The Node: Altcoin Season?

BTC has been putting on a bit of a one-man show for the last couple of years, rising all the way to $120k while other major cryptocurrencies like ETH and SOL are still below their 2021 records.

The orange coin’s share of the total crypto market capitalization steadily increased from a little under 40% in December of 2022 to 65% this June. But altcoins finally took a stand this July, with bitcoin dominance sliding 5.8% in a single week, its sharpest drop since June 2022.

This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk's daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here.

A quick look over at CoinGecko shows us that a majority of the coins in the Top 100 have risen between 20% to 30% in the past seven days. ETH, which has had a rough two years, outperformed most of the market by notching 26% gains. DOGE, XRP and ADA — the usual suspects in times of elation — are up 40%, 22% and 23% respectively. Meanwhile, SOL finally caught up today by increasing 7%; the coin’s price is now 18% higher than last Monday.

“It's not surprising to see bitcoin dominance fall over the last month given progress around digital asset legislation in the U.S. and the continued emergence of altcoin treasury companies,” Brian Rudick, chief strategy officer at SOL treasury firm Upexi, told CoinDesk.

“This legislation is likely to spur more on-chain development and activity and that benefits altcoins more so than bitcoin,” Rudick added. “While the preponderance of digital asset treasury companies continue to be [for BTC], they are increasingly moving down the risk spectrum to assets like ETH, SOL, and beyond.”

Case in point: since I last wrote to you on Friday, DeFi Development boosted its SOL holdings to almost $200 million; Bitmine and SharpLink’s leaders openly stated they’re in competition over the accumulation of ETH supply; The Ether Reserve (another ETH treasury firm) announced it will soon trade on Nasdaq (rebranding into The Ether Machine along the way); and a new company called StablecoinX declared its goal of constituting a treasury made of Ethena’s ENA tokens.

Not that bitcoin has been unloved. In that same period, Michael Saylor dropped another $740 million into bitcoin, semiconductor firm Sequans invested $150 million, and Trump Media disclosed that its bitcoin stash was worth $2 billion.

But the market capitalization of tokens like ETH, SOL and ENA is significantly smaller than bitcoin’s, so these treasury buys tend to have a much larger impact on their price, Rudick said.

“As long as the U.S. continues to make progress on digital asset legislation and the market continues to receive digital asset treasury companies well, I would not be surprised if bitcoin dominance continued to fall and altcoin season truly emerges,” he added.