First Mover Americas: Solana’s SOL Gains 50% in October, Adding $6 Billion to Market Cap

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Solana’s SOL outperformed other top crypto assets in October with a 50% gain. SOL is also up over 250% year-to-date. The surge comes after last year’s downturn when investors speculated the future of Solana after the collapse of the ecosystem’s top backer, FTX, threw the blockchain’s future in disarray. The Solana community is currently hosting its annual conference Breakpoint in Amsterdam. According to a growth report on Solana by Messari, “if Solana’s growth story is to continue, a constant stream of new experiments will have to flood in, with a few grand slams finding product market fit.” Bitcoin witnessed a 23% gain in October after hitting a 16-month high of $35,000 on Oct. 23. Ether had a less impressive month, gaining just 3%. Chainlink’s LINK followed behind Solana with a 42% uptick over the same period.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s attorneys are trying again to have the jury overseeing his trial consider the role of English law in governing FTX’s terms of service, hoping it may lead to a “not guilty” verdict on some of the fraud charges the exchange founder faces. “For misappropriation to have occurred, under the Government’s theory, there must have existed a trust, fiduciary relationship, or a similar relationship between FTX and its customers,” a filing including a proposed jury instruction said. The proposed jury instruction would tell the 12 individuals deciding Bankman-Fried’s fate that “FTX’s relationship with its customers was governed by the Terms of Service,” which are "governed by ... English law.” An additional set of filings provides example cases from the U.K.

Bitcoin (BTC) miners are evolving into industrial-scale enterprises, with North America gaining market share over China, broker Bernstein said in a research report on Monday as it initiated coverage of the sector in the U.S. Bernstein says it prefers Riot Platforms [RIOT], giving it an outperform rating and a $15.60 price target, and also rated CleanSpark [CLSK] outperform with a $5.30 price target. These miners are “market share consolidators with strong operational edge (self-mining model), low cost of production (low power cost), high liquidity and unlevered balance sheets,” wrote analysts Gautam Chhugani and Mahika Sapra.

- Omkar Godbole