Paul McCartney: Man on the Run

Documentary film Paul McCartney: Man on the Run was released last month on Amazon Prime. Before I go into my review of the movie, I would like to state without hesitation that I am very biased towards McCartney and his original band The Beatles. In 1964, when I was five years old, my mother brought home a copy of With the Beatles. I was instantly hooked. It didn't sound anything like Peter, Paul and Mary or the New Christy Minstrels that occupied the turntable in our living room. From there, I would watch the original Beatles performances on The Ed Sullivan Show, and also convinced my parents to take me to the drive-in movies to watch their first feature-length film A Hard Day's Night. 

You've probably heard of generational talents. That's not McCartney. He's a centenary talent, if not millennial. Very few recording artists can write songs in the manner that McCartney, either as a solo act, with his Beatles songwriting partner John Lennon, or with his 1970's bandmates in Wings can write. It's all about turning a phrase and playing a catchy riff. The thing about McCartney/Lennon songs is that you can sing to them, you can dance to them, and if you want to jump into a mosh pit, you can listen to "Helter Skelter". Musically, most generations have a leading cultural phenomenon. Currently, it's Taylor Swift. Before my time was Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby in descending chronological order. But for younger Baby Boomers and older Generation X, it's The Beatles.

Directed by Oscar winner Morgan Neville, Man on the Run begins in 1969 with the breakup of The Beatles and ends in 1980 with the termination of Wings. Both bookends are sad stories because they end great eras of popular music coupled with the assassination of John Lennon about the time Wings dissolved. Make no question about it, this is a solid documentary, chock full of archival footage of which is bountiful. From the press, paparazzi, or from McCartney's own home movies. Also, let's not forget that Linda Eastman McCartney, Paul's wife, was a prominent still photographer. Many sources contribute to a tight, visually appealing presentation. That said, I don't believe this is a great documentary because it's too much of a niche production and may not appeal to younger viewers that didn't experience the era first hand.

One thing that was noticeable to me throughout the presentation is it lacked music, except for cuts from Ram. I wanted more. Sure, there's a lot of jam sessions, but not polished products. Many times the director would give you a tease which left me flat. As an example,  Linda played a couple chords on her keyboard of "Venus and Mars/Rock Show", and that was it. I ended up streaming Wings' songs on YouTube after the movie ended because I wanted to hear them in totality. If I wasn't familiar with the songs, I wouldn't know where to start and can't believe a Gen-Z or Gen-Alpha would get the short and subtle riffs. One option is to stream Wingspan: Hits and History. That's the greatest hits compilation. 

Wings was one of the defining bands of the 1970's with 27 Top 40 hits, including six Number One songs. Wings had five consecutive number one albums during their run. George Harrison's All Things Must Pass is considered the best single album of the Fab Four's solo projects, McCartney had the best overall career based on the mosaic of the musical output. Although the documentary shows Wings winning multiple Grammy Awards in 1973 for Band on the Run, it really doesn't delve too far into the music the way other documentaries such as HBO's Yacht Rock does. What the movie does do, in a spectacular manner, is tell the story of Paul, his relationship with his wife and family, and his friendship with John Lennon. This is the selling point of the film.

As a Beatles and Wings fan, I learned a lot from Man on the Run. McCartney has experienced success without a dedicated ensemble, too. "Maybe I'm Amazed", "It's Just Another Day", and the entire Ram album were accomplished primarily with McCartney as a one-man band. He's an incredible musician. Piano, guitar and bass. He even played the drums on "Back in the U.S.S.R." on the White Album. I believe that Sir Paul's fans will get a lot out of the documentary. You can get a deeper understanding of what makes him tick. A fanatical fan base will surely fill the arenas when he goes on tour again this year. That said, there are holes in the picture, which is why I think this is a good and not great presentation. 

Solana: Total Addressable Market and Revenue Growth Make it Worth a Look

Introduction

Warren Buffett's mentor Benjamin Graham is famous for teaching, and I paraphrase, a stock can go down fifty percent for no reason whatsoever. Solana (SOL-USD), the seventh largest cryptocurrency based on a market cap of $48 billion, meets that criteria, but not without just cause. First, most cryptocurrencies are experiencing Crypto Winter. Secondly, software in general is in a free-fall. Third, so goes Bitcoin (BTC-USD), so goes the crypto market and Bitcoin is down close to 50% from the all-time high. There's a correlation with digital assets and Bitcoin. Fourth, and in the short-term, Operation Epic Fury is putting a lot of pressure on stocks and digital assets. Fifth, the S&P 500 corrects 10% every 14 months based on historical data. We may be in the midst of a garden variety pull back. Painful, but necessary to consolidate the market. Finally, it was extremely overvalued after momentum traders bid up the price in the Fall of 2025.

