This Week in Coins: Solana Explodes 25%, Bitcoin Reclaims $30K on ETF Hopes and Ripple Wins

It was a good week for holders of virtually all leading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Solana, and XRP.

After many weeks of inertia and slow movement, Bitcoin (BTC) finally rebounded with some bullish price action, adding 10% over the last seven days to change hands at $29,523 as of this writing. The rest of the market rebounded with it.

Bitcoin’s rally began on Monday, following last Friday’s news that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission would not be appealing a court verdict that labeled the regulator’s rejection of crypto asset manager Grayscale’s ETF application “arbitrary and capricious.”

The world’s favorite cryptocurrency also received another boost—of around 10%—on Monday when Cointelegraph tweeted fake news that Wall Street titan Blackrock had been approved to launch a U.S. Bitcoin spot ETF.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink responded to the price pump that day, saying during an appearance on FOX Business: “It’s just an example of the pent-up interest in crypto. I think the rally today is about a flight to quality.” A marked change of tune from 2017 when Fink called Bitcoin an “index of money laundering.”

Later in the week, BlackRock submitted an amended prospectus for its ETF application. Changes to its filing include acknowledgment of competition in the race for ETF approval and detailed explanations on the product’s pricing and reporting mechanisms. On a related note, a report released by JP Morgan that day (Wednesday) called it “most likely” that a spot Bitcoin ETF could get approved before January 10.

By Friday, the news had pushed Bitcoin’s price to briefly reclaim $30k, a level not seen since summer, according to CoinGecko.

The wider market: Solana, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash

While Bitcoin generally acts as the industry’s pace-setter (typically when BTC rises, other coins and tokens rise with it), this week, the market leader’s gains were far outpaced by some of its rivals.

Closest contender Ethereum (ETH) didn’t manage to catch up with it this week. Ethereum rose 3.4% to enter the weekend trading at $1.602.

Ripple’s XRP blew up this week, but not quite as much as Bitcoin. XRP grew 6.7% to $0.515669 off the back of news that the SEC had voluntarily dismissed charges against Ripple execs, CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen. The SEC sued them alongside the company in December 2020 for allegedly violating securities laws with sales of XRP.

The biggest rallies this week came from two altcoins: Solana (SOL) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Bitcoin Cash blew up 11.6% and currently trades at $239.40, while Solana mushroomed a staggering 25% to hit $26.89 at the time of writing.

SOL’s impressive rally appears to have been spurred by news that the FTX estate has decided to stake roughly $122 million in Solana held in the bankrupt exchange’s crypto wallets rather than liquidate it.

Finally, there were no significant losses among the top thirty cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The only red candle this week was from Cosmos Hub’s ATOM, which fell 3.8% to $6.36.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.