Solana Leads Gains in Crypto Majors, Bitcoin Metric Suggests Low Retail Growth

• Ethereum ecosystem and layer-2 tokens, such as LDO, ARB, and MNT, jumped as much as 7% as Franklin Templeton filed plans for a spot ether ETF.
• Meanwhile, some market observers pointed out that Google search interest for bitcoin remained at an all-time low compared to the price, implying low retail interest in the topic.

Solana’s SOL led the pack among crypto majors as bitcoin {{BTC}} briefly crossed the $50,000 mark late Monday, sparking renewed bullish sentiment among traders.

SOL jumped 8%, while ether {{ETH}} rose 6.6% as bitcoin saw buying pressure after the New York market opened on Monday. Avalanche’s AVAX spiked 6%, while BNB Coin {{BNB}} and Cardano’s ADA rose a relatively lesser 3%.

The CoinDesk 20, a liquid index of the twenty biggest tokens by capitalization and volumes, minus stablecoins, rose 4%.

Some Ethereum ecosystem tokens, such as staking protocol Lido’s LDO, and layer-2 tokens, such as Arbitrum’s ARB and Mantle’s MNT, jumped as much as 7% as financial giant Franklin Templeton filed plans for a spot ether ETF, joining a rising cohort.

Growth in major and alternative tokens has seemingly tracked the rise of bitcoin, which touched the $50,000 level for the first time since late 2021. Spot bitcoin ETFs have amassed more than 192,000 tokens as of Friday since they went live nearly a month ago.

Low retail interest

Meanwhile, some market observers pointed out that Google search interest for bitcoin remained at an all-time low compared to the price, implying low retail interest in the topic.

Bitcoin hit $50k.

Meanwhile, Google search volumes relative to price are at all time lows.

This is a new era. pic.twitter.com/8DnsadIclt

— Yassine Elmandjra (@yassineARK) February 12, 2024

Google Trends allows users to compare the relative volume of searches. However, this does not mean the total number of searches for that term is decreasing it just means its popularity is decreasing compared to other searches. A line trending downward means that a search term’s popularity relative to other popular terms is decreasing.

As such, some traders caution that price retracements in the short-to-medium terms could still be on the cards.

“There’s no upcoming news that may have a price correlation with bitcoin except the halving, which may provide returns in the medium to long term,” shared Ryan Lee, Chief Analyst at Bitget Research, in a note to CoinDesk. “It’s also important to take market’s psychological levels, such as BTC prices ranging from $50K to previous ATH, which may cause larger price retracements.”