June 2022. The device's hardware and software are integrated with Web3 functionality, making it a hardware wallet. The Saga also offers a number of other benefits, including a free month of access to the Helium wireless network, bonuses in the Honeyland game, early access to the Genopets project, and NFTs.
The surge in demand is thought to be linked to the distribution of BONK meme tokens. Buyers of the Saga automatically receive 30 million tokens. The value of the assets reached over $900 at its peak price on December 15 (CoinGecko). Even at current prices (~$0.00002), the tokens roughly cover the cost of the smartphone at $599.
In December, Circle added support for the Solana blockchain for its euro stablecoin EURC, and hardware wallet maker Trezor added support for the SOL token.
Over the past 24 hours, the price of the Solana token has risen by 15%. ForkLog has reported on the reasons for the rally and collected expert opinions in the News+ format.