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|7 min ReadMeteora’s token drop nears: where could MET price land
Lucca Menezes
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
Markets snap back as risk gauges cool
Bitcoin started the week with a clean bounce. It rose 7% from Friday’s low. On Monday, Launchpad names led. AI names lagged. That flipped last week’s pattern. You can feel traders rotating again.
On the weekly view, Launchpad remains a relative winner. Only gold looks stronger. Gold closed Monday near an all-time high. Even so, after the historic liquidation, most crypto indices still print red on the week. Inside the Launchpad basket, BSC-based AUCTION was the only name green on the week. It rose 46%.
The monthly picture is softer. Nearly every crypto index fell over the last 30 days. The Oct. 10 liquidation did damage. The bright spots were gold, crypto miners, AI and broad stock indices.
Volatility cooled. The VIX spiked to 29 on Friday morning. It slid back to 18. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq finished Monday higher. Both are a step from record highs.
ETF flows and DATCOs: who is really buying
ETF flows stayed quiet and negative. Monday saw 145 million out of ETH ETFs. SOL ETFs took in 1.5 billion. That reversed part of early October’s strong start. SOL ETFs were the only product with weekly net inflows, up $14 million.
Among DATCOs, BMNR is far ahead on ETH. It now holds 3,236,014 ETH. That is 2.67% of supply. Since late August, BMNR increased its stack by nearly 70% while most other ETH DATCOs stayed flat. BMNR’s share of the ETH held by DATCOs rose from about 50% to nearly 65%.
The same shows up in trading volume. BMNR accounts for roughly 60 to 85 percent of ETH DATCO volume. Its stock is the most liquid. That attracts larger allocators. It also softens the marginal impact of ATM issuance. BMNR looks like the clear ETH treasury winner.
In SOL DATCOs, the picture is messier. FORD still holds the most SOL, funded mostly by PIPE proceeds. It authorized a $4 billion ATM program but has not used it to build a large new position. Holding growth is weak. HSDT recently moved into the second spot.
Volume is spreading across the top names. FORD holds around 43% of the SOL owned by DATCOs, yet only about 10% of the group’s trading volume. Turnover is low. That likely explains why FORD’s ATM has added little SOL so far. ETH has a leader. SOL may not, not yet.
Meteora TGE: what will happen on Oct. 23
Meteora’s TGE is set for Thursday, Oct. 23. The team will not raise ahead of TGE. Instead it will airdrop MET to eligible recipients: Mercurial stakeholders, Meteora LPs, JUP stakers and Launchpad partners. By default, airdrops arrive unlocked. Recipients may also provide liquidity at launch to earn trading fees.
Meteora launched in February 2023 from the Jupiter team, the largest DEX aggregator and perps venue on Solana. When Meteora went live, the prior iteration, Mercurial Finance, was closed. The reason was simple. A large amount of MER was tied to FTX and Alameda. The team chose to rebuild with a new token.
Back in 2023 the team said 20% of MET would go to Mercurial stakeholders at TGE. Today the split is 15% to stakeholders and 5% to a Mercurial reserve. Meteora has also run a points program since Jan. 31, 2024. It will allocate 15% of MET to that program. At launch, 48% of the supply will circulate. That is a high float for a Solana token launch.
Ten percent of total supply will seed a dynamic AMM pool. The starting price is 7.5 billion fully diluted valuation. Early liquidity is single-sided. Early buyers swap USDC for MET. Fees start high, then fall sharply on a schedule.
Moat, distribution, and revenue run rate
DEXs on Solana have thin moats. No frontends, easy switching. Raydium learned it the hard way when Pump routed graduation tokens to its own AMM, PumpSwap. Volume and revenue left fast. Meteora is trying to blunt that risk with vertical integration. Distribution runs through Jupiter and select Launchpad partners.
In August 2024 Meteora and Moonshot launched a Launchpad. New partners followed, including Believe, BAGS and Jup Studio. In recent weeks, Launchpad activity brought in about 800,000 per week. Most of that came from Believe and BAGS.
Across all pools, Meteora generated 1.5 million even in a slow on-chain tape. More than 90% of revenue comes from memecoin pools. Those carry higher fee tiers than SOL-stable, project tokens, LST or stable-stable pools.
Fair value math: comps and scenarios
For comps, Raydium and Orca are the cleanest. Year to date, based on 30-day annualized revenue, both tracked similar price-to-sales multiples until September. Then Raydium started trading at a premium. For 2025, the median P/S for these two sits near 9x.
On multiple windows, Orca trades near 6x sales. Raydium has looked more expensive as its revenue slipped in recent months. For Meteora, annualized revenue ranges about 115 million, depending on the lookback.
Map that to P/S of 6x to 10x, the band most consistent with RAY and ORCA history. You get a reasonable post-launch valuation for MET between 1.1 billion. Above 2 billion, MET is almost surely overvalued unless the revenue run rate moves higher, fast. Everybody knows a beautiful launch is great. Sustained revenue is what cements value. That is the game.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.