Joanna Ossinger
Sign up for our new Crypto newsletter Twitter for the latest news.
Solana’s SOL and Terra’s Luna have been among the biggest gainers in the cryptocurrency universe in the past week, a sign of a broadening rally in digital tokens following Bitcoin’s revival.
SOL is up 28% in the past seven days and Luna about 22%, according to tracker CoinGecko. Bitcoin over the same period is little changed, having jumped about 40% from a January low.
“Bitcoin is now cooling off,” Antoni Trenchev, managing partner and cofounder of crypto lender Nexo, wrote in a note Sunday. “There’s a whole load of excitement taking place outside of Bitcoin.”
Solana may be benefiting from moves to include nonfungible tokens from its blockchain on major marketplace OpenSea, as well as the popularity of the Solana-based, fitness-related app called , said Jonathan Cheesman, head of over-the-counter and institutional sales at crypto-derivatives exchange FTX.
Luna is now a top 10 crypto token by market capitalization. The firm behind Luna’s affiliated Terra blockchain has purchased more than $1 billion in Bitcoin since the end of January. That’s part of a plan to back its UST stablecoin with a reserve comprised of the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
This overall strategy has drawn some criticism, since Bitcoin is volatile, but also brought attention to Luna.
“Luna Foundation Guard have bought 30,000 Bitcoin to diversify reserves,” Cheesman noted. “They have said they will buy at least double that in phase one but there hasn’t been any movement now for four days.”
