Table of Contents

September 16: The Fed Hikes; SOL Remains Strong

September 17: Positive Close on Quiet Network Upgrade

September 18: Investor Favor Continues; Major Speed Upgrade Activated

The recent improvements to the network and what is ahead

What's happening

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Solana's Week. A Fall Under $96, a 17% Faster Network, and an ETF Streak That Wouldn't Break

By India Crypto Research|2 mins read

Last Updated on: Sep 21, 2026|Published On: Sep 21, 2026

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Key Takeaways

SOL fell to $96.94, down 5.45%, on Tuesday after the CLARITY Act did not pass in the U.S. Senate. However, SOL later recovered by more than 16% to above $113.
On both bad news days for the crypto market, the failure of the CLARITY Act and the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike, SOL's ETFs saw inflows, unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, which saw outflows on those same two days. SOL ETFs have now experienced inflows for a 12th week in a row.
On Friday, Solana cut its target slot time to 250 milliseconds, a 17% faster block production time. This is a separate upgrade from Alpenglow, a bigger consensus overhaul aiming to reduce the time it takes to finalise transactions on the network to roughly 150 milliseconds, essentially instant.
Alpenglow recently passed governance approval and is targeted for mainnet activation around the end of this month.

Part of a series

Crypto Market Updates

Bitcoin's Week. A Mixed CPI Report, Four Days of ETF Outflows, and a Vote Nobody Can Call

1. Tuesday-Wednesday, 8-9 September
2. Thursday, 10 September: The worst day of the week for ETFs
3. Friday 11 September: balanced CPI data grew confidence for both hawks and doves
4. Monday, 14 September
5. The vote that hangs over everything

XRP's Week. A Fall Under $1.34, a Zero-Flow Day, and the Only ETF Category That Never Went Negative

1. Tuesday to Thursday, 8 to 10 September
2. Friday, 11 September: price recovers, flows go flat
3. 12 to 13 September
4. The real story: XRP’s ETFs never went red.
5. Wall Street is beginning to use XRP ETFs as collateral
6. What it means

BNB's Week. A $752 Open, a Drop Under $710, and a Real-World-Asset Crown Taken From Solana

1. Tuesday to Thursday, 8 to 10 September
2. Friday, 11 September: The CPI spike works in BNB's favor as well
3. The weekend: 12 to 13 September
4. The Real Story: BNB Chain Blows Past Solana for Real-World Assets
5. Still no BNB ETF, but the filings keep moving.
6. What it means

Market Update: BNB’s $700 Battle, What’s Behind the Pullback?

1. BNB Had Its Own Big Week Too. Here's What Actually Happened
2. The rally into midweek
3. The pullback
4. Today, 1 September
5. What actually drove the rally
6. How it compares to bitcoin's week

Solana Market Update: Governance Vote Rewrites Inflation and Token Economics

1. Solana Just Rewrote Its Own Economics. Here's the Full Story
2. The rally into the vote
3. Friday's governance vote
4. The weekend and into today
5. Why this matters more than a normal price swing

Market Update: Ethereum’s $2,500 Wall, ETF Inflows Keep Climbing

1. Ethereum, Near-Record ETF Inflows, Staking kept climbing through the month, a Wall at $2,500, and a Close Near $2,419
2. ETF inflows never went negative in the last week
3. Staking kept climbing through the month
4. What's still working underneath the chop

Market Update: TRX Holds Steady as Nasdaq Treasury Keeps Buying

1. A Nasdaq Treasury Keeps Buying While the Price Barely Moves
2. The week in price
3. The real story: a Nasdaq company that keeps buying TRX
4. A staked TRX ETF is still waiting on the SEC
5. Why any of this matters for TRX specifically

Solana's Week. A Trip to $98.65, an ETF Market Measured in Millions Not Hundreds of Millions, and an Upgrade Still Waiting to Go Live

1. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, 8 and 9 September:
2. Thursday, 10 September: a multi-week low
3. Friday, 11 September: the CPI spike lifts SOL back above $100
4. Monday 14 September
5. A network upgrade that isn't activated yet.
6. Defining moments

Bitcoin Mining and Number of Bitcoins Mined Till Today

1. 1. What Is Bitcoin Mining?
2. 2. Why Bitcoin Mining Matters
3. 3. How does the Bitcoin Mining Process Work
4. 4. The Evolution of Bitcoin Mining
5. 5. How Bitcoin Miners Earn Money
6. 6. Bitcoin Halving and the 21 million Supply
7. 7. The Future of Bitcoin Mining
8. Conclusion

Ethereum's Week. A $2,654 Spike, Two ETF Outflow Days Instead of Four, and a Quarter That's Up 60%

1. CPI for Friday, September 11
2. Monday, 14 September
3. Institutional staking as an infrastructure service
4. What this means

Bitcoin's Week. A Fed Governor, a Jobs Report, and $730 Million in One Day

1. Monday to Wednesday, 31 August to 2 September
2. Thursday, 3 September: Waller talks, bitcoin flies
3. Friday, 4 September: the jobs report undoes it
4. The weekend: 5 to 7 September
5. The ETF money, day by day
6. What it means

Ethereum’s Week: Whales Are Buying, Retail Is Selling, and $2,544 Won’t Budge

1. Monday to Thursday, 31 August to 3 September
2. Friday, 4 September: a fresh high, then the jobs report
3. The weekend: 5 to 7 September
4. Whales Buying, Retail Selling
5. ETF demand cooled off sharply
6. Behind the scenes: Vitalik on Ethereum's cryptographic future
7. What it means

Solana’s Week: A Death Cross, $348M in RWA Flows, and a Choppy Climb to $105

1. Monday to Thursday, 31 August to 3 September
2. Friday, 4 September: the jobs report cools things down
3. Monday, 7 September
4. ETF flows swung both ways
5. Solana still leads on real-world assets.
6. A death cross is now in place.
7. What it means

