This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
While Bitcoin’s and Ethereum’s price gains over the past seven days aren’t particularly notable numerically given their long histories of sometimes explosive price movements, there was a clear sense that it was still a significant week for both.
Bitcoin (BTC) is up 7.6% to its current price of $30,146, meaning it is final surpassed the $30,000 support barrier again for the first time in nine months and managed to hold onto gains through the weekend.
A key driver of Bitcoin’s rise in value was the release of the latest U.S. inflation figures by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The consumer price index for March showed that inflation was high lower than forecast.
This latest read is a strong indicator that the Fed could back away from the rate hike policy it has been pursuing throughout 2022, making borrowing more expensive and ultimately discouraging investors from risky assets like crypto and stocks.
It was also a big week for Bitcoin’s biggest rival, Ethereum (ETC), which is up 10.1% to $2,061. On Friday, the coin broke through $2,100 for the first time in a short time eleven months.
Much of the Ethereum hype has revolved around the launch of the long-awaited “Shapella” upgrade, the went live On Wednesday. “Shapella” collectively refers to two upgrades, Shanghai and Capella, which have now unlocked withdrawals of ETH staked on the network at the execution level and consensus level respectively, unlocking $34 billion of ETH staked in the process.
The execution layer executes and records Ethereum’s transactions in real-time, while the consensus layer validates those transactions. Each validator has wagered 32 ETH to activate their software and will be rewarded for confirming transactions with ETH.
Solana (SOL) holders witnessed the biggest rally among the top 30 cryptocurrencies. SOL is up 16% and is currently trading at $23.91.
Much of SOL’s performance this week was thanks to that the release of Sagaan Android phone built on the Solana blockchain on April 13. The device gives users seamless access to Solana’s vast ecosystem of apps and projects.
Other notable rallies this week include Cardano (ADA) up 11.9% to $0.43, OKB up 10% to trade at $45.33, Aptos (APT) up 8.4% to $12.41 and NEAR Protocol (NEAR) was up 9% to $2.17.
The top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap saw no losses this week.
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