Our experts told us why it is too early to talk about the start of general growth of altcoins (Altseason) other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. And what market conditions are needed for this.

The former head of BitMEX crypto exchange Arthur Hayes, known for his analytical forecasts on the cryptocurrency markets, announced the onset of the next Altseason. At the same time, he pointed to the sharp growth of Ethereum as the basis of his assumption.

Altcoin season (Altseason)  is a slang term for cryptocurrency traders that refers to a period of active one-time growth of alternative cryptocurrencies. Altcoin season is thought to take place in four phases: the rise of Bitcoin, the rise of Ethereum, the rise of large-capitalized cryptocurrencies, and the massive growth of the rest of the crypto market. This includes low-liquid assets with no fundamental value. Which is accompanied by a massive rush by retail traders.

Our experts told us why it’s too early to talk about an altcoin season and what market conditions are needed for it to start.

Altseason hasn’t started yet

Despite numerous claims that an “Altseason” has started in the digital asset market, our experts cannot agree.

Since the start of this year, Bitcoin’s (BTC) dominance has seriously increased. And at the moment, it shows no signs of decreasing. In general, Bitcoin has shown one of the most consistent dynamics in the cryptocurrency market since January. While the standard model of market behavior in the period of altcoin growth is the presence of BTC rate in a medium-term “sideways”. And without a strong rise or fall, and currently the medium-term uptrend on BTC is too confident for “Altseason”.

As for altcoins themselves, we can notice that there is no active capitalization growth there. Individual low-capitalized assets are “growing.” But this is not an indicator of the altcoin season, it only speaks to the local interest of participants in these assets.

The TOTAL2 index, which measures the growth of the total market capitalization of all altcoins (not including Bitcoin), is very slightly ahead of the total market capitalization index (TOTAL). This indicator shows that there is no multiple growth in demand for altcoins.

An important factor of Altseason is also the growth of the volume and number of transactions in the networks. As well as the growth of developer activity and audience activity. Again, we see growth of these indicators in individual assets. For example, in Ethereum, which had a successful fork allowing to take tokens from stacking. But overall, we are not seeing multiples of growth in investor and developer activity right now. After strong growth in January and February, the market is now looking for some balance. Which again does not signal that we have started an altcoin season.

When to expect growth

Our experts think that such a season is quite possible this year. But not before the second half of the year. The cryptocurrency market is still gathering energy for growth. And although we passed the bottom at the end of last year, the market has not yet reversed upwards: it takes time.

The growth season for cryptocurrencies, including altcoins, will start with the stabilization of stock markets. For that, there needs to be no geopolitical shocks. And also there were no problems such as still ongoing problems with banks in the U.S. and Europe. And also there were no predictions of an imminent global recession, and there are more and more of them.

Crypto Upvotes experts offered to collect their investment portfolio of six tokens of promising projects for Ethereum scaling

Projects that solve the problems of scaling blockchain networks and Ethereum in particular. Now they are actively developing and attracting funding, which indicates a high interest of investors in these solutions. And expectations of growth of capitalization of this sector.

Ethereum’s transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm in the network is proceeding smoothly: the problems with coin inflation and now with the withdrawal of tokens from staking with the Shapella update have been solved. But the issues of scaling the network, that is, making transactions in it faster and cheaper, have yet to be resolved.

According to the team’s plans, that will take two years. And during that time, Layer-2 projects that offer off-the-shelf extensions to scale Ethereum could cover the growing demand for the network.

Given how actively Ethereum is developing, the demand for it will only grow in the near future. Not only from within the industry, but also from external users. Who want to implement blockchain solutions with high security, speed and economy of transactions. Layer-2 solutions will obviously be in high demand in the coming months as well.

Our idea for an investment portfolio:

Buying a portfolio of tokens at current market prices in the following ratio:

• Polygon (MATIC) – 25%
• Synthetix (SNX) – 20%
• Optimism (OP) – 15%
• Loopring (LRC) – 15%
• Celer Network (CELR) – 15%
• Immutable (IMX) – 10%

This portfolio makes sense to hold till the end of the year. Since the main market movements may start in Q3-4.

Risks:

The main risk for this token portfolio will be a drop in market capitalization due to fundamental negative events. Such as external – the impact of inter-market relations and macroeconomics. As well as internal, it is the strengthening of regulatory pressure and problems of the projects, tokens of which are included in this portfolio.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the May-July period is historically weak for the growth of prices for digital assets. Therefore, the main movements on tokens from the portfolio may start in the second half of this year.

