The cryptocurrency market is bracing for altseason. If you haven’t heard of that term before, this is when Bitcoin (BTCUSD) starts losing its dominance and money flows towards altcoins. The crypto market has been very peculiar this time, thanks to spot exchange-traded funds causing significant inflow into BTC.
As a result, Ethereum (ETHUSD), a crypto that has trounced Bitcoin’s gains in every cycle since inception, has so far failed to do so. Traders started doubting whether altseason would happen due to that, but Ethereum has finally started making progress in closing the gap. ETH is pressing against its all-time high and could cross $5,000 in the coming months.
Regardless, the difference this time is that the market is far more selective. In 2021, every dog-themed ticker could triple overnight. This time, capital will likely go to projects that have ETFs and real-world utility. Analysts are especially eyeing the following two altcoins.
Solana (SOLUSD) is still in “beta” and was once called the “Ethereum killer,” since the chain ostensibly solved the Blockchain Trilemma. This is a belief that a decentralized network cannot have optimal decentralization, security, and scalability at the same time. Unfortunately, Solana was then rocked by major outages, one lasting 17 hours in 2021. Such network stalls are almost unheard of when it comes to other major chains.
Since then, the team has made significant improvements, and there have been no major outages in well over a year. The Solana blockchain is now the go-to platform for meme coin developers. It hosts thousands of tokens that are actively traded. The blockchain is perfect for it, since fees are extremely low, and transactions get processed fast. If you compare Solana’s fees to those of Ethereum, they may look negligible for occasional transactions, but Solana retains the edge for fast-paced trading.
Two meme coins that are on Solana that you’ve likely heard of are the “$TRUMP” and “$MELANIA” tokens. Those Trump-connected token launches brought a lot of publicity to the network and were seen as tacit support for SOL from the president. This was reinforced when Trump’s executive order for the “Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and United States Digital Asset Stockpile” included Solana.
