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Solana logo displayed on a phone screen and representation of cryptocurrencies are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on August 21, 2021.

Jakub Porzycki | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Solana was touted as the cryptocurrency that would challenge ether with an eco-friendlier approach, faster transaction speeds and more consistent costs.

Investors who made that bet had a miserable year. The token’s market cap collapsed from over $55 billion in January to barely above $3 billion at year-end.

Among Solana’s biggest problems in late 2022 was its close relationship to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces eight criminal fraud charges after his crypto exchange went bankrupt last month. The disgraced former crypto billionaire was one of Solana’s most public boosters, touting the advantages of the blockchain technology and investing over a half-billion dollars in Solana tokens.

“Sell me all you want,” Bankman-Fried told one skeptic in January 2021. “Then go f— off.”

Bankman-Fried’s companies held nearly $1.2 billion worth of the token and associated assets in June, according to documents reviewed by CoinDesk.

When FTX fell apart, investors bailed on Solana to the tune of about $8 billion. But in recent days, as the rest of the crypto world has been relatively quiet and prices stable, Solana has plummeted further.

Two of the biggest non-fungible token (NFT) projects built on Solana announced their migration off of Solana’s platform on Christmas Day. But the recent slides came after that news had already broken, making Solana’s recent slide something of a mystery.

In the last week, Solana has declined over 30%. Ether has held steady, shedding 1.7% in the same time period, while bitcoin has only dropped 1.2%. Among the 20 most-valuable cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the next biggest loser over that stretch is Dogecoin, which has fallen 9%.

In just one hour of trading on Thursday, Solana slid 5.8%, bringing it to the lowest since early 2021, around the time that Bankman-Fried began to vocally offer his support for the project.

Solana has since come off the lows, with a market cap now crossing $3.5 billion. Its 24-hour trading volume is up over 200% on a relative basis.

During the crypto market’s heyday in 2021, Bankman-Fried was hardly alone in his bullishness.

Developers raved about Solana’s support for smart contracts, pieces of code that execute pre-programmed directives, as well as an innovative proof-of-history consensus mechanism.

Consensus mechanisms are how blockchain platforms assess the validity of an executed transaction, tracking who owns what and how well the system is working based on a consensus between multiple record-keeping computers called nodes.

Bitcoin uses a proof-of-work mechanism. Ethereum and rival Solana use proof-of-stake. Rather than relying on energy-intensive mining, proof-of-stake systems ask big users to offer up collateral, or stake, to become “validators.” Instead of solving for a cryptographic hash, as with bitcoin, proof-of-work validators verify transaction activity and maintain the blockchain’s “books,” in exchange for a proportional cut of transaction fees.

Solana’s supposed differentiating factor was augmenting proof-of-stake with proof-of-history — the ability to prove that a transaction happened at a particular moment.

Solana soared over the course of 2021, with a single token gaining 12,000% for the year and reaching $250 by November. Yet even before the collapse of FTX, Solana faced a series of public struggles, which challenged the protocol’s claim that it was a superior technology.

Much of Solana’s popularity was built around growing interest in NFTs. Serum, another exchange backed by Bankman-Fried, was built on Solana. When the calendar turned to 2022, Solana’s limitations started to become apparent.

Barely a month into the year, a network outage took Solana down for over 24 hours. Solana’s token fell from $141 to a low of a little over $94. In May, Solana experienced a seven-hour-long outage after NFT minting flooded validators and crashed the network.

A “record-breaking four million transactions [per second]” took out Solana and caused the price of its token to drop 7%, CoinTelegraph reported at the time, pushing it further into the red during the bruising onset of crypto winter.

Why Anatoly Yakovenko left traditional tech to co-found Solana

In June, another outage prompted a 12% drop. The hours of downtime came after validators stopped processing blocks, immobilizing Solana’s touted consensus mechanism and forcing a restart of the network.

The outages were concerning enough for a protocol that sought to upend ether’s dominance and assert itself as a stable, rapid platform. Solana was experiencing growing pains in public. The project was first built in 2020 and is a younger protocol than ether, which went live in 2015.

Technology challenges are to be expected. Unfortunately for Solana, something else was brewing in the Bahamas.

The SEC called it “brazen” fraud. Bankman-Fried’s use of customer money at FTX to fund everything from trading and lending at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, to his lavish lifestyle in the Caribbean roiled the crypto markets. Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond last week while he awaits trial for fraud and other criminal charges in the Southern District of New York.

