This Week in Coins: Bitcoin and Ethereum See Green Shoots, Dogecoin Gets Musk Twitter Bump

Crypto markets thawed this week for the first time for six consecutive weeks. Bitcoin (BTC) rose 8% over the past seven days and is trading at $20,718 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko. Ethereum (ETH) had a stronger rally, up 24% on the week to $1,613 at the start of the weekend.

So called “Ethereum killers“layer-1 blockchains with high functionality smart contracts had a great week, including Cardano (ADA), which rose 15% to 40 cents, Solana (SOL) climbed 17% to $32.83, Polkadot (DOT) rose 11 % to $6.52, and Avalanche (AVAX) rose 18% to $18.38.

Other notable rallies this week include: Ethereum Classic (ETC) up 17% to $25.79, Litecoin (LTC) gained 7% to $55, Uniswap (UNI) up 14% to $6.88, Binance Coin (BNB) up 11% to $300, and Polygon (MATIC) climbed 16.2% to 93 cents.

But the meme coin king won the week. Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) surged 77% during the week to 10 cents (yes, still down from 72 cents in May 2021) on the back of news that the Tesla boss has finally closed the deal to take over Twitter for $44 billion.

For most of the week’s green crypto market, we can point to generally more optimistic macroeconomic trends this week, with the stock market also up after several large companies reported earnings.

The biggest coin news this week

On Monday, Bitcoin hit its highest mining difficulty of all time (for second time this month) after rising 3%. As the difficulty increases, miners may see slimmer profits if Bitcoin’s price remains inert, since more computing power and electricity are needed to mine. However, increases in mining difficulty also indicate a strong and growing network.

In the UK, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and Conservative crypto lawyer Rishi Sunak was chosen as Liz Truss’s successor as both head of state and party leader. Sunak was the only candidate to receive the necessary votes. He was up against former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who announced his resignation on Sunday.

Block owned Cash App announced on Tuesday that users can reach send and receive Bitcoin via the Lightning Network. Previously, app users could only send Bitcoin, but now they can also use the network to receive it.

On Thursday, right in the middle of Musk’s takeover, Twitter announced it would allow users view and trade NFTs through tweets thanks to a new partnership with four select marketplaces: Magic Eden, Rarible, Dapper Labs and Jump.trade. The new NFT Tweet Tiles feature – currently still in testing – displays NFT artwork in a panel within the tweet and includes a button to take users to a marketplace listing.

And on Friday, Binance confirmed it is an equity investor (at half a billion US dollars) in Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover bid. The exchange’s CEO Changpeng Zhao sent an email Decrypt this statement: “We are excited to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter. We aim to play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together to expand the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.”