This Week in Coins: Bitcoin and Ethereum See Green Shoots, Dogecoin Gets Musk Twitter Bump

Crypto markets unthawed this week for the first time in six consecutive weeks. Bitcoin (BTC) rose 8% over the past seven days and trades for $20,718 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko. Ethereum (ETH) had a stronger rally, up 24% over the week to $1,613 at the start of the weekend. 

So-called “Ethereum killers,” layer-1 blockchains with high-functionality smart contracts, had a great week, including Cardano (ADA), which rose 15% to 40 cents, Solana (SOL) climbed 17% to $32.83, Polkadot (DOT) rallied 11% to $6.52, and Avalanche (AVAX) ballooned 18% to $18.38. 

Other notable rallies this week included: Ethereum Classic (ETC) up 17% to $25.79, Litecoin (LTC) gained 7% to $55, Uniswap (UNI) rallied 14% to $6.88, Binance Coin (BNB) spiked 11% to $300, and Polygon (MATIC) climbed 16.2% to 93 cents. 

But the meme coin king won the week. Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) blew up 77% over the week to 10 cents (yes, still down from 72 cents in May 2021) off the back of news that the Tesla CEO has finally closed the deal to take over Twitter for $44 billion. 

For most of the week’s green crypto market we can point to generally more optimistic macroeconomic trends this week, with the stock market also up after several major companies reported earnings. 

The biggest coin news this week

On Monday, Bitcoin hit its all-time highest mining difficulty (for the second time this month) after rising 3%. As difficulty increases, miners could face slimmer profits if Bitcoin’s price stays inert, since more computing power and electricity is needed to mine. However, mining difficulty increases also indicate a strong and growing network. 

In the United Kingdom, former UK Finance Minister and Conservative crypto advocate Rishi Sunak was elected as Liz Truss’s successor as both head of state and party leader. Sunak was the only candidate to receive the required votes. He was briefly up against former PM Boris Johnson, who announced he was pulling out on Sunday. 

Block-owned Cash App on Tuesday announced that users can now send and receive Bitcoin via the Lightning Network. Previously, app users could only send Bitcoin, but now they can also use the network to receive it too.

On Thursday, right amid Musk’s takeover, Twitter announced it will let users display and trade NFTs through tweets thanks to a new partnership with four select marketplaces: Magic Eden, Rarible, Dapper Labs and Jump.trade. The new NFT Tweet Tiles feature—which is currently still being tested—displays NFT artwork in a panel in the tweet and includes a button to take users to a marketplace listing. 

And on Friday, Binance confirmed it’s an equity investor (to the tune of half a billion U.S. dollars) in Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter acquisition bid. The exchange’s CEO Changpeng Zhao emailed Decrypt this statement: “We’re excited to be able to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter. We aim to play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together in order to broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.”