Hedera’s Network Activity Is Up 168%, but HBAR Fell 8% This Week. Better Buy Than Solana?

Hedera (CRYPTO:HBAR) has seen a remarkable increase in its transactions, with a 168.4% rise in activity over the past 30 days, as reported by Token Relations. However, HBAR’s price has dropped by 9.5% over the last week. Transactions per second (TPS) show that Hedera’s network is far busier than it was a month ago.

HBAR is trading at about $0.0836, down 2.7% in the last 24 hours, and remains well below the $0.122 high it reached in late September. Solana (CRYPTO:SOL), on the other hand, has also declined, but less dramatically—down 4.6% over the week and now priced at about $105.

With one cryptocurrency showing rising network activity yet a price decline, and the other a larger player with a smaller drop, the HBAR vs Solana comparison raises one question. Which coin is the better investment right now?

Hedera’s Network Activity Rose 168% as It Joined a UK Taskforce

Hedera’s total value locked (TVL)—the dollar value users have deposited into the network’s applications—also rose by 12.3%, reaching $33.2 million, according to Token Relations.

This increase comes alongside several encouraging announcements. Hedera joined the UK’s Wholesale Digital Markets Champion Taskforce and made its cross-ledger protocol, CLPR, open source via the Linux Foundation’s Decentralized Trust Labs. This cross-ledger protocol lets different blockchains communicate and share data and assets, and being open source means developers can access the code and build on it.

Additionally, HashPack and SODAX are working on access to tokenized assets, such as bonds or fund shares represented as tokens on a blockchain. However, these initiatives’ fee structures have not yet been disclosed, leaving investors without a clear view of HBAR’s potential use.

Traders have also quickly sold on Hedera news in the past. For example, HBAR surged by 27% on September 28 after IBM (NYSE:IBM | IBM Price Prediction) added a Hedera-based identity app to its cloud offerings, only to lose 16% the following day, as our analysis on IBM highlighted.

Why HBAR’s Price Dropped Despite Increased Network Usage

HBAR’s price has declined 17.8% over the past two weeks, though it remains up 14.9% over the last 30 days. The IBM announcement in late September likely drove the 30-day increase, while the two-week drop reflects traders taking profits on those earlier gains. Trading volume has also decreased, dropping from about $1.51 billion on the spike day to approximately $91 million in the latest 24 hours.

Hedera’s activity is increasing, but it starts from a modest base, and higher usage alone doesn’t drive price higher. Hedera transactions typically cost only a fraction of a cent, so a 168% increase in transactions doesn’t create significant demand for HBAR. While network activity indicates usage, token demand concerns what users are willing to pay for the cryptocurrency, and these two aspects can diverge for months.

Moreover, HBAR holders face the challenge of a growing supply. About 44 billion HBAR tokens are in circulation out of a maximum supply of 50 billion, resulting in a fully diluted valuation—what the total value would be if all tokens were in circulation—of around $4.18 billion, compared with an actual market cap of $3.68 billion.

This larger supply means that achieving higher price targets requires more investment. HBAR’s all-time high was $0.57 on September 15, 2021, and at that price, the current supply would equal a market cap of about $25.1 billion. Even at its late-September high of $0.122, HBAR’s market cap peaked at approximately $5.35 billion.

Solana Is the Larger Network, and SOL Has Fallen Less

In contrast, Solana is much larger in both market value and trading activity. Solana ranks seventh by market cap at about $61.7 billion, while HBAR ranks 32nd. Solana’s trading volume totaled around $2.75 billion in the last 24 hours, roughly 30 times HBAR’s volume.

Macro investor Jordi Visser highlighted Solana’s strength on The Pomp Podcast on September 26, noting that Solana was trading well and signaling investor interest. After a drop to about $105, Solana’s price remains 64.3% below its $293 peak, yet it has shown more resilience than HBAR over the past two weeks.

HBAR could fully recover yet still lag behind Solana, since at its all-time high, HBAR’s roughly $25.1 billion value wouldn’t match Solana’s $61.7 billion market cap. Our analysis of HBAR versus XRP shows a similar trend: HBAR tends to react more to news than to steady fees from everyday users.

Is HBAR a Better Investment Than Solana?

In the HBAR vs Solana comparison, Solana appears to be the stronger contender. During the October market pullback, SOL fell less and runs a larger network. HBAR’s activity surge has not yet translated into measurable token demand. For Hedera to compete with Solana, it needs to name its paying customers and share fee figures, keep TPS growing in the next monthly data, and reclaim the $0.10 mark.

If activity growth stalls and Hedera fails to name any paying customers, HBAR could drop back to the $0.07 range, where it traded throughout the summer. Traders are watching closely to see whether HBAR can close above $0.10 by the end of November. That close could help HBAR narrow the gap with Solana. Conversely, if HBAR stays below $0.10, Solana may gain the upper hand in this comparison.

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