Can it be altcoin season? This, Grayscale Investments announced a slew of the latest trusts, each focused on smaller-cap “altcoins. week” Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group.) Meanwhile, Ethereum’s currency that is native ether (ETH, -4.61%), is outpacing bitcoin (BTC, -4.88%) so far this year, rising 142% as of Thursday.

“Altcoin season,” or “alt season,” is really a meme for the concept that bitcoin returns move cyclically against other crypto assets, or “altcoins,” as in, alternatives to bitcoin. The notion is that investors take their bitcoin earnings and play the altcoin casino with house money, and vice versa.

There’s evidence to support that theory, at the least anecdotally. An index that represents 70% associated with the crypto markets’ value into the fourth quarter of 2020, for example, bitcoin outran everything in the Digital Large Cap Index.

Into the chart you can see that litecoin that is onlyLTC, -3.33per cent), which had a fantastic run into the 4th quarter, been able to keep pace with bitcoin.

Comparison that with 2021 for the season to date: Returns from litecoin and bitcoin money (BCH, +1.9%) have actually lagged, while ether has outpaced bitcoin with a margin that is significant. (The asset XRP (+12.68%), another long-time crypto that is large-cap isn’t with this chart as it ended up being excluded through the DLCX early in the initial quarter after a few exchanges dropped the Ripple-linked crypto, following a lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.)

Therefore is it altcoin season? Two associated with three largest “alts” are underperforming bitcoin. During the time that is same historically smaller alts are outperforming.