The cryptocurrency market has experienced significant rally last week, providing much-needed support to many short-term speculators looking to make profits. Bitcoin led this changeexceeding $64,790, although at the time of writing this momentum seemed to have weakened.
This growth was reflected throughout The altcoin landscape, with several cryptocurrencies including TRON, Avalanche (AVAX), and Chainlink (LINK), seeing impressive gains of between 20% and 30% in just seven days.
Despite the gains among mainstream altcoins, Bitcoin continues to dominate the overall market.
Bitcoin is on the rise: What does this mean for altcoins?
This altcoin season has yet to gain momentum since the beginning of the year, as Bitcoin continues to command the lion’s share of investor attention. This is clearly apparent in the Altcoin Season Index, which currently registers a reading of 22 and tips the scale in Bitcoin’s favor. The scale also reads 29 on the Altcoin Monthly Index, also in Bitcoin’s favor.
Essentially, the index works by analyzing the performance of various altcoins in comparison to Bitcoin. If 75% of the top 50 altcoins have outperformed Bitcoin over the past 90 days, it is considered an altcoin season. If 75% of the top 50 altcoins have outperformed Bitcoin over the past 90 days, it is considered an altcoin month. Interestingly, the last official altcoin season occurred during the 2021 bull run.
According to the chart belowthe last time market dominance nearly tipped in altcoin’s favor was in January 2024, when it rose above 75 for just a few days. The scale now hovers mostly between 20 and 30, pushing altcoin season even further away. In fact, the index even fell as low as 12 on July 30, further underscoring Bitcoin’s ongoing dominance.
Supporting this trend of Bitcoin dominance is price data from CoinMarketCap. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $63,850 with a market capitalization of $1.26 trillion. This represents a 6.92% raise in the last seven days. As such, 56.3% of the entire cryptocurrency market value is currently held by Bitcoin.
What are the performance prospects for altcoins?
Due to Bitcoin’s dominance, many altcoins currently tend to mirror its performance. However, there are exception periods where some altcoins experience significant growth independently. At the time of writing, Ethereum has the largest share of altcoin market cap at $314.2 billion. The remaining altcoins collectively have a market cap of $438.48 billion, while stablecoins have a market cap of $161.97 billion.
The most impressive gains were recorded by Sun Token, a TRON-based stablecoin swap token, which gained 305% in seven days. Memecoins Dogwifhat (WIF) and POPCAT gained 32.7% and 76% respectively in the same time frame.
There is no doubt that altcoins will continue to perform at varying levels of efficiency, depending on their individual utility and market adoption.
Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView
