Solana Soars Past $100 With 17% Surge, Bitcoin Sluggish Beneath $44K (Weekend Watch)

Bitcoin came close to $44,000 hours ago, but it was rejected there and pushed south by about $500.

Most altcoins trade quietly on Christmas Eve, but Solana has gone on a tear once again and has definitively surpassed BNB as the fourth-largest cryptocurrency.

SOL Becomes 4th

It’s safe to say that Solana’s native token has been at the forefront of the recent price rally among the altcoins. The past week alone brought a 55% surge for SOL. On a daily scale, the asset is up by over 16%. As a result, it skyrocketed to over $110 for the first time in almost two years.

Quite a few other alts have posted impressive daily gains, including DOT (8%), UNI (5.5%), NEAR (11%), OP (10%), and INJ (5%).

In contrast, ETH, XRP, ADA, DOGE, BNB, TRX, LINK, AVAX, MATIC, and TON sit with either minor gains or insignificant losses.

The weekly scale also shows massive price surges from most of the aforementioned daily gainers. SOL, NEAR, OP, and INJ lead with increases of around 50%.

The total crypto market cap has added $80 billion on a 7-day scale, and sits well above $1.650 trillion on CMC.

Bitcoin Can’t Overcome $44K

After the highly negative start of the business week, in which BTC slumped to $40,500 for the first time in 5-6 days, the cryptocurrency started its recovery on Tuesday and especially on Wednesday. In fact, it had added over three grand in two days and jumped to well above $44,000 in the middle of the week.

The sideways trading began at that point since the bulls couldn’t maintain the run above $44,000 but also defended the subsequent rejections. In fact, BTC has been in a tight range between $43,000 and $44,000 for most of the past four days.

Earlier today, the asset tried to take down the latter once again but was stopped inches away from it and now stands about $500 south of it.

This, alongside the massive gains from some larger-cap alts, has harmed BTC’s dominance over the market, which is down to 51% on CMC. At the same time, bitcoin’s market cap remains above $850 billion.