Bitcoin and Ethereum Flat as Solana Meme Coin BONK Bounces 6.9%

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana were all flat on Friday morning after a rough start to the week.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was changing hands for $40,444—a 1% gain from this time yesterday and down 2.2% from last Friday. Trading volume has fallen off from earlier in the week, from $31.2 billion on Tuesday to $18 billion worth of BTC moving in the past day, according to CoinGecko data.

Meanwhile, Ethereum was trading for $2,221.47 at the time of writing—virtually unchanged from its price the same time yesterday, according to CoinGecko. Although BTC has made up some ground from its slide earlier this week, Ethereum is down over 10% in the last seven days.

The Ethereum community is currently preparing for its next big network update. The upgrade, which promises to make transactions on the network faster and cheaper, will next roll out on two more testnets in early February. The goal is to have Dencun on Ethereum mainnet by March, developers confirmed on Wednesday.

One of the standouts on Friday is Solana meme coin BONK. The dog-themed token has gained 6.9% since this time yesterday and is currently trading for $0.00001133. It has managed to hold onto its place in the top 100 crypto assets by market capitalization this week, but just barely. Its $688 million market cap makes it the 98th largest asset, as ranked by CoinGecko.

Early this week, the BONK community announced that it would be one of the sponsors for a Solana Hacker House event in New York in March.

Meanwhile, Solana has made a modest 1.7% gain since yesterday, currently changing hands for $88.90. The Solana Foundation announced earlier this week tokens minted on the network would get new features, like issuer-determined transfer fees, confidential transfers, and metadata requirements. They're all aimed at making the blockchain a more attractive destination for stablecoins and real world assets, the foundation said.