Bitcoin is skyrocketing.Traders are now paying attention to these altcoins

○At 9:55 a.m. Tuesday, Bitcoin soared above $69,000 for the first time in its troubled 15-year history. This milestone comes 848 days after the previous peak on November 8, 2021. In the months and years that followed, the industry dealt with a severe bear market, with asset prices falling more than 80% and losses of more than $2 trillion. Value is disappearing from the entire cryptocurrency market.

Currently, the price of Bitcoin fluctuates depending on 10 spot exchange traded funds (ETFs) provided by BlackRock and others.
BLK
Fidelity and Invesco
IVZ
bringing a total of over $7.5 billion in new capital into cryptocurrencies.

“Bitcoin
BTC
It has a unique bear-bull cycle compared to other markets,” said Nathan McCauley, CEO and co-founder of crypto management firm Anchorage Digital. “For the past 10 years, many people who might have been interested in taking a position in Bitcoin were unable to do so until ETFs came along.”

Bitcoin's soaring price poses an important question for investors: Will this remain a Bitcoin story, or will other digital assets and so-called “use cases” come to the forefront? Crypto bulls expect the market to move into another “alternative season” soon. This occurs when investors roll profits from core crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum into more speculative tokens such as Solana, Celestia, and Chainlink, and volatility levels increase. However, there are potentially greater profits to be made.

In 2017, funds moved from Bitcoin to other all-in-one blockchain platforms such as Ethereum and Cardano.
ADA
and polka dots
Dot
. During the 2021 Covid surge, funds moved into NFTs and then into more speculative decentralized finance tokens such as uniswap, compound, and aave. In fact, these his DeFi tokens rose an average of nearly 600% during the first period of the coronavirus bull market from August 2020 to May 2021. Bitcoin rose nearly 470% during the same period.

As crypto excitement extends beyond Bitcoin, investors tend to focus on a metric known as Bitcoin dominance, which measures Bitcoin's share of total cryptocurrency market capitalization. Since the 2017 ICO boom, this number has hovered around 50%, but when demand for alternative tokens heats up, it drops below 40%, such as in January 2022, a few months before blockchain Terra's collapse. there is a possibility.
Luna
And the stablecoin Luna caused a collapse of the virtual currency. Currently, Bitcoin's dominance level is stable at 53%.

“Technology tokens are undervalued right now,” said Kavita Gupta, founder of the $120 million Delta Blockchain Fund, which invests in early-stage crypto companies. “Ethereum
Ethereum

Ethereum
Solana
sol
and polygon
Matic
Some have rebounded, but they are still far from all-time highs. ” In the past three months, Ethereum has risen by 60%, and the price of Ethereum's blockchain clone Solana has nearly doubled. Polygon, which allows developers to build multiple blockchains from Ethereum, rose about 33%. Other altcoins that have risen include immutableX, a blockchain platform focused on gaming applications that is up 118% since late December, and has made strong forays into putting real-world assets on the blockchain. This includes Avalanche, an Ethereum competitor. The token has gained 63% in the past three months.

Despite these gains, overall crypto valuations remain below their 2021 highs. For comparison, in November 2021, the value of the entire crypto token ecosystem was $3 trillion, and now it is less than $2.5 trillion. And despite the downturn in cryptocurrencies since early 2022, the number of digital assets has expanded. Currently, he has 13,000 tokens traded, compared to 5,600 tokens traded at the peak of the market.

Nico Cordeiro, chief investment officer at $50 million crypto hedge fund Strix Leviathan, sits on a portfolio filled with speculative altcoins. “I hope to see another big alternative performance,'' Cordeiro said with enthusiasm. “Bitcoin ETFs are a big driver of this price movement, but cryptocurrencies are much broader than just Bitcoin and Ether.” One area Cordeiro finds particularly interesting is that users A platform that allows you to move tokens between blockchains. This is especially useful for developers who don't want to be siled into one particular chain. It is much more efficient to build one application that can run on multiple blockchain platforms simultaneously. Interoperability protocols provide that connective tissue. For example, decentralized exchange Uniswap
Uni
Use these tools to fork your platform from Ethereum to other chains such as Binance's BNB.
BNB
chain.Leaders in this specialty include her Celestia
TIA
According to CoinGecko, with an increase of 70% in the past three months, thorchain is trading nearly 50% higher than it was a month ago.

TWhile there are legions of speculators like Cordeiro here eager to reinflate the crypto bubble, some smart industry veterans believe that the recent introduction of fully registered and regulated exchange-traded funds has changed the situation. I believe it has changed. “We believe Bitcoin ETFs will dampen this trend.” [rolling profits into altcoins] “Bitcoin is in an ETF, so over time,” said Alex Thorne, head of research at Galaxy Digital, a $4.6 billion company led by billionaire Mike Novogratz. “This is especially true for advisor-managed accounts, which are much more sticky than Bitcoin on exchanges and may not be easily rotated to other coins.”

In other words, as Main Street investors and institutions migrate to Bitcoin and eventually Ether through ETFs, they will do so through traditional intermediaries such as financial advisors. This creates further friction when it comes to speculative crypto trading. “Even if the Ether ETF is approved, funds will still be stuck in customers’ accounts. This development could even be an even bigger disadvantage for the remaining liquidity crypto coins,” Thorne said. .

Molly White, a crypto critic and owner of the website Web3 Is Going Just Great, issued a more firm warning to investors considering trading high-risk altcoins. There is. “I don't think much has changed since last time. [time cryptos were at] “Achieving all-time highs will help prevent the same kind of crisis from happening again,” White said. “In 2021, there was all the talk about NFTs, how Web3 would be the future of the web, and how there is so much potential for blockchain and related technologies. Once the new money flowing into the coin dries up, the crypto industry will try to create this narrative as much as possible to attract retail investors.”

WBitcoin, the brainchild of Satoshi Nakamoto, is attracting attention as a potential Ether ETF, which was not anticipated until late May. The next important event for traders and Bitcoin miners is next month's Bitcoin halving, an event that occurs once every four years when the rate of Bitcoin issuance is reduced by 50%. This process will continue until his year 2140, when the 21 millionth and final Bitcoin will be mined. At the same time, more asset management companies are starting to introduce new Bitcoin ETFs onto their platforms.Recently, Wells Fargo
W.F.C.
and Bank of America
BAC
Merrill Lynch began allowing its customers to invest in these products.morgan stanley
M.S.
is also reported to be evaluating Bitcoin ETFs for its clients.

John Markman, technology analyst and newsletter editor at Markman Capital Insights in Seattle, said Bitcoin could see a surge in interest from institutional investors whose portfolios have lagged in the current market. I think it's sexual. “Pros will be itching to catch up. Those who had cash weren’t expecting the market to go up, so Bitcoin is a good way to get that additional exposure,” Markman said. To tell.

Another crypto bull, Cathie Wood of $13 billion Ark Invest, believes new investments will have a disproportionate impact on Bitcoin’s price. “He has 19.6 million Bitcoins, and the highest he has is 21 million,” Wood said on a recent podcast. “There's real scarcity value. This price increase for every institutional dollar that comes in right now is much higher than the price increase per dollar.” That was a year or two ago. ”