What happened

Several cryptocurrencies rose during a bit of an up-and-down week as traders observed the debt ceiling drama and contemplated the Federal Reserve's next move on interest rates.

XRP (XRP -3.59%) was trading roughly 8.7% higher for the week as of 1:22 p.m. ET Thursday, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Meanwhile, the price of Litecoin (LTC 0.84%) was 8.7% higher, while Solana (SOL -3.01%) was up by roughly 6.4%.

So what

All week, investors had speculated that the Fed is poised to raise interest rates at its next meeting later this month. Rising interest rates have generally been bad for all cryptocurrencies.

People looking at upward stock chart.

Image source: Getty Images.

But comments made Wednesday by Federal Reserve Board Governor Philip Jefferson seemed to ease those fears, as he indicated that the Fed would likely keep interest rates where they are at its June meeting. However, he also cautioned that the Fed could still raise interest rates further this year if the data doesn't show that inflation is clearly declining back toward its 2% target.

Still, XRP, Litecoin, and Solana seemed to benefit from investors being more bullish on these specific tokens, which doesn't always happen in the world of crypto.

XRP, which was created by the company Ripple, enjoyed a nice bump this week after Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse expressed optimism that the long-running lawsuit between the company and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will come to a conclusion in "weeks, not months."

The SEC's suit against Ripple alleges that the company raised $1.3 billion by selling unregistered securities. The SEC believes many cryptocurrencies do not qualify as commodities, but are in fact securities, and therefore must be registered with and regulated by the SEC. However, in recent months, comments by SEC officials indicate that Ripple may be on the verge of victory in the case, which would likely bode well for most cryptocurrencies.

Litecoin has been on the move recently ahead of an anticipated halving event in August. After that occurs, the rewards miners receive for approving transactions on the Litecoin network will be cut in half. This will naturally make new Litecoin tokens more scarce, creating a favorable supply-and-demand dynamic that investors expect to drive up the token's price. Litecoin's network had more congestion in May in anticipation of the halving.

Solana may have benefited from some bullish commentary from the network's cofounder, Raj Gokul, who told TechCrunch earlier this week that he thinks Solana could become "the Apple of crypto." Gokul said the iPhone and the App Store became what they are today through "relentless focus on a simple interaction that had to work perfectly," which is exactly what Solana's engineers are focusing on. Solana also recently launched its own web3-focused Android smartphone, the Saga.

Now what

Broadly speaking, I think the market's expectations on interest rates will impact how crypto performs for the rest of the year, which is why Friday's jobs report and those in the months ahead, as well as data on consumer prices, are going to be very important.

Of these three cryptocurrencies, XRP and Solana are certainly intriguing given their technical capabilities, so I think it's OK to hold some smaller speculative positions in them, but I still favor the larger cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum over them.