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Altseason is booming. Data from the popular monitoring resource Coin Market Cap shows that the total capitalization of all alternative cryptocurrencies currently stands just shy of $600 billion. This has reduced Bitcoin’s market dominance to 60%.
With this said, we’ve selected five altcoins to keep a close look at in the following week.
Yearn Finance (YFI)
YFI needs no introduction. It’s the governance token for the Yearn Finance ecosystem, and it’s one that definitely made history. Interestingly enough, it was intended as a valueless coin that wasn’t supposed to be traded – in the words of its creator – Andre Cronje.
Just yesterday, CryptoPotato reported that the cryptocurrency is once again making headlines. It surged to around $52,000 before retracing to where it currently trades. The move was seemingly propelled by the fact that Grayscale, the world’s leading crypto-asset manager, had set up a new venture – a statutory trust in Delaware, hinting interest in the cryptocurrency.
However, it’s worth noting that, despite the most recent surge in YFI’s dollar value, it’s still nowhere near its peak when trading against Bitcoin.
As seen in the above chart, YFI is currently hovering at a price roughly around 1 BTC, while its all-time high BTC value is upwards of 4 BTC. Only time will tell if we’ll ever see these prices again, but with the DeFi industry booming as it is, it might not be entirely out of the question.
Tezos (XTZ)
Tezos, the sleeping giant. The cryptocurrency was one of the best performers back at the beginning of 2020, and everyone seemed to have their sight set on it. For some reason, though, XTZ was flying under the radar for most of 2021 until just recently.
It seems that XTZ is finally catching up to speed as it has marked an incredible increase of around 70% in the past four days alone. However, since the beginning of the year, XTZ is up by about 150%, which, compared to other altcoins, signals some lag.
XTZ charted its all-time high yesterday, Feb 12th, at around $5.44, and it’s currently trading at about 10% below that.
In any case, if the altseason is to continue, Tezos might finally wake up and do the catching up that many believe it is due.
Polkadot (DOT)
Polkadot is undoubtedly one of the hottest projects in 2021 (though it was touted as one with great potential long before that). The cryptocurrency started the year at around $9 and is currently up over 220%.
Regardless of the gains, which may seem considerable, the project continues delivering one announcement after another and has already attracted hundreds of reputable projects building on top of it.
Many are touting it to be the next Ethereum, though that’s a claim that has failed to pan out in a positive turnout historically. Nevertheless, Polkadot is undoubtedly one of the leading projects in the cryptocurrency field, and if the current bull market persists, it’s likely to keep performing splendidly.
Binance Coin (BNB)
BNB – the biggest centralized exchange cryptocurrency. Being the industry leader, Binance has been quite busy lately. One of the things to consider is the currently deflationary mechanism behind BNB – the company is taking out a portion of its quarterly profits to burn BNB tokens, which reduces the circulating supply.
However, what appears to be a serious driver behind BNB’s most recent surge to an ATH of around $150 is the Binance Smart Chain.
This is yet another competitor to Ethereum, but unlike it, the transaction fees are currently almost non-existent, and the confirmation times are also almost instant. To interact with it, users need BNB, and given the growing value locked in various BSC protocols, the cryptocurrency may still have a long road of growth ahead of it.
REN
REN is another very important project for the entire DeFi ecosystem. Investors using the Ren Virtual Machine (RenVM) are able to easily transfer their Bitcoin (and other non-Ethereum assets such as Bitcoin Cash, for instance) on Ethereum and participate in the DeFi industry.
This unlocks massive liquidity for the otherwise nascent field, and REN being the infrastructure that powers it could certainly benefit.
Data from DeFi Pulse reveals that there’s over $1 billion in value locked through RenVM, which is definitely a good sign. In terms of pricing, REN is currently trading at around 11%, below its all-time high.
Please note that none of the above is financial advice. Investing in cryptocurrencies carries high risk. For a full disclaimer, please refer to the footer.
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