Altcoins in a pickle
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. 18th April 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.
Don’t invest in crypto unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong.
What’s up
Amidst Springtime Rain, A Few Green Shoots
Litecoin rallied 4.4% in the past 24 hours to reach $82.23. We're not exactly on the edge of our seat waiting to see if the 20th-largest crypto can somehow find its way back to $100. But then, positive moves are in short supply these days.
No. 16 Bitcoin Cash did gain 2.8% in that same span as of 7:10 a.m. (EST), CoinGecko said.
Among Big Ten assets, XRP, although not quite fifty cents, a key mark, nevertheless has a touch of green over the past day. So does Toncoin.
One week ago, TON touched its all-time high, $7.63, per CoinGecko. It's down 18% since then. The all-time low for TON came in September of 2021 when it reached $0.5194. TON is +1,100% since then.
Bitcoin and Ethereum were seemingly on the verge of a green-up over a one-hour period concluding at 7:30 a.m. (EST).
BTC is having a lousy week. Anxiety is high. For altcoins, it's even worse.
What's down
Bitcoin Dominance Is Higher But That's About It
Failing to hold $63K, bleeding momentum, Bitcoin has been battered about the face, chest, head and neck over the past week.
The spot ETF inflow train has come screeching to a halt while chatter about macro headwinds in the form of interest rate cuts has trailed to the faintest of whispers.
Bitcoin has declined 11% since last Thursday morning. Ethereum is down 14% in the same time period.
Continued relative underperformance versus BTC is the bearish call on ETH coming from Benjamin Cowen, a popular YouTube analyst, per The Daily Hodl.
In other words, BTC dominance is expected to rise from its current level of 55% versus the entire rest of the field.
Statistically charting the overbearing nature of crypto's most gigantic influencer is a handy way to track the trajectories, generally, of altcoins. These are coins not named Bitcoin, a group in large part cast as the 14,000 extras in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments."
Layer-1 chains, such as Solana, Cardano and Avalanche (co-categorized as Ethereum rivals), are among the main sub-compartments under the banner of alt. "While Bitcoin might be having a challenging moment, altcoins are doing worse," CoinDesk said.
Solana’s SOL has plunged 21% in the past seven days. Cardano's ADA fell 22%. Avalanche's AVAX is down 24%.
AI-related coins are getting absolutely creamed as are the governance tokens of DeFi projects. Fetch.ai is emblematic of the former camp (i.e. FET has fallen 23%); under-siege UNI reflects the latter trend, down 22%.
Memecoins haven’t been spared. BONK and WIF and FLOKI each lost 30%.
An Ethereum-rollup bridge, Omni Network, is today's biggest loser. The project's OMNI token, one day removed from a hotly hyped airdrop, punctured like a birthday party balloon.
OMNI is down 42% in the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, a scam-version-of- OMNI rug-pull episode marred the debut.
Genuine OMNI remains CoinGecko's 232nd-largest digital asset with a market capitalization of $264 million, or roughly the size of a smallish U.S. small-cap stock connected with, say, a legacy appliance maker or sleepy regional bank.
What's next
Negativity Oozes But Hardcores Steadfastly Positive The Cavalry Is Coming
Gone now are discussions of an imminent Bitcoin run to six figures.
Instead, BTC declines are expected after the "halving," an every-four-years supply diminishment procedure set to take place in a couple of days.
A recently published JPMorgan report predicts tough times ahead for miners. Bears seem intent on whipping up a "BTC $59K" campaign.
Only a minority (14%) of bettors on Polymarket see BTC as bound for a new record high.
As for calls of BTC reaching $100,000 this year, well, there still does remain a bully chorus except the bawdiest of forecasts are being pushed off.
Experts surveyed by Blockhead are saying this year might not bring the heights once viewed as almost assured; and yet this same group still insists BTC could surpass $150K by the end of 2025.
That 20-month time frame fits the $100K within 18 months thesis floated on CNBC's "Squawk Box" by one of the most vociferous BTC bulls, Anthony Pompliano, founder of Pomp Investments.
"The U.S. government has decided we are going to debase the [dollar]," Pompliano said of an intractable situation bred from out-of-control debt. "Everybody I know in the hardcore BTC community has already bought as much BTC as they possibly can. The net new dollars coming in are going to come from Wall Street."
