The altcoin market appears to be on the cusp of another altseason rally as tokens experience massive price surges while Bitcoin remains locked in sideways accumulation.
Altcoin Tokens Surge as DeFi Market Explodes
Tweeting on Monday (July 20, 2020), crypto analyst @Crypto_Ed_NL published a chart showing that a new altseason could be on the horizon. Indeed, altcoin tokens like Chainlink (LINK) and Cardano (ADA) have seen massive price gains year-to-date (YTD).
Indeed, previous altseasons have seen altcoin market capitalization grow significantly with the largest surge coming amid the ICO-mania of 2017. At the time, the total altcoin market cap surged more than 420 percent as new projects garnered attention from across the crypto space.
With the majority of altcoin tokens unable to recover from the year-long bear market of 2018, its market cap has taken a massive dive. However, 2020 has seen a reversal of this trend with a breakout imminent amid the growing hype in decentralized finance (DeFi) market.
If ICOs triggered the last major altseason, then DeFi appears to be the prime candidate for the next iteration of the altcoin dominance period. Decentralized exchanges (DEX) are seeing increasing volume at a time when trading activity on their centralized counterparts is shrinking.
Yield farming on DeFi protocols like Compound (COMP) has caused a stir leading to a new token distribution model for projects. Altcoin projects like Chainlink are also at the center of the emerging developments in the DeFi space.
Chainlink oracles offer real-world, off-chain data like price indices to lending protocols and money markets in the DeFi space. Decentralized oracles can enable DeFi protocols to overcome the major limitations historically suffered by decentralized apps (Dapps) i.e. access to trusted off-chain data.
Indeed, it is unsurprising to see the 9th-ranked crypto project gaining over 1,700 percent since the start of the year. The migration to full proof-of-stake consensus for the likes of Cardano and Ethereum (ETH) may also be another significant milestone for altcoin blockchains.
Bitcoin Volatility Shrinks to Near Zero
While alts show signs of rallying, the situation for Bitcoin is one of price stability within the $9,000 and $9,200 price bands leading to the likes of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao jokingly calling BTC a stablecoin. According to data from the crypto analytics platform Skew, Bitcoin’s 10-day realized volatility is currently at 16 percent.
The last time the BTC volatility was this low was back in November 2018. The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) hash war that followed saw Bitcoin losing almost 50 percent of its volatility.
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