BlackRock CEO offers his endorsement
Altcoins are stealing the show once again, with Solana and Filecoin leading gainers across the crypto market.
Meanwhile, despite turmoil in global equities, Bitcoin continues to sit above $30K as big institutional players show confidence in the asset.
This week’s highlights
– Bitcoin holds at $30K
– Firedancer sparks 8% gains for Solana
– Filecoin leads crypto cloud storage rally
– Polygon pops 3% on leadership reshuffle
Bitcoin holds at $30K
Despite turmoil in the stock market, BTC holds strong above $30K
Bitcoin is sitting above $30K as institutional players express confidence in the asset.
As eToro Global Markets Strategist Ben Laidler points out, this comes despite turmoil in the broader financial markets, with Bitcoin now “up over 80% since the start of the year, even as volatility has returned to broader assets on higher interest rate forecasts.”
Much of the recent gains have come since June 15, when BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, first filed to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF.
Since then, the number of coins held by institutions through trusts and funds has spiked, reaching its highest level in more than a year according to data from CryptoQuant.
This institutional confidence was summed up last Wednesday by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who endorsed Bitcoin as “an international asset” on Fox News, saying that it’s “not based on any one currency so it can represent an asset that people can play as an alternative.”
Firedancer sparks 8% gains for Solana
Trending higher since early June, SOL has now broken through the $20 barrier
Solana is up 8% on the week over excitement about a new validator client for the blockchain.
Known as Firedancer, this new software for running a Solana blockchain node is expected to address ongoing concerns about uptime, and increase the speed of transactions.
“Firedancer opens up new application possibilities for the @solana ecosystem by enabling Web2 applications on-chain with 1+M TPS.” tweeted crypto research firm Messari. “This scalability would benefit high-throughput financial apps and consumer apps like social media.”
For some commentators on Crypto Twitter, anticipation of these benefits has led to calls for a “Solana Summer” in which Solana becomes the DeFi blockchain of choice,
Filecoin leads crypto cloud storage rally
FIL broke through resistance at $4, and is now testing the same level as support
Beating both Bitcoin and Ethereum, Filecoin has finished the week flat after leading a powerful rally in crypto storage tokens.
As an alternative to cloud storage platforms like those offered by Amazon or Google, Filecoin uses blockchain technology to enable users to rent out spare storage space on their computer.
According to Twitter commentator Porter Stowell, this could make it one of many beneficiaries of the increasingly symbiotic relationship between AI and crypto. He tweeted last week that “the majority of AI organizations will be sued over the integrity of their datasets. Continuous proofs on data integrity will be one of the primary defenses against these challenges” and that “Filecoin is the data integrity solution that addresses this pain point.”
Falling behind, smaller crypto storage upstart Storj is down 1% on the week after a sudden swing higher last Tuesday.
Polygon pops 3% on leadership reshuffle
MATIC is pushing back up towards $0.75 for the first time since early June
Polygon has popped 3% on news that former Chief Legal Officer Marc Boiron will take the position of CEO.
The leadership shift could help Polygon manage legal concerns with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and comes as the project enters a new chapter of its development: Polygon 2.0.
This new phase aims to cement Polygon’s status as a leader in Ethereum scaling by introducing a new technical architecture and incorporating zero-knowledge proofs, an innovative and highly-anticipated cryptographic technique.
Speaking to Coindesk, co-founder Brendan Farmer shared the scope of Polygon’s ambition, claiming that the blockchain aims to become “the value layer for the internet”.