Crypto Markets Post Moderate Gains, Large Altcoins Take the Lead
|For most of 2019, Bitcoin has led the crypto market. This week, however, major altcoins have taken the lead as they experience the best price action — relatively speaking — in the entire crypto universe.
To better track these kinds of trends, we use the Weiss Crypto Indexes — the only price barometers that segment the industry by sector, market cap and other factors.
And the facts they reveal provide reliable evidence of the outperformance by altcoins this week:
Fact #1. Leading altcoins rose twice as fast
The Weiss 50 Crypto Index (W50), which includes Bitcoin and 49 other cryptocurrencies, rose 1.87%.
At the same time, our Weiss 50 Crypto Ex-BTC (W50X), which excludes Bitcoin and is dominated by large-cap altcoins, was up by 3.46%. That’s nearly twice as much.
Even though Bitcoin saw some gains this week, it was dwarfed by the price action of major altcoins such as Ethereum or Binance Coin.
Fact #2. Large-cap coins also lagged due to Bitcoin’s sideways action
The Weiss Large-Cap Crypto Index (WLC), including 10 coins with the largest market cap and dominated 60%-plus by Bitcoin, rose only 1.65%. Bitcoin’s relative underperformance was a drag on this index.
Fact #3. Midcaps and small caps lag behind major altcoins
The Weiss Mid-Cap Crypto Index (WMC) and the Weiss Small-Cap Crypto Index (WSC) both are up 1.82% and 2.32%, respectively, this week.
While they both outperformed the large-cap index, it’s important to note that they’re up less than the Weiss 50 ex-BTC.
This suggests that it’s the industry-leading projects that are attracting most of the buying activity.
First Stage of Crypto Bull Market:
Industry Focuses on Large-cap Projects
In 2019 as a whole, we’re seeing the same pattern of consolidation: Year-to-date, the Weiss Crypto Price Indexes tell us that the dominant trend is a broad, industry-wide consolidation.
The strongest price action is among the large cap, high-quality projects:
- The Weiss Large-Cap Index is up 69.67% on the year,
- The Weiss Mid-Cap Index is down 16.52%, and ...
- The Weiss Small-Cap Index is down 42.98%.
With a few notable exceptions, only larger, higher-quality projects are enjoying strong interest, while smaller projects continue to be ignored.
Unless this trend is reversed, many could fade into obscurity.
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