Solana since November 2022, the month that FTX failed and filed for bankruptcy protection.

Solana lost more than 70% in total value in the weeks following FTX’s November bankruptcy filing. Investors fled from anything associated with Bankman-Fried, with prices for FTT (FTX’s native token), Solana, and Serum plunging dramatically.

Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko told Bloomberg that rather than focusing on price action, the public should remain focused on “having people build something awesome that’s decentralized.”

Yakovenko did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

FTT has fared the worst, losing practically all its value. But Solana has seen a continued flight in recent days, reflecting ongoing concerns about FTX contagion and skepticism about the long-term viability of its own protocol.

Developer flight is the most pressing concern. Solana’s raison d’etre was to solve bitcoin and ether’s struggle “to scale beyond 15 transactions per second worldwide,” according to developer documentation. But active developers on the platform have dropped to 67 from an October 2021 high of 159, according to Token Terminal.

Multicoin Capital, a cryptocurrency investment firm, has maintained a bullish stance on Solana. Even after the implosion of FTX, Multicoin continued to strike an optimistic tone about the suddenly beleaguered blockchain.

“We recognized that SOL was likely to underperform in the near term given the affiliation with SBF
and FTX; however, since the crisis began we’ve decided to hold the position based on a variety of factors,” Multicoin wrote in a message to partners obtained by CNBC.

Multicoin, and other prominent crypto voices, maintain that the fallout from FTX underscores the need for a return to basics for the crypto industry: A transition away from juggernaut centralized exchanges in favor of decentralized finance (DeFi) and self-custody.

What is DeFi, and could it upend finance as we know it?

An uptick in daily activity at now peerless Binance might suggest that many crypto enthusiasts have yet to take that missive to heart.

It’s unsurprising that Yakovenko continues to believe in Solana. Yet even Vitalik Buterin, the man behind ethereum, voiced his support for Solana on Thursday. “Hard for me to tell from outside, but I hope the community gets its fair chance to thrive,” Buterin wrote on Twitter.

Chris Burniske, a partner at a Web3 venture capital firm Placeholder, said he was “still longing” Solana in a Dec. 29 Twitter thread.

Crypto saw mass adoption thanks to centralized platforms like FTX, Crypto.com, and Binance. FTX splashed millions of dollars on stadium deals and naming rights. Crypto.com invested heavily in prominent ad campaigns. Even Binance announced a sponsorship tie-in with the Grammys.

2023 may prove a seminal year for defi, as crypto-curious investors look for safer ways to garner returns and custody their assets. Bitcoin was born out of the 2008 financial crisis. Now the cryptocurrency industry faces a test of its own.

“Lehman was not the end of the banking industry. Enron was not the end of the energy industry.
And FTX won’t be the end of the crypto industry,” Multicoin told investors.

– CNBC’s Ari Levy and MacKenzie Sigalos contributed to this report.

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Tech stocks set for big losing week as AI names get rocked after Nvidia earnings

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Tech stocks set for big losing week as AI names get rocked after Nvidia earnings

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO, has a Q&A session at a press conference during the APEC CEO summit on October 31, 2025 in Gyeongju, South Korea.

Woohae Cho | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang couldn’t save the tech and artificial intelligence trade this week.

The chip giant’s talismanic leader trumpeted “off the charts” chip sales and dismissed talk of an “AI bubble,” and for a while, the tide lifted all boats.

“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Huang said during an earnings call this week. “From our vantage point, we see something very different.”

The buzz from the blowout report quickly reversed, sending the AI winners deeply into the red — and few beneficiaries were left unscathed.

Every member of the Magnificent 7, except for Alphabet, was tracking for a losing week, with Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft staring down the biggest losses.

Amazon and Microsoft have led the group’s drop lower, falling about 6% this week. Meanwhile, Alphabet has gained nearly 8%. The search giant is also the only megacap of the group on pace for November gains thanks to a boost from the launch of Gemini 3.

Oracle, which is another major Nvidia customer, slumped about 10%. The chipmaker also supplies major model developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Read more CNBC tech news

Chip stocks have also declined amid the broader tech market turmoil. Advanced Micro Devices and Micron were on pace for 17% losses. Marvell Technology has slumped about 10%. Quantum computing stocks Rigetti, IonQ and D-Wave have dropped at least 10%

CoreWeave, which buys and rents out Nvidia’s chips in data centers, initially soared on the chipmaker’s earnings report, but swiftly reversed course. The company’s stock is looking at an 8% blow this week.

