Ethereum broke through to $4,880 Friday, reaching its highest recorded price to date, while Solana crossed the $200 mark for the first time in eight months, and XRP pulled off a sharp return to third place in total crypto market value.
This aggressive movement at the top of the board followed new signals from the U.S. Federal Reserve and chaos around an ETH-heavy stock offering from a company backed by Peter Thiel.
According to data from CoinGecko, Ethereum moved up 14.4% in 24 hours, while Bitcoin climbed 4%, reaching $116,826, but staying flat across the past hour.
Solana followed close behind, jumping 11.3% to hit $203, and XRP rose 7.3% in the same timeframe to reach $3.08, overtaking Tether in total value. XRP’s current market cap is $183.5 billion, while Ethereum’s climbed to $587.1 billion with a daily trading volume of nearly $50 billion.
Powell hinted at cuts, traders responded with $300M in minutes
Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, addressed the central bank’s annual gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday. He said, “The baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance,” adding that “the balance of risks appear to be shifting” between maintaining stable prices and full employment.
He also pointed to “sweeping changes” in tax policy, trade, and immigration, pushing investors to brace for a potential shift in monetary policy.
After Powell’s comments, the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool showed the probability of a quarter-point rate cut in September jumped to 83%, up from 75% earlier in the same week. Chris Zaccarelli, Chief Investment Officer at Northlight Asset Management, reacted by saying, “The bar is extremely high now for the Fed to leave rates unchanged in less than a month.”
Markets didn’t wait for confirmation. Within 15 minutes of Powell’s speech, about $300 million flooded into Binance derivatives, instantly pushing Bitcoin’s Open Interest on Binance to roughly $13.3 billion. Liquidity poured into futures, not spot trading. That was the reaction from big money desks.
ETHzilla tanked after revealing a massive stock resale
At the same time Ethereum was climbing, the price of ETHzilla, the Ethereum-focused stock, collapsed. Shares of the firm, which recently rebranded from 180 Life Sciences, plummeted over 38% Friday, after announcing it would resell up to 74.8 million shares.
Despite a partial recovery, it still closed the day down about 31%, even as broader markets rallied after Powell’s speech. ETHzilla had previously seen a short-lived price boost earlier in the week after disclosing a massive Ethereum stake and revealing a 7.5% stake held by Peter Thiel.
But Friday’s news erased those gains. The stock is now up just 13% from its July 29 treasury announcement, and completely flat for the month of August. This is despite the fact that ETHzilla had, at one point this week, been the top-performing name in the crypto treasury space.