Bitcoin, at the time of writing, is trading for just shy of $24,000 per unit. The world’s most popular and most powerful digital currency is making its way up the financial ladder like it never has before, but despite the mega surges the cryptocurrency has encountered, they are nothing compared with the monster jumps being experienced by some of the world’s smaller, yet leading altcoins, some of which include Ethereum, Stellar, Ripple’s XRP and Litecoin.
Altcoins Are Taking the Stage
Right now, bitcoin has moved up by roughly 30 percent in just the last month alone, which at first, seems quite huge. However, the smaller currencies mentioned above have soared by more than that within the same period. Other assets, such as Cardano and NEM, have incurred even larger jumps.
Nicholas Pelecanos – head of trading at NEM – explained in a recent interview:
While bitcoin has largely dominated the narrative, I believe investors should look to altcoins who have tremendous amounts of development in both the core technology and usership yet are still a fair way off their all-time highs. Does this leave these altcoins undervalued against bitcoin? I believe it does, and I am expecting to see the price of these altcoins such as Ethereum and XEM rally hard when the bitcoin price inevitably slows down.
Several smaller altcoins are tied to bitcoin and will typically move in the same direction. Thus, if bitcoin moves up, these coins will follow suit. If it falls, they will drop as well. However, what we’ve seen in the past is that these currencies often tend to incur much more dramatic price swings than their bitcoin ringleader, which means if bitcoin falls or spikes by a small margin, these altcoins’ maneuvers will be considerably more noticeable.
Over the last month, for instance, Cardano has incurred a surge of roughly 70 percent, making it one of the top-performing altcoins at press time, while other assets – such as NEM and Stellar – have seen their prices double in the last 30 days.
Maybe Our Focus Should Be on Smaller Assets
In addition, many analysts are convinced that these price swings are still at the beginning, and that many of these currencies’ present bull runs are likely to continue well into the coming weeks. Pascal Gauthier – chief executive of crypto wallet company Ledger – explained in a statement:
We are only in phase one of the bull run. Many big players are investing time and resources to build or buy digital asset infrastructures needed to support the swell of institutional and retail adoption.
Another altcoin that’s seriously up in price at the time of writing is Ripple’s XRP, which experienced an airdrop last November. While the asset has fallen back a bit since then, the currency has jumped by approximately 90 percent in the last several weeks.
