This Week in Coins: Bitcoin Recovers $30K as Ethereum’s ‘Shapella’ Goes Live

While the Bitcoin and Ethereum’s price rallies over the last seven days are, numerically speaking, not particularly notable, given their long histories of sometimes explosive price movement, there was a definite sense that it was still a significant week for both. 

Bitcoin (BTC) rose 7.6% to its current price of $30,146, meaning that it finally recrossed the $30,000 support barrier for the first time in nine months and has managed to hold onto its gains coming into the weekend. 

A key driver for Bitcoin’s surge in value was the release of the latest U.S. inflation numbers by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Consumer Price Index for the month of March revealed that inflation was lower than forecasts had anticipated. 

This latest reading is a strong indicator that the Fed could back down from its policy of raising interest rates, which it pursued throughout 2022, making it more expensive to borrow money and ultimately turning investors away from risk-on assets like crypto and stocks. 

It was also a huge week for Bitcoin’s closest rival, Ethereum (ETC), which blew up 10.1% to hit $2,061. On Friday the coin briefly broke past $2,100 for the first time in eleven months.  

Much of the Ethereum hype centered on the launch of the long-anticipated “Shapella” upgrade, which went live on Wednesday. “Shapella” jointly refers to two upgrades, Shanghai and Capella, which have now unlocked withdrawals of ETH staked on the network at the execution layer and the consensus layer, respectively, freeing up $34 billion in staked ETH in the process. 

The execution layer executes and records Ethereum’s transactions in real-time, while the consensus layer validates those transactions. Every validator has staked 32 ETH to activate their software and is rewarded with ETH for confirming transactions. 

The biggest rally among top thirty cryptocurrencies was enjoyed by Solana (SOL) holders. SOL blew up 16% and currently trades for $23.91.

Much of SOL’s performance this week was thanks to the release of Saga, an Android phone powered by the Solana blockchain, on April 13. The device enables users to seamlessly access Solana’s huge ecosystem of apps and projects.

Other notable rallies this week include Cardano (ADA) which rose 11.9% to $0.43, OKB added 10% and trades at $45.33, Aptos (APT) surged 8.4% to $12.41, and NEAR Protocol (NEAR) went up 9% to $2.17. 

There were no casualties among any of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization this week.