SOL, LUNA Surge, Bitcoin Retreats After ATH: Markets Wrap

“As expected, Bitcoin reached its ATH,” Cryptohopper’s Ruud Feltkamp said. “We often see that when Bitcoin makes a move, the altcoins follow in the two weeks after, which could explain the latest surge [in] Solana.”

article-image

Shutterstock

share

key takeaways

  • Bitcoin is down roughly 4% on-day, trading at $60,728
  • SOL hiked 11%, trading at $202

Bitcoin continued to retreat as altcoins traded higher on Friday. Native tokens from Solana (SOL) and Terra (LUNA) both spiked. SOL was up almost 11%, trading at $202.71. LUNA surged 10% to $45.18, as of press time.

US stocks declined following comments on tapering back asset purchases from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Investors shifted capital away from less inflationary sensitive sectors of the market. “I do think it’s time to taper,” Powell told Congress. “I don’t think it’s time to raise [interest] rates.”

Elsewhere, a report by Goldman Sachs indicated that Decentralized Finance (DeFi) can offer certain advantages over traditional finance (TradFi).

Latest in Macro:

  • S&P 500: 4,543, -.12%
  • NASDAQ: 15,084, -.87%
  • Gold: $1,794, +.7%
  • WTI Crude Oil: $83.8, +1.59%
  • 10-Year Treasury: 1.649%, -.02%

Latest in Crypto:

  • BTC: $60,728, -3.58%
  • ETH: $3,954, -3.03%
  • ETH/BTC: .0652, +0.4%
  • BTC.D: 45.33%, -1.42%

Bitcoin retreats following ATH

After breaching past all-time highs on Wednesday, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap has since stumbled below $61,000. Despite a slight decline, BTC is still up 38.77% on the month, according to Messari.

“As expected, Bitcoin reached its ATH. It’s expected that the long volatile route to the top starts now, where I expect Bitcoin’s peak around Christmas. We often see that when Bitcoin makes a move, the altcoins follow in the two weeks after, which could explain the latest surge [in] Solana,” Ruud Feltkamp, CEO of Cryptohopper, said in a statement.

A break down of BTC price action over the past month can be seen below:

Source: Messari

DeFi’s Rapid Growth

DeFi is rapidly growing, a report from Goldman Sachs detailed on Friday. The total value locked (TVL) has skyrocketed 900% from under $10 billion during the first half of 2020 to nearly $100 billion currently, Blockworks reported.

DeFi could be easier for populations with less access to traditional financial services, but it still has flaws like hacks and “outright scams,” the report by Isabella Rosenberg, a foreign exchange analyst at Goldman Sachs, and Zach Pandl, co-head of foreign exchange strategy for Goldman Sachs Research, said. 

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Reddit is gearing up to potentially build an NFT platform, according to a job posting from the social network on Friday.

That’s all for today, folks. See you back here on Monday.


Are you a UK or EU reader that can’t get enough investor-focused content on digital assets? Join us in London on November 15th and 16th for the Digital Asset Summit (DAS) London. Use code ARTICLE for £75 off your ticket. Buy it now.


Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (8).png

Research

Meta-aggregators like Titan and Kamino Swap improve price execution for users, making the Solana swapping landscape more competitive. Jupiter has incorporated meta-aggregation features into its latest routing engine to keep users on its front end (own the user, own the flow). At large, teams are treating swaps as a commoditized complement, offering incredibly cheap or free swaps to own the end-user and increase demand for high-margin product offerings (multi-product DeFi). On another note, the divergence in the concentration of aggregator volume between DEXs suggests increased specialization at the DEX layer by asset type.

article-image

Onboarding the world to Bitcoin takes a series of firsts

article-image

If we get an altcoin season, it’ll be focused on tokens deemed “ fundamentally valuable enough for traditional public money and capital” to get involved with

article-image

Solana dropped nearly 10% amid mass crypto liquidations triggered by rising geopolitical strife

article-image

Investors moved to safe assets like the US dollar and gold, but bonds faltered

article-image

The Amex offers up to 4% bitcoin back, but the deal is a bit ironic considering crypto’s goals

article-image

Short answer: Subnets are now cheaper to bootstrap than a Celestia rollup