Bitcoin exploded from US$10,000 to US$64,000 from October through April. Ethereum jumped from US$700 to US$3,300 from January through today. Now is it the smaller altcoins’ time to shine?
Not that they haven’t already, of course. There’s only a handful of top 500 cryptocurrencies, like Chimpion, Efforce and MimbleWimbleCoin, that aren’t up by at least double-digits this year.
Still, some mid-cap altcoins have underperformed Ether’s 359 per cent surge in 2021, including Litecoin (up 130 per cent year-to-date); Stellar (up 316 per cent); Bitcoin SV (128 per cent); EOS (148 per cent); Cosmos (247 per cent); Crypto.com Coin (222 per cent); Tezos (185 per cent); Dash (232 per cent); Nem (68 per cent) and Zcash (272 per cent).
These tokens range from No. 10 (Litecoin) to No. 54 (ZCash) on rankings of tokens by market capitalisation.
It’s hard to make predictions in a market as famously volatile and as new as cryptocurrency – but some on Crypto Twitter feel these things work in cycles.
First $ETH
Then all the other Altcoins#ETH #Ethereum pic.twitter.com/JwuyXM0H3B
— Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) May 3, 2021
Institutional investors are aping into $ETH. Large cap alts will run, followed by mid, then small.
My strategy is to focus on Top ~100 MC tokens, until I see a shift towards mid caps.$LINK $DOT $LUNA $ATOM $RSR https://t.co/8kLRihEiNy
— Altboy Moonz (@AltboyMoonz) May 3, 2021
BREAKING
🪓#Greyscale adding to the mid-cap alts yesterday. One thing to note they haven’t added any significant amount of #BTC over the past few weeks.
🪓You all know what that means already, ladies and gents. The rotation is starting🔄
Are you ready?🪓#CryptoNews #Alts pic.twitter.com/VDqB5CyfLl
— Axe Capital (@AxeCapitalGroup) April 1, 2021
$ETH made a new #ATH.
Mid-cap and small-cap Alts will follow.— Sobek the Trader (@trader_sobek) April 2, 2021
The psychology is money moves to riskier and riskier assets, as the major liquid ones become more boring.
E.g. Everyone’s looking at ETH now, but what would they look for of it’s stable and not moving much? The next level of alts start to look more interesting.
— Crypto Raver 🎉🔊💰 (@CryptoRaver_) May 4, 2021
Once again, #Ethereum is a key indicator to the markets.
If #Ethereum pulls this move (which isn’t even explosive like it used to be in 2016 and 2017), you know what’s going to happen next.
Large caps follow first.
Mid caps next.#Alt season.— Michaël Van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL_1) May 3, 2021
This afternoon Ethereum Classic, the No. 37 token, was up 13.6 per cent – besting Ether’s 8.8 per cent rise.
Litecoin was up 4.0 per cent, while Bitcoin was down 3.3 per cent.
$LTC | $BTC Litecoin finally showing $BTC who’s boss. pic.twitter.com/1pZt8QTYEn
— Trading Tank (@TradingTank) May 3, 2021
The counter-argument to all this, of course, is that development and “network effects” all favour Bitcoin and Ethereum — particularly Ether.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing you not to buy something solely because “it already pumped”.
As a result you not only end up accumulating deadweight like 2017 ghostchains, but also are positioned in the underperformers within rising sectors itself. pic.twitter.com/HzJxBujsUr
— Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) January 23, 2021
Only time will which argument is right.
