Bitcoin Analyst That Nailed $44K Price Calls for Solana All-time High

GM! This week: The SEC rejects Coinbase’s petition for clearer crypto rules, $BONK’s surge turns the Solana Saga into a sell-out, Ordinals inscriptions erupt on Arbitrum, and the Bitcoin analyst, who nailed his $44,000 price call in 2023, says a new all-time high for Solana isn’t out of the question in 2024.

SEC Denies Coinbase

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected Coinbase’s petition for crypto rules on Friday, prompting the exchange to seek a review of said rejection in court. The back-and-forth is the latest in a legal tussle between Coinbase and the SEC centered on securities laws and compliance in the digital assets industry.

“The existing securities regime appropriately governs crypto asset securities,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a written statement, adding that “disclosures and protections remain important in the context of crypto assets that are securities.”

Coinbase initially petitioned the SEC for clearer crypto rules last July, including guidance that could help identify which digital assets are securities. In April, the firm asked a court to compel the SEC to respond, as it had not yet heard back. A court found no intervention was needed, as the SEC signaled its intent to respond: On Friday, it was, ‘No thanks’ from the SEC.

On X, Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal described the SEC’s denial as “arbitrary and capricious.” The language echoed that from a court decision earlier this year, finding the SEC’s “market manipulation” concerns — underpinning the regulator’s denial of Grayscale’s repeated attempts to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into an ETF-like product — were invalid.

Ultimately, the SEC’s five-person panel of commissioners was split 2-3 on the decision. Among those who disagreed with the SEC’s rejection, Commissioners Hester Pierce and Mark Uyeda called for “public roundtables, concept releases, a requests for comments” as part of a public dialogue.

Solana’s $BONK Effect

Crypto’s Solana-based meme coin du jour, $BONK, has been on a tear. While fading from its all-time high last week, the coin has still surged 580% over the past month.

An allocation of 30 million $BONK — that each owner of a Solana Saga is eligible for — has sent arbitrageurs in search of the crypto-focused phone released by Solana Labs. On Friday, Solana Labs said the Solana Saga had sold out in the U.S. This weekend, some Solana Saga phones sold for more than $5,000, per The Block.

While meme coins are fun — they often fall as quickly as they surge. The allocation of $BONK that each Solana Saga is eligible for was worth around $985 at its peak last week. As of this writing, it’s worth around $593, just below the Saga’s price tag of $599.

With 20,000 Saga phones sold in the U.S., there’s a chance that new users could chip away at the likes of Apple and Google, who dominate mobile devices with the Apple iOS Store and Google Play store, according to Solana Co-Founder Anatoly Yakovenko. Fundstrat’s Head of Digital Asset Strategy Sean Farrell told Coinage on Monday that Solana riding that momentum to a new all-time high could be in the cards for 2024.

“They’ve created this really interesting entryway for new crypto users and that gives me confidence that there is still certainly upside for Solana,” he said, shrugging off concerns that $SOL’s 5X surge in 2023 means anyone would have missed the boat. (Coinage NFT holders can watch Sean's full price call in the video above.)

Ordinals Impact Arbitrum

Why are people minting inscription-based assets on Arbitrum when the EVM-compatible chain already supports NFTs and ERC-20 tokens? Well, that may have been on the minds of folks at Offchain Labs when inscriptions, often associated with Bitcoin Ordinals, took Arbitrum offline.

The layer-2 Ethereum network was ineffective for an hour and a half on Friday, as the network was suffocated by “a significant surge in network traffic,” according to Offchain Labs. It was the first time the network was down since June.

According to Hildobby, a pseudonymous data scientist at the VC firm Dragonfly, 90% of Arbitrum transactions were inscriptions-related when the network temporarily went kaput. According to Hildobby, a recent spike in Avalanche tokens burned could be traced to inscriptions on that network as well.

While inscriptions are often associated with Bitcoin, due to the popularity of Bitcoin Ordinals, the protocol that enables NFT-like assets on Bitcoin has been ported over to several other networks, including Polygon, BNB Chain, and Ethereum.

Becoming an effective stress test for various blockchains, inscriptions sent transaction fees skyrocketing on Polygon’s PoS chain in November, per Decrypt. And, in light of Arbitrum’s brief outage, it appears that other blockchains should be braced for a surge of inscriptions coming their way too.

Other Headlines:

• Ledger Library Exploit Grinds Web3 to a Standstill (CryptoSlate)

• Tether: We've Onboarded FBI, Secret Service to Our Platform (The Block)

• Worldcoin Update Lets Websites Verify Eyeball-Scanners to Help Thwart Bots (DL News)

Vote for Coinage’s Crypto Project of the Year…

And just like that, we have our winners of Round One for Crypto’s Project of the Year! Check out the updated bracket, vote on which project will progress next, and unlock the ability to co-own the fastest-growing name in Web3 news!