Bitcoin, Ethereum and Cardano took a step to the side and into the shade today, as high-performance blockchain Solana let itself shine.

Solana has surged to a fresh all-time-high at the time of writing, up 42.4% since yesterday and positively beaming at US$67.93.

The super-fast smart-contract platform is getting comfortable in the top 10 cryptos by market cap and is closing in on Polkadot. The top four smart-contract platforms, in order, are: Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT) and Solana (SOL).

Plenty of crypto watchers have been predicting both a Cardano and Solana price explosion in the second half of this year, due to fundamental expansion of their capabilities and ecosystems. Both projects have been ticking off achievements on their respective roadmaps in recent months and weeks.

Might be time to look at Polkadot again, to see if it could be next to bust a move. It does have a little thing called Parachains coming up on its roadmap.

Solana recently deployed its Wormhole interoperability protocol that allows tokens and NFTs to flow between it, Terra, Ethereum, and Binance Smart Chain. It also garnered buzz last week with the launch of its decentralised exchange, Mango Markets.

And yet, as Stockhead reported several hours ago, it seems that what’s really skyrocketing the SOL price, is a whole lotta NFT-related frenzy around 10,000 images of cartoon apes.

Source: Coin360.com

Bitcoin (BTC), meanwhile holds the rest of the crypto market in the palm of its hand, as ever. It’s facing decision time, and a “higher timeframe resistance zone” around US$48,600.

Dutch trader and crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe, who mercifully keeps his analysis short and to the point, believes a corrective move is still showing up in the charts as a decent chance.

“The area around $40K is the latest low,” he said in his latest video, “and the entire area that you don’t want to lose.”

The analyst is looking at US$43K and US$40K as his two levels of support should Bitcoin continue to be rejected around US$48K. On the flip side, however, an upside breakout move will interest him only if Bitcoin can come back down and retest around the US$48.6K mark as new support.

Bitcoin Charts, another respected analyst was meanwhile highlighting the weekly candle close just passed, and using it as the basis for a continuing bull market thesis.

At press time, the entire crypto market was up 2.89% since yesterday, enjoying the air at US$2.07 trillion.

Bitcoin is changing hands for US$46,450, Ethereum is knocking around for US$3,232, and Cardano is still looking strong at $2.13.

In further top-10 action, Polkadot (+13.1%) and Dogecoin (+10.6%) join Solana in the double-digit positive percentage action.

Ripple’s XRP is the only top-tier coin in the red at press time, down 1.55% and trading at US$1.24.

 

Mooners and shakers

Aside from Solana, the best-performing asset in the top 100 in the past 24 hours is Terra (LUNA), ranked 17 on CoinGecko. It’s up 33.8% and going for US $23.56.

Decentralised music platform Audius (AUDIO) is also a strong gainer, up 30.9% at the time of writing, on the back of its just-announced TikTok integration.

The intersection of music, decentralisation and NFTs is a strong crypto play. Whoever nails it, could potentially be onto something big. Audius is currently at 123 on CoinGecko with a market cap of US $654,103,185.

There’s a lesser-know Aussie decentralised music project, by the way, called Emanate (EMT), which sits all the way down at 1,561 on CoinGecko, but with a very active community. More on them another time…

Other impressive double-digit gainers today include Solana’s DeFi Automated Market Maker project Raydium (RAY) +26.2%; Yield Guild Games (YGG) +25.9%; Fantom (FTM), +22.2%; Ethernity (ERN) +21.5%; and another Solana one – Mango Markets (MNGO) +19.8%.

In the red today: Safemoon (SAFEMOON) -29.1%; Covalent (CVT), which is a competitor to The Graph, down 9.25%; and Utrust (UTK), down 4.44%.