The Year Of Alt Season: Altcoins Dominate Market In 2021

Bitcoin has had a favorable year in 2021 but the altcoins have dominated the market. The advent of the alt seasons this year had seen multiple altcoins rally towards new highs even when market-mover bitcoin had remained stagnant at times. This move, coupled with the growth and adoption that rocked the crypto space this year, has proven that the altcoins dominated the market on a large scale.

Altcoins Rule 2021

So many new things came out of the altcoin industry this year and have found success at the same time. Basically, the year 2021 has been one long alt season when we look at the performance of some of these assets.

Related Reading | The Year In Review: An Emotional Rollercoaster For Crypto Investors

5 BTC + 300 Free Spins for new players & 15 BTC + 35.000 Free Spins every month, only at mBitcasino. Play Now!

A lot of this growth has been driven by decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, and most recently, the metaverse gaining popularity among investors. These have brought to the forefront some interesting projects that have had their tokens rally because of it. Most of the time, they followed the growth of bitcoin. While at other times, these assets broke free and rallied on their own accord.

Altcoins total market cap chart from TradingView.com

Altcoins market cap at $1.32 trillion | Source: Altcoins Total Market Cap on TradingView.com

This has led to bitcoin losing a significant portion of its market dominance to altcoins. Starting the year out at about 75% of total market dominance, it has now fallen to 38% where altcoins have continuously eaten into the pioneer cryptocurrency’s market share. Ethereum was, as always, leading this charge as it took the largest chunk of the market share.

Get 110 USDT Futures Bonus for FREE!

Memecoins also found favor in the market this year. Coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu grew into the thousand and million percentile, as well as “ETH killers” also making a play in the market.

Mid-Caps Take The Lead

Altcoins always showed out in the indexes with triple-digit gains for the year. Bitcoin which had a tremendous run of it this year still recorded the lowest gains being the only index that returned double-digit gains. All other indexes, the small, mid, and large cap indexes enjoyed the majority of the gains.

Related Reading | Bullish Signal? Ethereum Market Dominance Sitting Above 20%

Bitcoin’s returns for the year only came out to 73%. While this is still vastly ahead of top investment vehicles like gold, the S&P, and NASDAQ, it still performed poorly in comparison to the other indexes.

Chart showing crypto indexes performance in 2021

Mid Cap Index records highest returns of 2021 | Source: Arcane Research

The Large Cap Index saw the second-lowest returns with 179%, but even it saw returns over 100% higher than that of bitcoin. The Small Cap Index made a splash with returns reaching as high as 485% for the year.

Finally, the Mid Cap Index came out as the winner for 2021 marking returns of 830%. This index consists mostly of Layer 1 tokens which had seen some of the most gains for the year, outperforming even ethereum despite its massive 485% returns for the year.

Featured image from Investment U, charts from Arcane Research and TradingView.com

Source

Tagged : / / / / / / / / /

Litecoin hits six-month high as LTC price soars 20% in 24 hours

Litecoin (LTC) has posted daily gains of almost 20% on Nov. 9, the highest levels for LTC/USD since May 2021, amid a wider cryptocurrency market rally that analysts attribute to inflation fears.

The 14th-largest digital asset rose by a little over 25% in three days pushing its price to almost $250 on Coinbase. Meanwhile, the total value of cryptocurrencies reached nearly $3 trillion, the highest level ever.

Bitcoin influence

Litecoin’s ongoing price rally drew inspirations from similar upside moves across the top digital asset brass, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro shows. 

For instance, Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s leading cryptocurrency by market cap, rallied to a new record high Tuesday above $68,500. Ether (ETH) also logged an all-time high above $4,840.

Top fifteen cryptocurrencies’ performance in the last 24 hours. Source: TradingView

Nonetheless, only a few top alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) fared better against Bitcoin in the previous 24 hours, including Litecoin. Data provided by Messari showed that the hugely-traded LTC/BTC instrument surged almost 14%, indicating a rise in capital migration from Bitcoin to Litecoin markets.

The pair’s technical outlook suggested further gains ahead, based on a classic bullish reversal pattern called a Falling Wedge.

Falling Wedges begin wide at the top but start contracting as the price moves lower. A bullish confirmation comes when the price breaks above the Wedge’s upper trendline. Analysts typically interpret the breakout as a signal to a rally towards the profit target that sits at length equal to the Wedge’s maximum height.

LTC/BTC weekly price chart featuring Falling Wedge setup. Source: TradingView

The latest Litecoin gains had its price break above its Falling Wedge’s upper trendline, staging prospects of additional upside.

In doing so, the profit target comes to be around 0.006122 BTC. On the flip side, the Litecoin chart detected a bearish divergence between its rising prices and falling volumes in the last three weeks, underscoring that the Falling Wedge breakout move may grow weaker.

Another Litecoin wedge, but bearish

The Litecoin price, in the U.S. dollar terms, has rallied by more than 150% after bottoming out near $103 on July 20. But the “silver to Bitcoin’s gold” cryptocurrency’s massive upside move has also triggered a bearish reversal outlook, indicating that its ascent is due for a pause.

Related: Litecoin transactions near an all-time high after gaining ground in consumer finance

Dubbed Rising Wedge, the pattern is the complete opposite of the Falling Wedge. It begins wider at the bottom but starts contracting as the price rises. A bearish confirmation comes when the price breaks below the lower trendline and then targets levels at length equal to the Wedge’s height.

LTC/USD three-day chart featuring Rising Wedge setup. Source: TradingView

Depending on the level from where Litecoin initiates its negative breakout, the Wedge target may shift from anywhere between $117 and $21.

Conversely, a decisive breakout above $250 would risk invalidating the Rising Wedge pattern, setting LTC en route to test $300 as its next price target.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.