Meanwhile, many crypto firms are seeing greater client interest for these smaller tokens, with BlockFi last weekend noting a “flip” by its retail clients toward alternative coins.
When you add layer-1s that have higher beta, that’s where you have 20-30% moves in just a couple of days,” he said, referring to an underlying type of blockchain that competes with Ethereum.
The term “altcoin season” has been used plenty of times in the past.
He likens it to the early internet days, when just a smattering of companies like Microsoft Corp.
Starr says traditional finance companies and investors who wanted to dabble in the crypto space could really only do so via a handful of products, like Grayscale’s Bitcoin trust.
The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 100 Index, which is dominated by Bitcoin and Ether but includes many others, is up roughly 9% over the past month compared with Bitcoin’s 6% gain.
Some of the rallies over the past month for many smaller coins coincided with idiosyncratic announcements or developments.
The crypto market is seeing tons of technological innovation and many investors are looking to get in early, something only the digital-asset space can offer, said Noelle Acheson, head of market insights at Genesis Global Trading.
A lessening in its market-dominance can be seen as supporting “an increasing role for the rest of the market, which represents the innovative technology” side of it, she said.
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