AI fever was cooling in the runup to Nvidia’s earnings report on Wednesday, and investors looked to the print to alleviate fears that the AI bubble was on shaky ground. Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the stock has helped power the market to new all-time highs.

But concerns have mounted in recent weeks as tech stocks hit stretched valuations.

Major investors, including Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio told CNBC Thursday that the market is definitely in a bubble.

Much of the worries have stemmed from a boom in capital expenditures spending to support AI, with few signs of a payoff in view for many of the players.

Investor Michael Burry recently accused some of the biggest cloud and infrastructure providers of understating depreciation expenses and estimating a longer life cycle for their chips, calling it “one of the more common frauds of the modern era.”

Earlier this month, Burry revealed bets against Nvidia and Palantir.

Shares of the software analytics company, which supplies AI tools to the government and businesses, are down 11% this week. The stock has shed nearly a quarter of its value this month.

WATCH: Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio: We are definitely in a bubble, but that doesn’t mean you should sell

Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio: We are definitely in a bubble, but that doesn't mean you should sell

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Amazon cut thousands of engineers in its record layoffs, despite saying it needs to innovate faster

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Amazon cut thousands of engineers in its record layoffs, despite saying it needs to innovate faster

The Amazon Puget Sound Headquarters is pictured on Oct. 28, 2025 in Seattle, Washington.

Stephen Brashear | Getty Images

Amazon‘s 14,000-plus layoffs announced last month touched almost every piece of the company’s sprawling business, from cloud computing and devices to advertising, retail and grocery stores. But one job category bore the brunt of cuts more than others: engineers.

Documents filed in New York, California, New Jersey and Amazon’s home state of Washington showed that nearly 40% of the more than 4,700 job cuts in those states were engineering roles. The data was reported by Amazon in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, filings to state agencies.

The figures represent a segment of the total layoffs announced in October. Not all data was immediately available because of differences in state WARN reporting requirements.

In announcing the steepest round of cuts in its 31-year history, Amazon joined a growing roster of tech companies that have slashed jobs this year even as cash piles have mounted and profits soared. In total, there have been almost 113,000 job cuts at 231 tech companies, according to Layoffs.fyi, continuing a trend that began in 2022 as businesses readjusted to life after the Covid pandemic.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been on a multiyear mission to transform the company’s corporate culture into one that operates like what he calls “the world’s largest startup.” He’s looked to make Amazon leaner and less bureaucratic by urging staffers to do more with less and cutting organizational bloat.

Amazon is expected to carry out further job reductions in January, CNBC previously reported.

Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc., speaks during an unveiling event in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The company said it’s also shifting resources to invest more in artificial intelligence. The technology is already poised to reshape Amazon’s white-collar workforce, with Jassy predicting in June that its corporate head count will shrink in the coming years alongside efficiency gains from AI.

Human resources chief Beth Galetti, in her memo announcing the layoffs, focused on the importance of innovating, which the company will now have to do with fewer people, specifically engineers.

“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” Galetti wrote. “We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”

Amazon said in a statement that AI is not the driver behind the vast majority of the job cuts, and that the bigger goal was to reduce bureaucracy and emphasize speed.

Jassy said on Amazon’s earnings call last month that the cuts were in response to a “culture” issue inside the company, spurred in part by an extended hiring spree that left it with “a lot more layers” and slower decision-making.

The layoffs impacted a mix of software engineer levels, but SDE II roles, or mid-level employees, were disproportionately affected, the WARN filings show.

The AI boom is making software development jobs harder to come by as companies adopt coding assistants or so-called vibe coding platforms from vendors like Cursor, OpenAI and Cognition. Amazon has released its own competitor called Kiro.

Read more CNBC tech news

‘Significant role reductions’

Amazon spends billions on AI arms race as it guts corporate ranks

Game designers, artists and producers made up more than a quarter of the total cuts in Irvine, and they were roughly 11% of staffers laid off at Amazon’s San Diego offices, according to filings.

The company also told staffers it’s halting much of its work on big-budget, or triple A, game development, specifically around massively multiplayer online, or MMO, games, Boom wrote. Amazon has released MMOs including Crucible and New World. It was also developing an MMO based on “Lord of the Rings.”

