This Week in Coins: Bitcoin Hits 18-Month High, Solana’s Market Cap Closes in on USDC

Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.

The crypto excitement doesn’t seem to end. Bitcoin (BTC), after cooling off last Friday, continued to bolt upwards—it hit an 18-month high on Thursday, crossing into $37,000 per coin on optimism surrounding the potential approval of a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF).

New Research note from me today. We still believe 90% chance by Jan 10 for spot #Bitcoin ETF approvals. But if it comes earlier we are entering a window where a wave of approval orders for all the current applicants *COULD* occur pic.twitter.com/u6dBva1ytD

— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) November 8, 2023

Bitcoin’s boom—most likely caused by a note from Bloomberg Intelligence analysts saying that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission now has an eight-day window to approve the applications for a Bitcoin ETF—brought the rest of the market with it.

Over the past seven days, BTC is up nearly 8% and trading hands for $37,369, according to CoinGecko.

A number of big altcoins saw gains with Solana (SOL) taking the lead and continuing its seemingly unstoppable rally. On Friday, the coin was closing in on USD Coin’s (USDC) market cap. It is now comfortably above $50 per coin, and priced at $54.54—a more than 38% weekly rise.

SOL has been on a rally of its own: it’s up 150% in the past 30 days; no other major coin or token has experienced gains like that. Experts told Decrypt that it is likely down to a short squeeze caused by short sellers exiting their positions. Plus, the blockchain is fast and cheap—so there is renewed interest from institutions.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, also did well. It crossed the $2,000 mark for the first time since July; it is currently up over 14% over the week.

Elsewhere, alts that had seemingly been quiet experienced a resurgence: Chainlink (LINK) has experienced a 33% seven-day rise—making it the next best gainer after SOL out of the top 20 coins and tokens. It is currently trading for $15.10 per token.

Its jump is partly down to British telecoms company Vodafone’s Digital Asset Broker (DAB) announcing a rebrand; DAB is using Chainlink’s network to improve document transfer.

And Sui (SUI) also had a quiet resurgence: the blockchain’s token launched last year by ex-Meta engineers, is up over 36% over the past seven days, coming in at $0.61.

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