The crypto market’s bearish slide in June began showing signs of recovery this week, as bullish news revived investor interest across a variety of altcoins.

Chief among those coins is Solana (SOL)—one of the biggest cryptocurrencies after Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

The latter assets were down another 5% and 3% respectively over the past week, with another old-school Bitcoin whale deciding to take profits while the market is up. By contrast, SOL leaped by an impressive 6% this week to over $142 thanks to VanEck pitching the first-ever application for a U.S.-based Solana ETF.

VanEck’s logic was simple: If regulators consider Ethereum a commodity worthy of an ETF, then surely Solana also ticks all necessary boxes as well. It’s a prevalent bullish thesis for altcoin investors, eager for a taste of the Wall Street inflows that Bitcoin ETFs enjoyed earlier this year. And 21Shares followed up with its own Solana ETF filing on Friday, continuing the buzz.

Riding the same excitement, alternative runner-up smart contract platforms including Cardano (ADA), Avalanche (AVAX) and Polkadot (DOT) also rose approximately 5.5%, 11%, and 7% respectively.

Meanwhile, the Telegram-linked Toncoin (TON) recovered some of its gains from earlier this month following a steep correction last week, rising over 5% in the last seven days. It has now successfully eclipsed Dogecoin as the 9th largest crypto by market cap.

Another coin to see market-defying gains this week was Kaspa (KAS)—a top 25 crypto by market cap that exploded 23% this week after Marathon Digital announced that it was mining the cryptocurrency. The miner has now produced $15 million worth of KAS since September 2023, with its dedicated ASICs generating 95% gross profits on its efforts in some cases.

Blast (BLAST) was a major focus for traders this week, as the token tied to the Ethereum layer-2 network finally launched alongside a sizable airdrop that put $354 million into the wallets of users—though there was some initial disappointment among the Crypto Twitter chatter amid expectations of larger bags for early supporters.

Still, the airdrop indeed enriched many users, and BLAST started to bounce back after significant selloffs. It’s currently down 29% from this week’s peak, at a price of nearly $0.021, giving it a market cap around $360 million.

Perhaps most volatile this week, however, were the political meme coins. Following what was widely viewed as a disappointing debate performance from President Joe Biden, the Solana-based “Jeo Boden” (BODEN) token tanked 52% in a single day—alongside Biden’s re-election odds, at least per crypto bettors.

Donald Trump, who many crypto advocates viewed as the victor of the debate despite his persistent falsehoods, also saw his “Doland Tremp” (TREMP) token plunge late Thursday into Friday—though it’s still up 13% on the week.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

There’s now more than $7 million wagered on U.S. President Joe Biden dropping out of the election on crypto betting site Polymarket.

And after his performance during the first 2024 Presidential Election debate against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, the odds that he will leave the race have spiked to 38%.

Meanwhile, the biggest political betting pool on the site—$191 million that’s being wagered on the winner of the election—now shows a 63% chance that Trump will win in November. That’s despite the fact that the former president is now a convicted felon and is still awaiting sentencing in July.

Polymarket, which raised $70 million in a new funding round earlier this year, has seen more than $328 million bet on different aspects of the U.S. election. Some of them have been downright bizarre.

There was $54,000 riding on whether Biden would close his eyes for more than 3 seconds during last night’s debate. Another saw more than $200,000 bet on whether the incumbent would soil himself while standing at the podium—the outcome of which has since been declared “no.”

There’s $23,000 bet on whether independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who CNN excluded from the debate, will win or manage to place second in any state. Bettors have also have it at 28% odds that Biden begins accepting crypto donations before August.

The uptick in betting on Biden leaving the race has coincided with increased interest in the $60 million pool for  predicting who will be named the Democratic nominee after the party’s national convention in August. Bettors currently think Biden has a 61% chance of clinching the nomination—down from 90% less than 24 hours ago.

The next most likely candidates to receive the Democratic nomination are California Governor Gavin Newsom at 16% and Vice President Kamala Harris at 8% odds. Gamblers think there’s a higher chance, at 7%, that some unnamed other candidate takes the nomination than either former First Lady Michelle Obama or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Biden’s sometimes jilted and confusing speech during the debate has already become the subject of a Bold Leonidas cartoon, generated speculation about what mixture of supplements would have made him appear more alert, declarations that “it’s over” for him.

Trump and Biden meme coins dive

Meanwhile PolitiFi meme coin traders seem to have already seized their opportunity to cash in after what was widely perceived as a win for Trump. The entire $1 billion category—comprised of 40 different meme coins on CoinGecko—has dropped 6% in the past 24 hours.

A handful of Trump-themed coins, MAGA (TRUMP), MAGA Hat (MAGA), and Donald Tremp (TREMP), have all dropped roughly 7% since this time yesterday. But that’s nothing compared to Solana meme coin Jeo Boden (BODEN)—an intentional and goofy misspelling of Biden’s name—which has plummeted 35% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.

The Kamala Horris (KAMA), Obema (OBEMA), and Ruburt F Kenidy Jr (KENIDY) meme coins have gained 129% in the past day.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of these political meme coins trade for pennies and are extremely volatile. That makes them especially risky investments.

Ironically enough, the largest so-called political meme coin, ConstitutionDAO’s PEOPLE governance token, doesn’t have anything to do with the election. And the DAO itself hasn’t been active since it tried (and failed) to win an auction for a copy of the U.S. Constitution in 2021. But it’s still seen a 6% bump in the past day.

The shares price of game retailer GameStop seem to have leveled off after last week’s spike, but the GME tribute meme coin hasn’t fared as well. The token, which trades on Solana and has no connection to the company, is down more than 58% in the last week and close to 16% in the past 24 hours, per data from CoinGecko.

The meme coin has had a turbulent month. It spiked early in June when influencer Roaring Kitty (aka Keith Gill) made a comeback after several years and promptly upped his GameStock holdings to 9 million shares.

The company’s share price also skyrocketed, peaking at around $46.55 on June 6, more than double what it was just a week prior.

GME shares—and the meme coin—may also have been buoyed by early-June news that the company beefed up its cash on hand with the completion of its at-the-market equity offering, securing proceeds of $2.1 billion.

But a lackluster shareholder meeting on Monday prompted shares to fall back to around $25, roughly the same level they had been prior to the Roaring Kitty hype—despite CEO Ryan Cohen’s attempts to highlight the company’s “strong balance sheet.”

The GME token also fell, hitting its lowest price in more than two weeks overnight.

At just over $0.008, the price of the GME token remains well ahead of its pre-June level, when it hovered in the range of $0.003 to $0.004. However, it has fallen considerably from its June 7 peak of slightly more than 3 cents per token. Trading volume has also plunged to around $53 million, about half the level of just a week ago.

This is not the first time the meme token has behaved erratically. A month ago it experienced a similar, though smaller, spike followed by a plummet. When it leveled off in late May, though, it was considerably higher than it had been prior to the spike.

It remains to be seen if the same happens again.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.