Long Beach (CoinChapter): Decentrader co-founder of Filbfilb announced in a tweet that conditions were right for an altcoin surge. Total market capitalization of has reached new highs of nearly $750 billion. Meanwhile, Bitcoin accounts for less than 60% of the total crypto market.
‘Alt season’ has been three years in the making. Expectations of a massive altcoin resurgence have long been high, but ultimately went unfulfilled. But with Bitcoin consolidating after hitting all-time highs above $61,000, things seem to have played into altcoin traders’ hands.
The most recent catalyst for the optimism came from Visa on Monday. The company announced that it would support stablecoin USD Coin for settlement, thus leveraging the Ethereum blockchain. In response, ETH/USD saw a decent 4.8% rise, with the market cap share of Ether, the largest altcoin, still in decline versus January.
In the grand scheme of things, it appears that the foundations for an altcoin summer is being laid right now. Cointelegraph analyst Michaël van de Poppe believes the summer will be ‘very bullish’ for altcoins, especially as the market capitalization has been breaking new highs. “Ethereum is going to surprise everyone massively,” he added following the Visa announcement.
Altcoin bull market has just begun
And van de Poppe isn’t alone in that belief either. Analyst Scott Melker added that “altcoins look great,” while Rekt Capital made their thoughts known on Twitter. “The macro Altcoin Bull Market has only just begun. Don’t let any Altcoin pullbacks convince you otherwise.”
Rekt Capital also offered their thoughts on Bitcoin itself. There were talks as to whether last week’s bounce off $50,000 represented a definitive price floor in the ongoing consolidation period.
“It could very well be that the BTC bottom is in,” Rekt Capital noted. “If this is indeed the case, then this means that $BTC bottomed after a two-week retrace for the second time this year. Average Bitcoin retrace in 2017 was ~16 days.”