Hundreds of projects have recovered at least 10% of their price in the last week.
This is quite an unexpected turn of events. At least for most of the traders who have witnessed the massive decline of the crypto market in the last 13 months.
The many altcoin bounces seen in early 2023 are far from reaching all-time highs. That being said, these are at least some of the biggest price increases seen since the crypto market bulls ended abruptly back in November 2021.
Thus, among the top 100 crypto assets, a few have made notable returns over the past week:
Lido DAO (LDO): +60%
Solana (SOL): +44%
Aptos (APT): +39%
Hex (HEX): +33%
Decentraland (MANA): +28%
The Sandbox (SAND): +26%
Hundreds of projects have recovered at least 10% of their price in the last week. Clearly, cryptocurrencies still have a long way to go to recover their levels of a year ago. With that said, how did 2023 get off to such a great start for altcoins?
Crypto Market Sentiment
First, altcoins have raised a lot of questions about their ability to recover from their tragic downfall throughout 2022. In this case, the skeptics may well still be right. However, it is certain that FUD is ready to counter, as Santiment surveyed via Twitter:
“Has altcoin season begun?
Open the floodgates: 22,3 %
Prices will flatten out: 12,3 %
They’ll pull back a bit: 20,8 %
Get ready for the plummet: 44,5 %”
With just under two-thirds of respondents in the survey above expecting altcoins to pull back, this is in line with Santiment’s mantra that prices move in the direction of the most unlikely expectation. public. For now, assets continue to rise, while Bitcoin has appreciated enough to allow small projects to thrive.
It is important to analyze the frequency of mentions of words like altcoin or alt season against the price of Ethereum (as a diluted representation of the prices of many altcoins). In this sense, while prices are going up, it usually means that the public has realized that these cryptocurrencies are going up and that FOMO is just around the corner. This usually results in the formation of a price ceiling, at least until the masses start to doubt that the crypto market can go up.
Where Are We Now?
It would seem that the enthusiasm for altcoins has increased significantly due to the price action. Therefore, with the mainstream saying it’s time to buy altcoins, that probably means the right time has passed by now. In fact, among the top altcoins of the past week, it is advised to be especially careful, and not expect their momentum to continue, even as rumors about their popularity spread.
If you’re trying to plan your trades between bitcoin and stablecoins on the one hand, and altcoins on the other, it never hurts to wait for FOMO to go away in order to make a profit in BTC.
So can altcoins keep going a little higher? The answer is Yes. Are they as fascinating as they were on New Year’s Day? Not until Bitcoin regains some momentum.
By Audy Castaneda
