A Monday rally during the U.S. trading day put an end to what had been very muted crypto price action over the previous 72 hours, pushing bitcoin (BTC) above $68,000 for the first time in more than five weeks. At press time, the world's largest crypto was changing hands at $68,250.

Leading the rally in crypto was Solana's (SOL), which has gained 7% over the past 24 hours, also to more than a five-week high. That outperformed both bitcoin's 2.6% advance and the CoinDesk 20's 2.8% rise.

The turnaround in the recent downward price action came last week after the government reported softer-than-forecast April inflation data and quarterly institutional filings showed interesting participation in the spot bitcoin ETFs from the Wisconsin state pension board and a number of heavy-hitting hedge funds. Bitcoin rallied from just above the $60,000 to more than $66,000 by week's end.

Alongside that rally came a renewal of big inflows into the spot bitcoin ETFs, which had previously witnessed net outflows over four of the previous seven weeks. All told, the spot funds added 14,389 bitcoin last week, according to HODL Capital, the strongest performance since March.

Earlier Friday, Grayscale, the manager of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), announced the exit of CEO Michael Sonnenshein, who will be replaced by Goldman Sachs executive Peter Mintzberg. The move suggests Grayscale may have its eyes on a return to growing assets for GBTC as opposed to the current slow bleed of bitcoin from its holdings.

Bitcoin Solana

Stephen Alpher

Stephen is CoinDesk's managing editor for Markets. He previously served as managing editor at Seeking Alpha. A native of suburban Washington, D.C., Stephen went to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, majoring in finance. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.