By
Temitope Olatunji
April 26th, 2024
The altcoin market is buzzing with strong investor interest as well as the rally in the DeFi space. Cardano and Polkadot have registered strong moves surpassing Ripple’s XRP.
The altcoin market is buzzing with huge investor interest. It’s a rare sight in the crypto space currently as both Bitcoin and altcoin market is surging at the same time. In the last 24 hours, the overall cryptocurrency market cap has surged a massive 16% and is just short of $1.4 trillion.
On Monday, February 8, the cryptocurrency market entered a strong rally following Tesla‘s disclosure of $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) purchase. Bitcoin price skyrocketed since then surging over 20% in the last 24-hours and hitting a new high of $47,500 levels.
On the other hand, the altcoin market has also registered a strong rally. The world’s second-largest crypto Ethereum (ETH) has topped $1800 levels surging another 10% today. As per data by CoinShares, Ethereum has seen strong institutional interest recently. ETH attracted 80% of net institutional inflows last week. The report from CoinShares notes:
“We believe investors are looking to diversify and are growing increasingly comfortable with Ethereum fundamentals. Bitcoin had its lowest inflows (US$42m) since the all-time highs were achieved in the week ending 8th January 2021”.
Altcoin Market Rally: Polkadot (DOT) & Cardano (ADA) Surge Past XRP
Over the last three days, Cardano has registered a strong rally as the ADA price has surged 66% over the last week. With a $21.7 billion market cap, Cardano is currently the fourth -largest crypto and even bigger than Ripple‘s XRP. Last week, Cardano’s parent group IOHK announced a new platform functionality that allows users to create their own custom tokens on the network.
This comes as part of the “Goguen Mary” update on the Cardano platform. Thus, the update makes Cardano a multi-asset blockchain network wherein ADA remains the “principal currency”.
Along with Cardano, Polkadot (DOT) has also surged past XRP to become the fifth-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $21.3 billion. Market analysts believe that the latest rally in these two altcoins is because they are emerging as a very strong alternative to the Ethereum blockchain network. Speaking to CoinDesk, Mable Jiang, a principal at crypto investment firm Multicoin Capital, said:
“[Ethereum] is seemingly too clogged. [Cardano and Polkadot] fit into the larger narrative of ‘seeking for a scalable blockchain,’ so if the capital within the crypto capital market is looking for some latest narrative to shill, this is it.”
On the other hand, analysts also think that the DeFi market rally has provided a catalyst to Polkadot and Cardano. Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Bequant, said:
“Given the market focus on all things DeFi, one would be forgiven for missing the recent Cardano upside but the underlying fundamentals are very supportive. Equally, Polkadot was also highlighted as another actively developed protocol and its interoperability play and venturing into DeFi is well documented.”
Another altcoin Binance Coin (BNB) has also surged a whopping 30% moving close to $100. At press time, BNB is trading at a price of $94.8 with a market cap of $14.1 billion.