At the time of this writing, Solana trades at $85 a token, down 65% from $247 five months ago. Prone to boom/bust cycles, it's descending, going in the wrong direction if you're long the Solana Blockchain. My opinion is that this a good time to dollar-cost-average if you own it, or an even better time to take a position in it.

Some Background and Total Addressable Market

Anthony Scaramucci recently wrote Solana Rising: Investing in the Fast Lane of Crypto. Scaramucci gives a one sided report of Solana's history and attributes with evangelical zeal. He also gives a succinct description of what Solana does: "it's a programmable blockchain that enable users to borrow, lend, trade, or earn interest on their cryptocurrency, all outside the traditional banks and financial intermediaries that comprise the TradFi [Traditional Finance] landscape." If you're looking for in depth information about Solana in layman terms, Solana Rising is a good place to start. 

Solana has a humongous total addressable market [TAM] ahead over the next four years because of the tokenization of all things financial. This includes equities, derivatives, commodities and real estate. Tokenization is turning analog assets into digital assets that can be traded and transacted over a blockchain. Depending on the source, tokenization of assets is projected to grow from $250 billion today to $4-16 trillion by 2030. Boston Consulting Group has the rosiest projection at $16 trillion. Citigroup (C) is much lower at $4-5 trillion. ARK Invest is between the two at $10 trillion. No matter who is correct in their projections, it's a tremendous opportunity to increase revenues for utility blockchains. 

The Competition

Currently, there's a battle between the more established Ethereum (ETH-USD) and the newcomer Solana to capture the lion's share of tokenized assets flowing through their blockchains. Other players in the cryptosphere, such as Avalanche (AVAX-USD) and Cardano (ADA-USD), have promise but lag in market dominance. Although Cardano and Avalanche have outstanding growth rates, revenues are in the millions of dollars, not billions of dollars, as are Solana and Ethereum. Ethereum is the industry standard in DeFi, with 56% market share last year. Most of Solana's revenues are derived from the gaming, social media, and meme coins. Solana's market share in DeFi varies on the source, but a ballpark figure is approximately 12%. Clearly a distant number two to the leader, Ethereum. 

Blockchain	2025 Revenue	2026 Est. Revenue Growth	Key Growth Driver for 2026
Solana	$2.39 Billion	40% – 55%	Firedancer upgrade & Perp DEX expansion
Ethereum	$5 Billion	15% – 25%	L2 Interoperability & Institutional RWAs
Avalanche	$207 Million	30% – 45%	Real World Asset (RWA) Subnets
Cardano	$18 Million	50% – 70%	Ouroboros Leios & Midnight Privacy Layer

I believe the estimated 2026 growth revenue on the table above can be misleading because it's not an apples to apples comparison between Ethereum and Salona. Ethereum is still in pole position with DeFi tokenization and has a huge lead. Although Ethereum is slower than Solana in processing transactions, it's much more secure and has first-mover advantage. Established financial institutions prefer Ethereum. After all, when you're dealing with money, security is the name of the game.

Solana receives a majority of its revenues via the retail trade, not DeFi. This means meme coins. A joke to many on Main Street, but no laughing matter to Solana. In 2025, trading and meme coin activity constituted about 50% of Solana's revenue.  Ethereum isn't going anywhere, either. It's the number two crypto in a universe of thousands of digital assets, right behind Bitcoin. Ethereum has the same Total Addressable Market as Solana to capture. Both should experience tremendous growth in the next five years. Currently, it's a Coke (KO) and Pepsi (PEP) battle. Coke, like Ethereum, dominates in the global market in DeFi. Solana, like Pepsi, is the clear runner-up but has terrific products. Neither Solana nor Ethereum are meme coins such as Dogecoin (DOGE-USD), Trump ($TRUMP-USD), or Bonk (BONK-USD). 

Although buying cryptocurrency can be considered gambling, I think of it an investment if you choose the right tokens. Solana and Ethereum are the plumbing for the infrastructure of WEB 3.0. In the not-so-distant future, both of these blockchains, along with crypto oracle Chainlink (LINK-USD), will be in the lexicon of Main Street investors. The utilitarian aspect of crypto is in a current period of consolidation. This is similar to the turn of the Twentieth Century, when there were over 100 automobile manufacturers, only to be dwindled down to a handful by 1920. This is happening now to crypto that actually does something. 

Why Solana?

Solana is a high risk, high reward investment. Even at the depressed price, it's still expensive by utilizing traditional metrics on an absolute basis. On a relative basis, it appears to be less expensive than competitor Ethereum and most in the cryptosphere. Ethereum has a market cap of $240 billion, with 2025 revenues at $5 billion and only projected to grow 15%-25% this year. Solana has one fifth the market cap, and although it has half the revenue of Ethereum, it is growing close to 50%. Both are over their skis in traditional value investing, but we're in a bull market and investors will pony up for growth. Like Benjamin Graham, I prefer a margin of safety, but Graham lived way before the technological revolution. 

