Sales of Solana Phone Surge as Traders Chase BONK Arbitrage

The once-struggling Solana phone is turning into a sellout. And the memecoin BONK is almost certainly the reason why.

Arbitrage traders appear to be chasing a 30 million BONK token airdrop that’s available to every owner of the Saga phone. At current prices that much BONK is worth nearly $700 for a phone that costs $599.

“Saga sales have >10x’d in the past 48 hours, and are now on track to sell out before the new year,” Solana co-founder Raj Gokal tweeted midday Thursday. The surge is so pronounced that Gokal’s counterpart, Anatoly Yakovenko, tweeted they needed to raise the price.

The euphoria around BONK – Solana’s dog-themed equivalent to Dogecoin – has led to a turnaround story for Saga, which just one week ago faced dimming prospects amid forgettable sales figures. Saga is a blockchain-enabled smartphone with special features for storing one’s crypto securely on the phone’s own hardware.

The Saga Discord server exploded on Thursday with newcomers declaring they just bought the phone and wanted to get the airdrop.

According to posts on the Discord server, the BONK airdrop is available to those who download the BONK app from Saga’s crypto-forward custom app store.

“When you physically have the phone you will be able to mint ‘Genesis token’ through the ‘dApp store, [this token is eligible to claim the bonk drop,” said a user who identified themselves as an employee of Solana Mobile in the Discord server.

“The bonk drop is NOT forever, at some point that promotion will end,” the user, whose screen name was Jax, said in the Discord. “As of right now the claim is live and is up to the bonk team on when they’d want to close it. No end date yet.”