Smells like alt spirit
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 3rd December 2024.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
Wide Variety Of Tokens Flashing Green
A mixed bag of lesser-known tokens is jingling, causing eyes to bulge while stirring suspicion that a genuine altcoin season is at hand. Whether a great rotation or an influx of fresh liquidity, the market for coins (other than BTC) is nothing short of a sizzle fest.
XRP continues to scorch a path toward record levels, doubling in the past week to $2.80. The coin associated with Ripple, the ledger technology company that has been wrestling with the SEC, is chasing an ATH of $3.40, reached in January of 2018 and which has felt light years away over a 48-month stint in regulatory purgatory.
Cardano (ADA), eighth-largest coin, is another alt stud that is faring impressively today as of 7:20 a.m. (EST). ADA has gained 18% since this time yesterday to reach $1.27. ADA was 33 cents a mere one month ago.
A slew of familiar Top 50 coins have crackled to life, including Chainlink (LINK), Avalanche (AVAX) and Hedera (HBAR). In fact, the latter, HBAR, is up 50% in 24 hours. Another old favorite, VeChain (VET), has shot up 40% in the past day. And by old, we mean coins that were around pre-2020.
"Much to the delight of speculative traders," Cointelegraph said, "the cryptocurrency market may be on the verge of the much-awaited altcoin season."
According to one index specifically designed to track whether it's "altseason," some 73% of the Top 50 coins have outpaced BTC in the past 90 days. This index, compiled by Blockchain Center, has increased sharply over the past few days, edging closer to the 75% threshold that determines when a true season of the alts is officially on.
Widening out our lens to the Top 100, we find Iota (IOTA), an old-school distributed ledger technology (DLT) asset, up 144% on the week. Maybe the 84th-largest token is riding XRP's ledger-tech-embroidered coattails, or possibly just a rising tide for relatively ancient cryptos. IOTA is said to be in the midst of a strategic pivot to the Real World Assets (RWA) space.
Speaking of which, let's not forget to congratulate Ondo Finance, a project connected with tokenized securities, like treasuries, and which has seen its native ONDO surge to a record high of $1.79 just a few hours ago. ONDO is up 170% in the past month.
Meanwhile, Moo Deng (MOODENG), has doubled in 24 hours, sneaking back into the Top 200. The spurt came after the pygmy-hippo-themed memecoin was placed on Coinbase's listing roadmap, a harbinger of a future listing.
What's down
U.S. Government BTC Dump Concerns Surface
Bitcoin shed a smidgen of its spot price compared to this time yesterday, settling near $94,800.
The dip comes amidst speculation that the U.S. government is preparing to sell a huge stash of BTC.
According to Spot on Chain, federal coffers contain 183,850 BTC worth $17.7 billion, held across various known addresses. A decent-sized chunk of it ($1.9B worth) got transferred to Coinbase.
Not long after this was revealed late yesterday, BTC lost 3%, sinking from $97,300 to $94,500.
It's possible the government is merely consolidating wallets or upgrading old addresses, Cointelegraph said.
Most likely, CryptoQuant explained, drilling into the weeds of Coinbase Prime (versus just Coinbase), only about 10,000 BTC were sold.
“Huge strategic mistake," said Jason Lowery, an author who has written about the strategic significance of crypto in the geopolitical arena. "There is no price where it makes sense for the U.S. to sell.”
What's next
Altseason Close But Something Else Has To Happen
It's not that investors are rotating out of Bitcoin, up merely 2.4% across two weeks of sub-$100K consolidation. Rather, notes CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, crypto denizens are beefing up portfolio contents, as evidenced by a spike in volume for stablecoin pairs. This trend reflects “real market growth rather than asset rotation,” Ki said.
Demand for BTC these days is viewed primarily as driven by institutions snapping up shares of spot BTC ETFs. Inflows into such products reached $6.4B in the 30 days of November; BTC enjoyed a +45% rally for the month.
If altcoins are to ever reach a new record high in terms of the total market capitalization for coins that are not BTC, the alt camp will need to see "a significant influx of fresh capital to crypto exchanges,” Ki said.
A shift away from traditional rotation toward a stablecoin-liquidity boom would suggest a deeper, more sustainable evolution happening in the crypto market, Cointelegraph said.