Beyond its gaming division, Amazon also significantly cut back its visual search and shopping teams, according to multiple employee posts on LinkedIn. The unit is responsible for products like Amazon Lens and Lens Live, AI shopping tools that enable users to find products via their camera in real time or images saved to their device. The company rolled out Lens Live in September.

The team was primarily based in Palo Alto, California, and Amazon’s WARN filings indicate that software engineers, applied scientists and quality assurance engineers were heavily impacted across its offices there.

Amazon’s online ad business, one of its biggest profit centers, was downsized as well. More than 140 ad sales and marketing roles were eliminated across Amazon’s New York offices, accounting for about 20% of the roughly 760 positions cut, according to state documents viewed by CNBC.

WATCH: Box joining AWS marketplace in new partnership

AI's impact on reshaping the workforce

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The market’s surprising reversal, Gap’s viral ad, AI regulation and more in Morning Squawk

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The market's surprising reversal, Gap's viral ad, AI regulation and more in Morning Squawk

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Hero to zero

Stock investors didn’t end up getting the post-Nvidia earnings market bounce they hoped for. After opening yesterday’s trading session higher, stocks took a dramatic midday tumble, once again casting doubt on the artificial intelligence trade.

Here’s what to know:

  • Nvidia shares gave up their 5% post-earnings gain, ending the session down more than 3% despite the chipmaker’s blockbuster quarterly results and guidance. The AI darling’s stock is on track to finish the week down 5%.
  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average swung more than 1,100 between its session highs and lows. All three major averages closed solidly in the red, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ending the day down 2.15%.
  • Meanwhile, the CBOE Volatility Index — better known as Wall Street’s fear gauge — ended the session at a level not seen since April.
  • Bitcoin fell to lows going back to April, further illustrating the shift away from risk assets.
  • Before stocks’ midday reversal, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio told CNBC that “we are in that territory of a bubble,” but that you don’t need to sell stocks because of it.
  • The three major indexes are all on track to end the week in the red.
  • Follow live markets updates here.

2. Prediction market

A ‘Now Hiring’ sign is posted outside of a business on Oct. 3, 2025 in Miami, Florida.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

The belated September jobs report was finally released yesterday, and the headline number was much hotter than economists expected with an increase of 119,000 jobs. On the other hand, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest level since 2021.

The chance of a rate cut at the Federal Reserve’s next meeting remained low after the report, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. But the odds flipped this morning after New York Fed President John Williams said he sees “room for a further adjustment” in interest rates, reviving hopes of a December cut.

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3. Better than yours

Merchandise on display in a Gap store on November 21, 2024 in Miami Beach, Florida. 

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Gap‘s “Milkshake” ad brought all the shoppers to the store. The retailer’s viral “Better in Denim” campaign with girl group Katseye helped drive comparable sales up 5% in its third quarter, beating analyst expectations.

The Old Navy and Banana Republic parent also surpassed Wall Street’s estimates on both the top and bottom lines, sending shares rising 4.5% in overnight trading. Athleta was the notable outlier, with the athleisure brand’s sales falling 11%.

Gap’s report comes at the end of a busy week for retail earnings. As CNBC’s Melissa Repko reports, one key theme of this quarter’s results has been that value-oriented retailers are winning favor with shoppers across income brackets.

4. AI in D.C.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House on Oct. 6, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images

The White House is putting together an executive order that would thwart states’ individual AI laws. A draft obtained by CNBC shows the order would focus on staging legal challenges and blocking federal funding for states to ensure their compliance.

The draft would work to the advantage of many AI industry leaders who have pushed back on a state-by-state approach to the technology’s regulation. A White House official told CNBC that any discussion around the draft is speculation until an official announcement.

Click here to read the full draft.

5. Flight fight

Courtesy: Archer Aviation

Joby Aviation is taking air taxi competitor Archer Aviation to court. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Joby accused Archer of using information stolen by a former employee to “one-up” a deal with a real estate developer.

Joby alleges that George Kivork, its former U.S. state and local policy lead, took files and information before jumping to the competitor in an act of “corporate espionage.” Archer called the case “baseless litigation” and said it’s “entirely without merit.”

The Daily Dividend

Here are our recommendations for stories to circle back to this weekend:

CNBC’s Liz Napolitano, Tasmin Lockwood, Melissa Repko, Jeff Cox, Sarah Min, Emily Wilkins, Mary Catherine Wellons and Samantha Subin contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.

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