Ethereum “Killer” Solana Surges 14% on a Slow Market Day

The crypto market is continuing its steady, if uneasy, recovery. Among winners today was Solana’s SOL surged 14% overnight to land on a price of $18.22 per token. continuing a stride that has helped the token grow over 30% in value since last weekend. 

The surge could be related to news that some fresh capital hit the Solana network this week in the form of a $40 million boost from two key investors: the crypto exchanges OKEx and MXC. 

Developed by a team of former Intel and Dropbox engineers, Solana was last year touted as a potential ‘Ethereum killer’ due to the fact that its blockchain has fewer fees and can process up to 50,000 transactions per second. Though Ethereum began a phased launch of its 2.0 upgrade last year (with expectations of up to 100,000 TPS in a few years), it’s still locked at about 14 TPS.

Ethereum stagnated a bit today, and grew less than a percent overnight. A single ETH coin is now worth $1,707. Still, that’s almost 4% cheaper than it was last weekend.

Binance, Bitcoin, and the altcoins

BNB holders can enjoy an optimistic start to their day. As of lunchtime UTC on Sunday, Binance Coin gained over 5% in value to trade at a price of $271. That’s still 20% shy of its ATH of $343 last month, but its price has been closely tracking Bitcoin’s.

Bitcoin grew 2% in the last 24 hours to reclaim its $56k price tag, though given that it set an all-time high of $61.7k only a fortnight ago, it only serves as an uncomfortable reminder of crypto’s inherent instability. 

Bitcoin’s price pulled back last week, with a particularly heavy 10% plunge occurring overnight on Thursday. The US economy is recovering and with it, the US dollar has gained in value once again. The two events are very plausibly related, as Bitcoin’s worth as a store of value is intimately tied with global confidence in fiat currencies. 

One other big overnight winner worth mentioning is THETA, which is now trading for $12.41. That’s 4.33% more than it was going for 24 hours ago, making for almost 50% growth since last weekend. 

In the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, Klaytn deserves the silver medal though. It grew to $3.50 overnight, adding almost 8% to its value. 

Today the markets can best be described as patchy, though with a current global market cap of $1.76 trillion it’s clear crypto won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.