Solana steals spotlight

To celebrate the Winter Solstice – a day when the northern half of the planet endures its biggest sunlight deficit of the year – Solana's SOL is shining as brightly as it has in some 20 months. SOL hit $88 as the sun was coming up in the Eastern part of the U.S.

Abetted by some dog-themed memecoins and spiking interest among the general public (i.e., more Google searches), SOL now has a market capitalization of more than $37 billion. It has soared 34% in the past two weeks and yesterday surpassed XRP as the industry's fifth-largest digital asset.

We’ve routinely referred to the layer-1 blockchain as an Ethereum "rival," but "killer" seems more apt these days.

Indeed, some analysts are now questioning whether ETH can sustain its leading ecosystem-facilitation position among layer-1 chains when considering Solana's growing reputation for less costly, speedier transactions (Cointelegraph).

SOL had gained 13% in 24 hours as of 7:54 a.m. (EST), per CoinGecko.

A couple of Top 100 coins enjoyed 24-hour gains of 14% in that same time period. One of them is PancakeSwap.

Recall how it once jumped above $40 but that was in 2021, back when DeFi was synonymous with "juggernaut." The DEX's native CAKE spent the better part of crypto winter (most of last year and part of this year) plummeting from $10 to $1. But hold the one-dollar line CAKE did. And since crypto's thaw, starting this past autumn, CAKE has soared from $1.06 to $2.70 as of mid-November. When we checked CAKE at 8:03 a.m. (EST), CAKE was $2.51, per CoinGecko.

Near Protocol's native NEAR also shot up by 14%. CoinGape describes it as a "sharded, PoS chain." Near Protocol recently partnered with a data integration company, IDS, to help India create blockchain projects.

Bitcoin reached roughly $44,200 earlier this morning, one day after the U.S. stock market tumbled.

One week ago, the Fed signaled rate cuts were coming. However, since then, a slew of Fed officials made pains to utter, in succession, echoing comments in what seemed like a coordinated walk-back of the decidedly dovish overtures. This could be in light of new inflation fears emanating from a freight shipping bottleneck in the strife-engulfed Red Sea.

The S&P 500 index finished yesterday's session down 1.42%.

Spot BTC in the past one hour has shaded slightly red. As of 8:30 a.m. (EST), BTC was $43,994, down 0.4% relative to 7:30 a.m. (EST).

Meanwhile, chatter about a Litecoin rally has dissipated. LTC, which was being overly shorted as of the other day, harkening to a possible squeeze, had declined 1.3% since yesterday.

And Injective, one day removed from its ATH of $43.20, has since shed 8%. INJ, which often gets grouped with search terms such as "Web3" and "AI" and "Mark Cuban," is now a few pennies shy of $40.

Solana has gained 700% since the start of the year. Let that sink in for a moment.

SOL rallied to kick off the year – and then skyrocketed to finish it – and this was despite the project having uniquely close ties to FTX, and also despite the fact that regulators deemed SOL to be an unlawfully issued security.

“There were real questions around Solana’s survival after the collapse of FTX," Brian Rudick, a senior strategist at GSR, told CoinDesk. "But it has instead thrived."

Solana has experienced increased activity on the chain, as well as a newfound appreciation for its innovative technology, Rudick said.

Airdrops helped, too.

Solana Saga phone owners are set to be on the receiving end of an incoming airdrop of 100,000 tokens connected with content distribution platform Access Protocol (ACS).

A recently completed airdrop of Solana-based BONK led to a spike in demand for Saga phones.

Solend, a Solana-run decentralized lending protocol, has confirmed an upcoming airdrop exclusively for Saga owners (The Crypto Times).