Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer of Bitfinex, says momentum and interest is now expanding beyond Bitcoin and Ether.
The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies has hit $2 trillion for the first time — doubling since the year began.
But it seems that this latest surge had very little to do with Bitcoin, which has continued trying (and failing) to overcome stubborn resistance at $60,000. Although the world’s biggest digital asset has managed to maintain a market cap of more than $1 trillion for a whole week, BTC appears to be in something of a holding pattern… gaining just 2.16% in a week.
By contrast, many other coins in the top 10 have surged by double digits over the past seven days. Binance Coin is in record territory after rallying by 40%, Polkadot is up 31%, and XRP is up 52.5%. Among smaller altcoins, some of the biggest gainers during this timeframe have included TRON (up 107%,) BitTorrent (up 176%) and EOS (up 56.8%.) Given how each of these assets have market caps in the billions, it all starts to add up rather quickly.
Ethereum came within one dollar of breaking records once again in the early hours of Tuesday morning, leaving it tantalizingly close to surpassing the all-time high of $2,152.45 that was set on Saturday.
Altseason is Here
Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer of Bitfinex, says momentum and interest is now expanding beyond Bitcoin and Ether. He was quoted by Reuters as saying:
“As the industry continues to mature, we expect more blockchain-based applications to be introduced to the world, and coinciding with that, a surge of interest around other alternative assets... as they become more market ready.”
Bitcoin’s dominance has slid rather substantially over the past three months — tumbling from 68.5% on January 6 to 55.5% at the time of writing.
But there’s still a lot to celebrate when it comes to BTC’s fundamentals. As Glassnode points out, the fact that the cryptocurrency has been able to maintain its $1 trillion market cap for one week running is a “strong vote of confidence for Bitcoin and the asset class as a whole.”