Current Article

Solana's Week. A Fall Under $96, a 17% Faster Network, and an ETF Streak That Wouldn't Break

1. September 16: The Fed Hikes; SOL Remains Strong
2. September 17: Positive Close on Quiet Network Upgrade
3. September 18: Investor Favor Continues; Major Speed Upgrade Activated
4. The recent improvements to the network and what is ahead
5. What's happening

Ethereum's Week. A Drop Under $2,400, a Glamsterdam Milestone, and a Missed Shot at $2,672

1. Tuesday, September 15: ether follows bitcoin lower
2. Wednesday, September 16: FED raises rates, Ether tests Glamsterdam
3. Thursday, September 17: further Ether outflows
4. Sept. 18: Rally arrives, flows turn positive
5. The remainder of the week, Sept. 19-20:
6. What the recent test run means
7. What it Means

XRP's Week. A 9.8% Crash, Ripple's Legal Team Speaks Up, and a Ledger Upgrade Racing Toward Activation

1. September 15: The Crash, and What's at Stake for XRP
2. September 16: bottom before the rate hike
3. September 17: sideways price action and the approach of the Ledger update
4. What the Batch V1.1 update does and the reason for a partial rebuild
5. What it Means

BNB's Week. A Dip to $704, a $768 Peak, and a Correction on a Previous Claim

1. Thurs. 17 September: continued climb
2. Fri. 18 September: Week's high
3. 19-20 Sept. Weekend
4. Revising BNB's ETF section of last week's report
5. What it means

Bitcoin's Week. A Failed Senate Vote, a Fed Hike, and a Rally That Shrugged Off Both

1. Tuesday, September 15: The CLARITY Act Fails
2. Wednesday, 16 September
3. Thursday, 17 September
4. Friday, 18 September
5. The Weekend: Sep 19-20
6. The Cross
7. What it means

Regulation’s Week- ICR Crypto Regulation Updates

1. India: Enforcement Over Legislation
2. United States: Regulators Move Without Congress
3. European Union: MiCA Is Live, But Already Changing
4. Steady and Predictable: Dubai
5. What This Means for the Reader

Bitcoin Treasuries Week: Trump's MSTR Stake, Strategy and Strive Both Buy, and BTC Breaks $84,000

1. Top 3 Latest News on BTC Treasuries
2. Top 5 Bitcoin Holding Companies
3. Top 5 Bitcoin ETFs
4. Top 5 Government Bitcoin Holdings
5. Top 5 Ethereum Treasury Companies
6. Most Important Digital Credit Instruments
7. Summing Up

SOL touched $95.90, a multi-day low, on Tuesday after the failure of the CLARITY Act, before closing the day at $96.94. It then rallied back to above $113 by Saturday before pulling back on Sunday. Here is this week's recap of Solana.

September 16: The Fed Hikes; SOL Remains Strong

The Fed's first rate hike since 2023 occurred on Wednesday, and SOL was up 1.73% to $98.62. ETFs continued their positive trend with $800,000 in inflows. Negative news hasn't affected SOL or its ETFs this week the way it has affected Bitcoin or Ether.

September 17: Positive Close on Quiet Network Upgrade

SOL continued its upward trend, rising 3.13% to $101.71. ETFs were flat for the day.

September 18: Investor Favor Continues; Major Speed Upgrade Activated

The week's strongest rally propelled SOL 10.81% to $112.70. Bitcoin also broke above $80,000 the same day. Solana initiated the third phase of SIMD-0525, reducing the slot time to 250ms from 300ms. This is a speed improvement, not a throughput increase; the compute and data limits per slot were reduced proportionally so the network's overall processing capacity stays about the same.

Daily closing rates of SOL, September 15-20, 2026

September 19-20

SOL closed at $113.11 on September 19, up 0.36% for the day. Prices pulled back on September 20, trading between $108 and $112. The broader market also traded sideways for the day.

US Spot Solana ETF daily flows, September 15-18, 2026

The recent improvements to the network and what is ahead

The Solana network announced a reduction to slot time to 250 milliseconds. This is the third of four planned phases this year, part of a staircase from 400 milliseconds down through 350, then 300, and now 250. A final step to 200 milliseconds is planned, though no mainnet date has been set for it yet.

Separately, a bigger upgrade called Alpenglow aims to reduce time to transaction finality to roughly 150 milliseconds. Alpenglow was recently approved by governance and is planned to be implemented prior to the end of this month.

What's happening

$95.90 is the low for Tuesday and has been the low for the week. $114.30 is the high for Friday and has been the high for the week. There has been no trade above $114.30 this week. There has also been no trade below $95.90 this week.

Beyond the notable levels from this week, Solana ETFs had an inflow for the 12th week in a row this week. The inflow held through the two most negative news events for crypto this week. The first was the news that the CLARITY Act failed to pass in the Senate. The second was the news that the Fed would be increasing interest rates. Bitcoin and Ether ETFs lost money on both of those days. It appears that there is information that the public does not have that is fueling the demand for Solana ETFs.

Data as of 20 September 2026 (Sunday figures reflect trading as of writing). Prices and figures sourced from Investing.com, CoinGecko, Farside Investors, KuCoin, crypto. news, 247wallst, Yahoo Finance, Gokhshtein Media, Bitbase, CoinMarketCap, and SolCard reporting.

Disclaimer

India Crypto Research operates independently. The information presented herein is intended solely for educational and informational purposes and should not be construed as financial advice. Before making any financial decisions, it's essential to undertake your own thorough research and analysis. If you're uncertain about any financial matters, we strongly recommend seeking guidance from an impartial financial advisor.