Since April of this year, Bitcoin dominance has grown rapidly – with a 300% rise in price that has renewed investor interest in cryptocurrency, after the longest bull run in the history of the industry – which lasted a year and a half. Bitcoin hit a top price per coin of nearly $14,000 per coin at the peak of its rally.
Since Bitcoin corrected, many Altcoins have grown significantly, and conditions are perfect for all the money investors have recently made in Bitcoin to go straight into hedged bets with Altcoins. Much like the 2017 bull run, at various checkpoints along the way (that were surprisingly easy to predict before, and map out afterwards) Bitcoin corrected from its parabolic run, only to allow Altcoins to thrive and increase 100s of percent in a few days. Of course there are two scenarios here. The first, is that Bitcoin is on a similar parabolic run now, and that Altcoins will see marked increases in price as the leading cryptocurrency corrects along the way. ThThe second is that the environment is similar to the early 2017 Altcoin run, where Bitcoin stabilised and Altcoins saw price increases in the 1000s of percent.
The latter is certainly what most investors will be hoping for now. The ‘free money’ attitude of the previous Altseason – for those that remember it – was something to behold. It was akin to the gold rush in America, and people were tripping over each other to sign up to Coinbase to invest their life savings in the new digital ‘gold’ (yeah, don’t do that again).
You’re smarter in 2019 than you were in 2017
However there’s a difference now – something that may mean that Altseason will never happen again as it did before. This is the fact that the market is regulated to a much higher degree now. The rise of IEOs have shown that investors are smarter, and are generally backing projects that are well-vetted, trustworthy, and backed by larger companies which are held accountable – such as Binance. Binance has so far made over $20 million from their IEO launchpad, and growth seems to be accelerating.
Since the 2017 run, investors have learned that a lot of projects they invested in were either completely and utterly useless, or outright scams. Millions (if not billions) of dollars were lost, and this new generation of traders are smarter. This is partly why there’s so much less money in the industry than there was then. If you bought a scamcoin that promised 10,000% returns, or a guaranteed ponzi structure where you couldn’t lose – and of course you did end up losing, then you wouldn’t be in a hurry to do it all over again, would you? Quick shout-out to the miracle of human learning here.
Investors are smarter now, and as such it’s likely we’ll see a large increase in the price of already strong projects, and a lesser growth from unknown or poorly-backed projects. However, while this may annoy the average Joe looking to invest for a quick buck on PonziCoin, this is an extremely good thing for the industry. What this means is that while interest may not be in making a quick buck, it will definitely be in supporting projects that actually drive the industry forwards and create innovative solutions to the world’s current problems. Interest may be similar to stocks on traditional markets – people will be watching the larger projects, and be looking to make less money, but safer money.
Will Altcoins ever reach their ATH again?
This question has been on the minds of every investor who FOMO’d in at the top of the bull run and for some reason has still inexplicably HODL’d to this very date. Will you dedicated and loyal people ever see a return on your coin investment? Well, thanks to a report from Messari which states that Altcoins may never again see ATH – even if Bitcoin hits $100,000 per coin – the chances may not be in your favour right now. However there’s still hope. Litecoin has had a peak 600% price increase this year alone, so for some of the larger projects like LTC and ETH, you may get to see a new ATH in the future.
Don’t underestimate the power of FOMO
However there’s also something to say for investor emotion. The cryptocurrency markets in 2017 were led primarily by emotion – and more specifically, the emotion behind the lovely phrase Fear Of Missing Out. All our current expectations on whether Altseason will occur again anytime soon – and if it does, whether it will look the same – are based around the premise that the market is more mature now. This may be a big mistake. With only an extremely small percentage of the world investing in the 2017 bull run, there is a massive number of potential investors that may know nothing about the current market state, and will of course still be looking to invest their hard earned cash into PonziCoin. The 1% of the world’s population that are once burned twice shy, are still in the extreme minority – and so if (well, when) interest properly takes off again, we may well see a completely different 1% or more of the world’s population enter the markets – with no prior knowledge of the markets and all their risks. In this scenario, it will be even easier for Altcoins to reach and even exceed their ATH, along with completely new coins seeing 1000s of percent increases.
The main thing to note here isn’t whether these people will come or not – it’s knowing what you, as an experienced trader and investor, can do to benefit from any situation that comes up in the coming months. If you know exactly what to do in any future scenario, it’s almost impossible for you not to profit, whether there’s an Altseason or not. To end on a quote from the strategic mastermind (but absolute a**hole) Littlefinger:“Fight every battle, everywhere, always, in your mind. Everyone is your enemy, everyone is your friend, every possible series of events is happening, all at once. Live that way, and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens will be something that you’ve seen before.”