This Week in Coins: Bitcoin Rally Cools and Solana Explodes

Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.

Bitcoin’s fortnight long rally cooled off this week, but several of the biggest altcoins continued posting double digit percentage gains, including Ripple’s XRP, Solana (SOL), and Cardano (ADA). 

Entering the weekend, Bitcoin (BTC) grew by 2.7% over the last seven days to hit its current price of $34,802. Much of its price appreciation over the last two weeks was down to hype that an exchange-traded fund (ETF) would soon be approved stateside. 

Suffice to say, that hasn’t happened yet—but one analyst at investment research firm Bernstein said in a note to clients on Tuesday that it could happen in the first quarter of 2024 and may even drive Bitcoin’s price to $150k by 2025. 

Bitcoin’s biggest competitor, Ethereum (ETH), matched the market leader’s pace and grew 2% this week to change hands at $1,809 as of Friday. 

Solana (SOL) undoubtedly posted the biggest gains, growing 22.9% over the week to trade at $39.58. At its peak last week, the coin was 80% higher than it was at the start of the month. This is down to a steadily growing developer community that sees Solana (SOL) as a real contender to the Ethereum blockchain. 

Solana’s rally briefly dipped 5% on Friday amidst sizable SOL transfers from wallets linked to FTX, following a court-approved liquidation of $3.4 billion of the collapsed exchange’s digital assets in September, including $1.16 billion in SOL.

The coins and tokens in the top thirty by market cap that posted the most notable rallies this week include XRP, which rose 11.4% to $0.611593, Cardano (ADA) grew 11.2% to $0.320599, Toncoin (TON) rallied 9.2% to $2.25, Polkadot (DOT) surged 1.7% to $12, Uniswap (UNI) rallied 14% to $4.65, Stellar’s XLM grew 9.6% to $0.123115, and Cosmos Hub (ATOM) grew 10% to $7.75.

In the news

On Tuesday, USDC issuer Circle said that it’s closing down legacy accounts, meaning that retail users can no longer mint the stablecoin from the company itself—they’ll need to buy tokens from exchanges or brokerages.

PayPal on Wednesday became a registered crypto service provider with the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). This means the online payments giant can begin marketing its digital asset services to UK clientele. 

Crypto exchange Coinbase reported a third-quarter loss of $2.2 million on Thursday although it still outdid analysts’ predictions. Jack Dorsey’s crypto-integrated payments company Block also reported better-than-expected Q3 earnings, netting total revenue of $5.62 billion thanks largely to its Bitcoin-related business. 

Finally, SEC Chief and infamous crypto skeptic Gry Gensler shared a birthday message for Bitcoin on Halloween.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.