Disclaimer:
Crypto-Upvotes does not provide investment advice. This material is published for informational purposes only. Cryptocurrency is a volatile asset that can lead to financial losses.

Santiment analysts reported on growth of “Whales” investment in altcoins. Review by Crypto-Upvotes experts

Those socalled “Whales” of cryptoindustry, that is, large holders of crypto-assets. They have started to increase their investments in altcoins. And it is the interest of the big players, according to information and analytical platform Santiment, that is causing the rise in prices of digital assets.

Santiment experts pointed out that large holders of Litecoin (LTC) have increased their token holdings by 1.15 million coins (+4.92%) over the past six months. And in the last 7 weeks alone, the increase in their wallet balances was about 0.5% of the coin’s total supply. Analysts said on Twitter that this was the reason for LTC’s 89% rise since it fell to $50 in early November. By January 31, the value of the asset had risen to $95, a daily gain of 2.8%.

The cryptocurrency Litecoin, created in 2011, uses the same programming code as Bitcoin. But it works with some differences, offering cheaper and faster transactions. The asset has a market capitalization of $6.8 billion as of Jan. 31 and daily trading volume of $1.1 billion.

One of oldest investment companies in the crypto industry, Pantera, has renewed its interest in investing in digital assets. Which is different from Bitcoin and Ethereum, The Block reports. Last spring, Pantera switched from investing in altcoins to ETH to avoid losses. But now it has begun to return to coins, which Pantera co-founder Joey Krug says will “outperform Ethereum in the coming cycle.” No specific assets were named.

Prices of some altcoins rose by tens or even hundreds of percent earlier this year. Santiment analysts last week pointed out that sentiment in the cryptocurrency community may be signaling tops. But if traders don’t take emotion into account, the rise in cryptocurrency prices could continue.

Santiment also named the top 10 fastest-growing altcoins. To compile the ranking, the analytics company used data on developer activity.

Our experts talked about trends in the cryptocurrency market. And pointed out several altcoins worth paying attention to

Start of 2023 was positive not only for Bitcoin supporters, but also for almost the entire cryptocurrency market. The leading coin has risen in price by 36 % since the beginning of January. And some alternative coins rose in price by tens of percent.

However, not all assets linger at their peak values after significant growth. Often tokens both reach new ATH and fall off.

Our experts told us what affects altcoin rates. And which coins look promising at the moment. And also what risks an investor who wants to invest in cryptocurrencies may face.

Promising altcoins

Cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP) and Monero (XMR) have the best long-term growth prospects among altcoins. At the moment, it is worth investing only in those assets that can grow in value over the long term.

Of altcoins worth considering for purchase, tokens related to artificial intelligence (AI) may be worth considering. He noted that the trigger news for this area was a statement from Bill Gates. Who said that AI is “a really big deal” and that AI projects are revolutionary.

Another trigger for the increased attention to tokens related to AI. Our expert pointed to a post by Elon Musk. The billionaire wrote on Twitter that 2023 will be the year of AI. However, such statements are partly provoked by the emergence of ChatGPT neural network. Although it does not meet the criteria of general artificial intelligence, it has created a lot of hype in a market.

In the opinion of our expert, it is worth looking at Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) and Fetch (FET) tokens. However, FET is already trading at local highs. And in order to enter it will be necessary to wait for its correction first. Which is likely to happen in February, our specialist warned.

Ocean Protocol is a data trading platform. Including those used in the work with artificial intelligence. The main goal of the Ocean network is to create a global data supply chain for AI. The OCEAN Protocol token rose 125% in a month, from $0.16 to $0.36. The current price is 81% below the all-time high of $1.93 shown in April 2021.

Fetch is a project to build a decentralized “economic Internet” infrastructure based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The goal of the project is to optimize the use of resources, to automate processes. As well as the development of algorithms for collective learning of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The FET token went from $0.095 to $0.28 in a month, up 194%.

Risky investments

Because there are no fundamental prerequisites for a long-term bullish cycle in crypto market yet. The current growth of altcoins is accompanied by high volatility. Our expert noted that this is the reason for their recent growth. We should expect the same significant correction in the next couple of weeks.

At the same time, the expert reminded that altcoins always have risks – it is even more risky asset than Bitcoin. When the market is nervous because of macro signals from regulators. The first thing investors do is to sell such excessively risky assets.