Altcoin rally loses steam: Institutional bets fail to save Ethereum, Solana, and Aptos

The altcoin market is seeing a major shift after the August rally. Ethereum [$ETH] has fallen about 2% despite bullish developments. In the past week alone, Bitmine added 28,086 $ETH, bringing its treasury to nearly 4.9% of Ethereum’s supply.

At the same time, Spot $ETH ETFs also saw $218 million in inflows. Meanwhile, Vitalik Buterin came up with an EIP-8141 proposal, which aims to simplify stablecoin transactions by reducing users’ need to hold $ETH specifically for gas fees.

Joining the trail, Solana [$SOL] dropped 4% despite activating its Transaction V1 upgrade, which improves its ability to handle larger and more complex DeFi transactions.

DeFi Development Corp. also raised $11 million to buy $SOL, adding potential institutional demand. However, spot $SOL ETFs recorded modest outflows, while broader market weakness kept pressure on the token.

Other altcoins that saw a dip

Ripple’s XRP faced a even more sharper decline depsite RLUSD’s market cap surpassed $2.3 billion. Additionally, Binance Chain [$BNB] fell 1.5%, although $BNB Chain strengthened its position in tokenized assets.

It now holds approximately $1.267 billion in tokenized stocks, or 44.6% of the market, ahead of Ethereum and Solana. Jupiter’s JUP fell just 0.7% as it expanded into tokenized assets.