This Week in Coins: Bitcoin Regains $30,000 as Ethereum’s ‘Shapella’ Goes Live
This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
While Bitcoin and Ethereum’s price gains over the past seven days, numerically speaking, are not particularly remarkable given their long history of sometimes explosive price movements, there was a clear sense that it was still a significant week for both.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose 7.6% to its current price of $30,146, meaning it finally crossed the $30,000 support barrier again for the first time in nine months and has managed to hold on to the gains coming into the weekend.
A key driver of Bitcoin’s rise in value was the release of the latest US inflation numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The consumer price index for the month of March revealed that inflation was lower than the forecasts had expected.
This latest reading is a strong indicator that the Fed may back off from its policy of raising interest rates, which it pursued throughout 2022, making it more expensive to borrow money and ultimately turning investors away from risky assets like crypto and stocks .
It was also a huge week for Bitcoin’s closest rival, Ethereum (ETC), which surged 10.1% to hit $2,061. On Friday, the coin briefly broke past $2,100 for the first time eleven months.
Much of the Ethereum hype revolved around the launch of the long-awaited “Shapella” upgrade, which went live on Wednesday. “Shapella” collectively refers to two upgrades, Shanghai and Capella, which have now unlocked withdrawals of ETH staked on the network at the execution layer and consensus layer, respectively, freeing up $34 billion in ETH staked in the process.
The execution layer executes and records Ethereum’s transactions in real time, while the consensus layer validates these transactions. Each validator has staked 32 ETH to activate their software and is rewarded with ETH for validating transactions.
The biggest rally among the thirty largest cryptocurrencies was enjoyed by Solana (SOL) holders. SOL gained 16% and is currently trading at $23.91.
Much of SOL’s performance this week was thanks to the release of Sagaan Android phone powered by the Solana blockchain, April 13. The device enables users to seamlessly access Solana’s vast ecosystem of apps and projects.
Other notable rallies this week include Cardano (ADA) which rose 11.9% to $0.43, OKB added 10% to trade at $45.33, Aptos (APT) rose 8.4% to $12.41, and NEAR Protocol (NEAR) rose 9% to $2.17.
There were no casualties among any of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap this week.
