This Week in Coins: Solana Surge, Bitcoin Boom, and Meme Coin Mania

Crypto Breaking News

Dec 23

This week in Coins — Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.

It may be December but it sure doesn't seem like the holiday season—at least not for the crypto world, anyway.

Bitcoin started sleepy but hit $44,000 per coin for the second time this month. It is now trading for $43,815, according to CoinGecko. Over the past seven days, that's an increase of over 3%.

The biggest digital coin by market cap continued to rise on the news (surprise, surprise) that a long-awaited spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) might be closer to approval: BlackRock's Head of Digital Assets met with the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets on Tuesday to discuss its application.

Ethereum (ETH) also had a bumper week. The second-biggest digital asset is now up over seven days, priced at $2,295.

As a result, scaling solutions such as Optimism (OP) and Arbitrum (ARB) also increased in price, jumping more than 47% and 19% over the week, respectively.

OP is now priced at $3.23, and ARB is trading hands for $1.36.

And Solana (SOL) continued to rally. This week the asset flipped XRP to become the fifth biggest digital coin by market cap and surged over 30% in seven days. It is now closing in on $100 per coin and is priced at $96.99.

The Ethereum competitor has had a tremendous run this month—and last, as renewed investor interest in SOL and its ecosystem has led to tokens that run on its blockchain going up.

Solana-based meme coins have been particularly popular: the dog-themed Dog-themed Dogwifhat (WIF), which launched just last month and wants to compete with Shiba Inu (SHIB), blew up by 242% this week. It's now trading for $0.27.

Meanwhile, Bonk (BONK), the meme coin that was the talk of the town last week, cooled right down: it has now dropped by 25% over seven days, coming in priced at $0.00001849 after a phenomenal rally.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.