Metric	Solana	Ethereum
Current Price	~$85.30 - $88.89	~$1,900 - $1,980
Developer Activity	~2,500 - 3,000+ active devs	~5,000 - 6,000+ active devs
Monthly Revenue	$245 Million (Jan 2026)	$89 Million (Jan 2026)
Daily Active Addresses	~2.17 Million	~682,000
Total Value Locked	~$6.4 Billion	~$52.4 Billion ($65B+ incl. L2s)
DEX Trading Volume	~$108 Billion (last 30 days)	~$63.7 Billion (last 30 days)

Solana has 3,000 active developers on the network and that figure is growing. The additional programmers could help Solana chip away at Ethereum's dominance in DeFi. One example is BlackRock's (BLK) blockchain money market token, the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL-USD). Originally on Ethereum, it's now on Solana and other blockchains, too. More could follow in jumping ship, and go with the upstart Solana. As reported in MEX.CO "As of early 2026, the competitive landscape between Solana and Ethereum has shifted from a theoretical debate to a data-driven rivalry. While Ethereum remains the "reserve currency" and institutional bedrock of DeFi, Solana has aggressively captured market share in terms of retail engagement, transaction volume, and capital efficiency." 

In the opening paragraph, I gave a list of reasons why Solana has depreciated in price recently. Most of these reasons investors have no control over: war, market corrections, or overvaluation. Investors also have no control over government intervention. However, a legislative act that's up for vote in The Senate, could be a major catalyst to boost, or, buoy the price of Solana and crypto in general. This is the Clarity Act which has already passed in Congress. The Clarity Act aims to put guardrails on cryptocurrency, strengthening oversight and protecting investors. This past week, President Trump posted on Truth Social, that he supports the Act, and crypto prices rose 5%-7% in one day unison. If it becomes law, we may be off to the races. No matter how you feel about The Commander in Chief, his posts can move the market.  

Another thing to consider is what's happening in the Artificial Intelligence space with Open AI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's (ANTHRO) Claude, and Google's (GOOG) Gemini. They change leads by the day. Technologies leapfrog each other in the bat of an eye. This could be the situation with Ethereum and Solana if developers continue flocking to Solana to develop DeFi. However, Ethereum's developer community is growing, too.

How To Invest in Solana

In the early days of crypto, the only way to invest was through a digital wallet on crypto exchanges such as Coinbase (COIN) and Binance. They can get hacked, tokens can get lost, and they are far from plug-and-play in terms of ease of use. Crypto purists prefer to use them. In the past few years, discount brokers such as Robinhood (HOOD) and Interactive Brokers (IBKR) introduced crypto trading on their exchanges. Not all discount brokers allow crypto trading, so check with whoever it is you invest with.

More recently, the way I prefer to play it is by using spot-priced ETFs. These ETFs have only been on the market for a few months and are very risky, just like buying cryptocurrencies in general. Spot-priced crypto ETFs are regulated under the Securities Act of 1933, which means they are registered with the SEC and subject to anti-fraud provisions. One caveat is that these ETFs are not registered under the Investment Act of 1940, and therefore are not subject to the same regulations and protections as 40 Act ETFs and mutual funds. You could lose everything, but if you're venturing into cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC-USD), you probably are already aware of that. If the Clarity Act, which aims to regulate the digital asset market, passes in the Senate, then these ETFs should be much safer investments.

Here's a list of some of the many Solana spot-price ETFs:

• Grayscale Solana Staking ETF (GSOL), 0.35% expense ratio.
• Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL), 0.2% expense ratio.
• VanEck Solana ETF (VSOL), 0.3% expense ratio.

The list includes both staking and non-staking ETFs. Non-staking ETFs trade at Solana's spot-price. Staking ETFs generates interest, just as in a banking account or money market fund. ETFs trade only during market hours, unlike buying tokens on crypto exchanges. The ETF parent companies will adjust prices once the market opens to compensate for any discrepancy in after-hours trading. As an example, if Solana is up 2% overnight, it will open 2% higher at the opening bell. The principle holds true if the token is down in overnight trading. 

Conclusion

This is a heavyweight fight. Just like Muhammed Ali vs Joe Frazier back in the day. Not just a boxing match but a clash of cultures. The whole world is watching, too. The global DeFi market is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate [CAGR] of 21.8% to 68.2% in the coming years, with 2026 appearing as a key year of high growth. With a huge Total Addressable Market, this is a place you can make a lot of money, especially at these distressed prices. Solana has near-term momentum in the cryptosphere and is gaining market share. The Clarity Act is set to become law. Solana's price is under pressure. For 2026, Solana is projected to experience a 40%-55% revenue growth rate. Because of these factors, I believe that Solana is a good bet for the next year and beyond.