🚀 Dogecoin, Solana & Ethereum Surge While Bitcoin Flatlines: Altcoin Season Ignites

Crypto markets roar back to life as meme coins and smart contract platforms steal the spotlight—leaving old king Bitcoin eating dust.

Altcoins steal the show

While BTC treads water, DOGE's 20% weekly surge proves the meme economy isn't dead—it's just getting warmed up. SOL follows close behind, up 15% as its DeFi ecosystem hits record TVL. Even ETH shakes off its gas fee shackles with a 12% bump.

Institutional money plays catch-up

Hedge funds still clinging to their Bitcoin-only theses are getting left behind—again. The real action's in altcoin derivatives, where open interest just hit a 3-month high. (But sure, keep waiting for that 'institutional adoption' to save your boring portfolio.)

The bottom line

When even the SEC can't kill the crypto rally, you know we're in for a wild Q3. Just don't tell the Bitcoin maxis—they're still waiting for their 'store of value' narrative to play out.

Elon Musk and Dogecoin

Musk and the crypto world have a long and complicated relationship, with the billionaire's affinity for dogecoin a recurring theme.

Just last year, he proposed and led the "Department of Government Efficiency," whose name formed a backronym of Dogecoin’s Doge ticker.

Monday's market moves may indicate traders are hopeful that there will be a place for Dogecoin in Musk’s political party—or at the very least, that he'll post about it again. 

Solana pops following staking ETF launch

Other strong performers among major altcoins include solana and Ethereum, which have risen by 3.1% and 1.9% respectively at time of publication.

Wednesday saw an exchange-traded fund offering exposure to Solana launch for the first time in the U.S.—with a REX Shares and Osprey Funds spokesperson telling Decrypt it generated $12 million in inflows on day one.

Volume in $SSK now at $20m, which is really strong, top 1% for a new launch. For context, $SOLZ did $1m on Day One, and that's pretty good. Also, the $25m in seed assets makes $SSK already bigger than $SOLZ. https://t.co/ibiKxizeeQ

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) July 2, 2025

Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas noted it had a "healthy start to trading" that put the fund within the top 1% of new launches.

However, the Securities and Exchange Commission is yet to decide on whether to give the green light to ETFs tracking the spot price of SOL and other altcoins, which could potentially drive billions of dollars of institutional investment. 

Altcoins are considerably outperforming bitcoin at time of publication, with the alpha crypto relatively flat, rising just 0.5% over the past 24 hours.

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