Solana climbs higher while bitcoin, ether prices cool

Bitcoin and ether held steady Monday morning in New York after their selloff over the weekend, while Solana continued its rally. 

After dipping to $64,500 over the weekend, bitcoin moved 2% higher Monday, according to Coinbase, to around $68,000. 

Bitcoin’s (BTC) weekly low on Sunday comes after a historic run for bitcoin last week, when the crypto posted a new all-time high of $73,835, per Coinbase. Analysts say the price moves are not surprising. 

“A pullback was to be expected considering Bitcoin’s steep climb over the past few weeks. If there were any surprises, it’s that the correction was a mild 12%, as compared with the 20 to 30% dips we’ve seen in the past,” Lucas Kiely, chief investment officer of digital wealth platform Yield App, said. “In part, this showcases Bitcoin’s current resilience to the macro environment.”

Read from our opinion section: As bitcoin’s price soars, I’m having fun and staying poor

Ether (ETH) was also relatively quiet, gaining 1% to trade around $3,600 after briefly topping $4,000 last week. The cryptocurrency has yet to surpass its 2021 record price of $4,721, according to Coinbase. 

Meanwhile, Solana (SOL) bounced another 16% Monday, per Coinbase, positioning it nearly 40% higher over the week. 

The run comes as Solana MEV startup Jito Labs announced earlier this month that it will suspend mempool functionality offered by the Jito Block Engine. The company cited an increased amount of sandwich attacks on the Solana blockchain.

“To mitigate network congestion from spam, Jito introduced an external mempool solution for Solana, effectively adding a 200ms mempool phase within the 400ms block period,” Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, said in a note. 

“The introduction of the mempool, however, also opened the door for more toxic forms of MEV like sandwiching that harm the user experience, ultimately resulting in Jito shuttering the service,” Thorn added. 

Looking ahead, traders are waiting for this week’s main event: the Federal Reserve’s rate decision on Wednesday. While markets overwhelmingly anticipate rates will stay the same, the Federal Open Markets Committee will also be releasing its economic projections, which could give insight into what to expect for the remainder of the year and in 2025. 

“In the latest release, the Fed lowered its forecast for end-of-year fed funds from 5.1% to 4.6%, which the market celebrated,” Noelle Acheson, author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter, said. “It’s likely that they will be raised again, if not this week then at the June meeting, since inflation seems somewhat stuck.”

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