After a shaky start, where Bitcoin struggled to maintain its position above $60,000, the digital currency made a remarkable recovery. Over the weekend, it managed to stay afloat, slightly increasing to around $61,000. The real momentum kicked in on Monday, with Bitcoin surging past $63,000. Although it faced a minor setback on Tuesday, possibly due to some technical issues with Coinbase and anticipation of the US CPI announcement, Bitcoin didn’t stay down for long. Following the CPI announcement, which aligned with expectations, Bitcoin’s price soared, reaching heights of over $67,000. This surge was fueled by increased inflows to ETFs, marking one of Bitcoin’s best weeks since early March and reigniting investor enthusiasm.
In the altcoin realm, Solana (+6%) and Chainlink (+17%) stood out with their impressive gains. Solana experienced a significant surge earlier in the week, while Chainlink reached a multi-month high of over $16. FLOKI has also continued an impressive run with a 6% gain on the day, a 25% gain in the last week and 60% over the last month.
ALEX Lab was the loser with a 40% decline, going from $0.25 to under $0.15 on news that they experienced a hack resulting in a loss of over $4.3 million in various tokens. The breach occurred due to a suspected private key compromise, specifically targeting ALEX’s XLink bridge service. The stolen assets included over $300,000 worth of bitcoin (BTC), $3.3 million worth of stablecoins, and $75,000 worth of Sugar Kingdom (SKO) tokens. The ALEX team, claiming to know the identity of the attacker, has offered a 10% bounty for the return of 90% of the stolen funds. Private key compromises remain a common attack vector in the crypto world, and makes for the 3rd notable hack of the week.
Despite Bitcoin’s volatility, a report from Bitfinex highlighted that the network’s fundamentals remain strong, even though there was a slight decline in difficulty. Meanwhile, Ethereum has been losing ground to Bitcoin, with the gap between the two widening, pushing the idea of Ethereum overtaking Bitcoin, known as the ‘flippening,’ further away.
In the investment world, Morgan Stanley disclosed a $269 million investment in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, showcasing the growing interest from traditional finance in cryptocurrency. Additionally, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board’s $164 million investment in Bitcoin ETFs suggests that more state entities might join the crypto investment trend. CME Group is also considering entering the spot Bitcoin trading market, indicating increasing demand from Wall Street.
On the innovation front, Shiba Inu’s ecosystem took a significant step forward with the launch of ShibaSwap 2.0 on its Layer 2 blockchain, Shibarium. This move highlights the continuous development and activity within the Shiba Inu community.
