• While bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies showed minimal movement, Solana's SOL token surged by 5% to $173, leading the market gains with a 14% increase over the week.

• Bitcoin's market dominance reached over 57%, the highest since April 2021, indicating a market preference for Bitcoin's stability over altcoins. Although one trader holds a bearish view.

• The Solana network experienced increased activity with AI-themed memecoins driving trading narratives, leading to record-high token issuances and revenue through platforms like Pump.

Solana’s SOL and ecosystem memecoins, such as popcat (POPCAT), led crypto market gains on Thursday, with bitcoin {{BTC}} and majors mostly flat. A bitcoin trader believes the rising dominance rate for suggests short-term bearishness.

BTC added under 1% in the past 24 hours, with majors ether {{ETH}}, BNB Chain {{BNB}}, xrp {{XRP}} and dogecoin {{DOGE}} showing mixed price action. The broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a liquid index tracking the largest tokens by market capitalization, rose 0.43%.

Last week, a widely tracked bitcoin dominance indicator reached over 57% on CoinMarketCap, to its highest level since April 2021. Dominance refers to the ratio between the market capitalization of BTC to the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined and is often used as a gauge for market sentiment.

High dominance might indicate that bitcoin is leading the market, which can be seen when investors prefer the relative stability and established nature of bitcoin over the higher risk associated with altcoins.

Conversely, a decrease in bitcoin's dominance might suggest that investors are moving their capital into altcoins, potentially signaling the start of an “altcoin season.”

“Ethereum continues to lose market share to bitcoin and other altcoins. As a result, BTC’s share of all cryptocurrency capitalization has risen to 57.3%, the highest since April 2021,” Alex Kuptsikevich, senior market analyst at FxPro told CoinDesk in an email. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean an upward trend for the top cryptocurrency, which has pulled back below $67K, losing 1% in the last day and nearly 4% from its peak on 21 October.

“The price is now close to a local support level at $66.8K. A break of this support will open the way for a deeper correction to $65.5K, near the 61.8% retracement level from the last rally and the late September top,” Kuptsikevich warned.

SOL leads market

SOL jumped 5% to $173 in the past 24 hours, extending weekly gains to 14% as it reached price levels last seen in early August. SOL set a record high against ether, as reported, while, network-based memecoins POPCAT, BONK and GOAT rose as much as 70% amid a bump in network volumes and trading activity.