Ethereum [ETH] is cutting the first turf for an altcoin season — Here’s how

• ETH breaking the $1,700 may have set the tone for altcoins to blossom.
• BTC dominated the market but attention has been shifting toward SOL and ADA.

Ethereum [ETH], considered the pioneer altcoin and the one with the largest market cap, seems to be setting the stage for what could potentially be the resurgence of the altcoin season, Glassnode founders opined.

Read Ethereum’s [ETH] Price Prediction 2023-2024

The term “altcoin season” refers to a period where cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin [BTC] outperform the king coin. While there’s no such thing as guaranteed gains during the period, altcoin season is usually a good time for traders and investors to diversify their portfolios. 

ETH is about to shift the trend

Whenever the altcoin season is in its early stages, ETH’s dominance increases and serves as a catalyst for others to gain momentum. Founders of the on-chain analytic platform Jan Happel and Yann Allemann, who used the Negentropic handle on X, said ETH crossing the $1,700 resistance, was a sign that dominance was shifting to altcoins. 

The duo also noted that also mentioned that assets like Cardano [ADA], Ripple [XRP], and Solana [SOL] could also be gearing up for more gains. However, Grayscale’s partial win against the U.S. SEC seems to have reduced ETH’s potential to take over the market dominance from BTC.

Glassnode gives an insight into the dominance using the BTC-ETH dominance metric. The BTC-ETH Dominance tracks the macro outperformance trends between the top two crypto-assets. 

It considers only the Market Cap of Bitcoin, relative to the combined market cap of Bitcoin plus Ethereum. Lower values and downtrends indicate outperformance by Ethereum. On the other hand, higher values and uptrend suggest Bitcoin still dominates the market.

At press time, peak ETH dominance was -0.085 while for BTC, it was +0.085. The disparity in these values indicated that ETH had not yet flipped BTC’s dominance. Therefore, the altcoin season might take a while before resumption.

BTC-ETH market cap dominance

ADA, SOL rise to the occasion

But is attention actually shifting to Ethereum and other altcoins? One metric that describes this possibility is social dominance. Social dominance compares the number of posts/discussions around an asset compared with other cryptocurrencies in the top 100.

At the time of writing, ADA’s social dominance was 1.643%. SOL’s social dominance was down to 0.774% while XRP was 1.421%. Of all three, only the metric for XRP decreased while ADA and SOL increased.

If the social dominance continues to maintain the same level or improve, then the altcoin season may appear soon. 

Source: Santiment

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Historically, this season occur about ten months before the Bitcoin halving. Considering the current market condition, the altcoin season may just be a few weeks or months away.