Altcoins including Solana, Chainlink, and Pepe are riding Bitcoin’s coattails as crypto’s OG chases $35,000
Bitcoin’s surge toward $35,000 has helped lift a number of altcoins, some of which have recorded double-digit percentage gains over the past week. Although smaller meme tokens often see a jump following a Bitcoin rally, more established altcoins have joined the party.
Solana, branded by some as an “Ethereum killer,” has shaken off a slump caused by frequent mentions in the first weeks of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s ongoing trial. The token notched a gain of 40% over the past week, and as of Wednesday afternoon Solana was trading at $33.28, up 8.3% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
The token has been the most popular altcoin for investors in major exchange-traded products so far this year, according to a report by CoinShares. Last week alone, investors poured $15.5 million into the token, an inflow of capital that trailed only Bitcoin’s. Last week’s investment puts year-to-date inflows to Solana at $74 million, according to the report.
Other winners from this week’s rally included lesser-known tokens such as Chainlink and Aptos, as well as the meme token Pepe.
Chainlink, a coin with close ties to the decentralized oracle network of the same name, jumped 56.6% over the past week and was trading up 11.7%, at $11.12, on Wednesday afternoon, according to CoinGecko.
Aptos was just behind Chainlink, with a 35% weekly gain. The token was up 6.1% on Wednesday.
And although its valuation is based mostly on hype, the Pepe coin had one of the best weekly performances, gaining 88%—and about 24% over the past 24 hours.
Partly fueling the rally across the board is a bet by investors that the Securities and Exchange Commission will soon approve a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. TradFi giants like BlackRock and Fidelity have already filed applications, and analysts at Bloomberg put the odds of a spot Bitcoin ETF being approved by January at 90%.
