Alternative cryptocurrencies – altcoins – posted gains of 5%-10% on Monday while bitcoin (BTC) treaded water near $35,000 as investors ventured into riskier tokens.
Following key approvals for the company to operate and offer services in Georgia and Dubai last week Ripple’s XRP jumped nearly 10% during the day and toppled Binance’s BNB as the fourth-largest crypto by market capitalization.
Other large-cap digital assets such as native tokens of layer 1 networks Cardano (ADA) and Avalanche (AVAX), popular meme token dogecoin (DOGE), oracle network Chainlink’s token (LINK) and decentralized exchange UniSwap’s token (UNI) rose 5%-6% over the past 24 hours.
Non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Blur’s token (BLUR) added 32% today to its gains, more than doubling in price in a month as the platform prepares to distribute 300 million tokens in an airdrop to users on November 20.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, on Monday has been trading in a tight range on either side of $35,000. Ether (ETH) is also little changed.
The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), a broad basket of cryptocurrencies, advanced 0.6%.
Bitcoin dominance drop brings call for altcoin season
Altcoin outperformance – though it’s only been in place for a handful of days – could be a sign that traders will continue to rotate profits from BTC’s roughly 30% October rally into lower-cap digital assets.
Bitcoin’s market cap dominance – which measures the largest crypto asset’s market share of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization – has dipped to 52.5% Monday from around 54.3% in late October, which at that point was a 30-month high, TradingView data shows.
“The decline in dominance after five consecutive weeks of increase marks the first signs of heightened investor interest in altcoins, suggesting a riskier market stance,” Matteo Greco, research analyst at Fineqia International, said in an email.
Investment advisory firm ByteTree hinted at the early innings of an “alt season” – an extended period of the broader altcoin market outperforming BTC’s price – as the crypto rally’s market breadth improved and a likely end of the Federal Reserve’s rate hiking cycle offered a more supportive environment for risky assets.
“Today, we make the most significant investment into altcoins we have made for some time,” ByteTree analysts wrote. “Bitcoin has rallied, and the space is catching up.”
The firm added layer 1 protocol NEAR’s token (NEAR), Bitcoin-based smart contract platform Stacks (STX), LINK and XRP to its model portfolio by reducing BTC’s weight.
While BTC’s rally spread to altcoins, it’s still not broad enough for a full-fledged altcoin season yet, Blockchaincenter data suggests.
Some 57% of the top 50 digital assets have outperformed BTC over the past 30 days and 33% did over the past 90 days, lower than the 75% threshold to qualify as altcoin season.
