Normally, Bitcoin dominate the entire cryptocurrency market due to it influence as the first and only cryptocurrency. However, they are times when the Bitcoin effect becomes weak, and this moment Altcoins or alternative coins tends to skyrocket in price not minding if Bitcoin is in favour or not.
This moment is what is referred to as the Altcoin Season.
What is Altcoin
“Altcoin” is a combination of the two words “alternative” and “coin.” It is generally used to include all cryptocurrencies and tokens that are not Bitcoin. Some of the most well-known Altcoins (based on market cap) are Ethereum, Ripple, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, and Litecoin.
For maximum gains it’s crucial to sell your altcoins before Altseason is over. Alt’s prices drop just as quickly as they rose. There have been many Altseasons in the last decade, with all of them beginning right after Bitcoin dominance declined. The sharper the decline in BTC dominance the bigger the Altseason.
What is Altcoin Season
When Bitcoin begins to rally, dominating the price charts and outperforming altcoins for a prolonged period, it is called ‘Bitcoin season. ‘ And when altcoins outperform Bitcoin for a significant duration, it qualifies as an ‘altcoin season’ or ‘alt season.
You can tell if we are in an Altcoin season when 75% of the Top 50 coins performed better than Bitcoin over the last season (90 days) it is Altcoin Season.
How Long Doe Altcoin Season Last
According to Blockchain Centre, when 75 percent of all altcoins outperform Bitcoin over a period of 90 days, it classifies as altcoin season. Altcoin season index filters out stablecoins and asset-backed tokens such as wrapped bitcoin and Lido staked ether.
Altcoin Season Index Chart
This tool puts an end to the question “Is it Altcoin season right now?” – Based on data.
Altcoin season or altseason is a period in which alternative crypto coins experience an increase in market performance due to increased prices and trading volumes. Altcoin or alternative coin is a term used when referring to crypto assets other than Bitcoin such as Cardano, Polkadot, Polygon, Ethereum, etc
Best Altcoins to Buy in 2022? (Not financial advice)
Below is the top-performing Altcoin to buy in 2022, which we hold in high esteem. They include:
1. MATIC
Polygon is self-described as a Layer 2 scaling solution, which means that the project doesn’t seek to upgrade its current basic blockchain layer any time soon. The project focuses on reducing the complexity of scalability and instant blockchain transactions.
Based on data from Token Terminal on the Polygon blockchain’s performance, it could be said that both the project and its token, MATIC, are fairly undervalued. Although MATIC has only recently entered the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, this happened more due to the failures of Solana (SOL) than to the actual merits of Polygon.
As a blockchain, Polygon demonstrates exceptional performance in terms of both business and performance. In the last 30 days, Polygon’s number of fees collected is up 185% to $3.37 million. Of particular interest is Polygon’s revenue metric. According to the data, which counts revenue as the share of transaction fees accrued to MATIC holders, the figure has risen 386.6% in the past 30 days to $1.4 million.
Thus, Polygon as a business and as a blockchain is growing by all measures. That said, MATIC’s market capitalization lags behind Cardano and Dogecoin, which may not be surprising, but not when the gap is more than $4 billion. At the same time, according to CoinMarketCap, 87% of MATIC’s supply is already unlocked and in circulation, which is also positive.
2. LINK
Chainlink is one of the first networks to allow the integration of off-chain data into smart contracts. With many trusted partners, Chainlink is one of the major players in the data processing field. Due to the integration of off-chain data, Chainlink has attracted the attention of numerous trusted data providers, including Brave New Coin, Alpha Vantage, and Huobi. Data providers can sell access to data directly to Chainlink, thus monetizing the information they have.
Chainlink has grown from aggregating and providing cryptocurrency price data to DeFi protocols like Aave, to a lot more. The ecosystem currently accesses over 1B data points, securing over $75B in value through 1,000 project integrations with 700 oracle networks.
Mainstream organizations like AccuWeather, FedEx, FlightStats, and the Associated Press have partnered with Chainlink for data verification. However, one of the biggest wins Chainlink has secured is onboarding Eric Schmidt, ex-Google chairman, and CEO, as a technical advisor to the oracle network protocol. According to Schmidt, “Chainlink is a secret ingredient to unlocking the potential of smart contract platforms and revolutionizing business and society,” and he is interested in helping Chainlink build a world powered by truth.
On the roadmap for 2022, Chainlink will finally roll out staking for LINK holders to secure the network and earn rewards. Chainlink has been working on a staking solution for years, however, oracle networks are not a blockchain but a form of decentralized computing. Co-founder Nazarov explained that Chainlink does not produce blocks but “make consensus on hundreds of oracle networks about price data.” He says the team is finally satisfied with the security and scalability of the consensus mechanism and ready to launch staking this year.
3. LITECOIN
Behind Bitcoin, Litecoin is the second most popular pure cryptocurrency. This success can be largely attributed to its simplicity and clear utility benefits.
Its main benefit comes from its speed and cost-effectiveness. Litecoin transactions are typically confirmed in just minutes, and transaction fees are nearly negligible. This makes it an attractive alternative to Bitcoin in developing countries, where transaction fees may be the deciding factor on which cryptocurrency to support.
As of January 2021, 66.245 million LTC have already been mined out of a total maximum supply of 84 million. The Litecoin Foundation recently estimated it will be well over 100 years until Litecoin reaches full dilution (around the year 2140) — since the number of LTC mined per block decreases every four years as part of the block reward halving schedule.
4. XRP
It’s still not too late to buy XRP now before November ending, especially if you invest in crypto assets for the long term.
The world of crypto assets is unpredictable. Every crypto asset will have its ups and downs throughout the year. So is the case with XRP. Throughout 2022 there may be price fluctuations on XRP.
Not to mention that the future of XRP or Ripple is currently quite questionable since the emergence of a lawsuit with the SEC and the previous delisting by a well-known cryptocurrency exchange.
Even so, if XRP can settle this lawsuit, there could potentially be a more vigorous bull run in XRP’s price.
As such, XRP is an excellent choice for investors who prefer cryptocurrency based on a top-down investment approach to diversify their portfolios.
Whale Alert blockchain tracker has reported that over the past five hours, nearly 338 million XRP have been shoveled by anonymous wallets in two transactions.
The aforementioned crypto tracker spotted two transactions — one carrying an astounding 288,684,193 XRP and the other moving 49,000,000 XRP. Together, these two lumps of XRP are worth roughly $117.7 million in fiat.
Two days ago, on Nov. 19, a transfer of similar size was detected by Whale Alert; 296,396,865 XRP evaluated at $113,756,355 were moved between wallets that the crypto tracker marked as “unknown.”
However, the XRP chart formed a pattern that, back in 2013-2017, preceded a surge of the XRP price to the all-time high of $3.84 — a Bullish Triangle. Back then, after exiting the pattern, the price of the Ripple-affiliated coin jumped a mind-blowing 4,430%.
5. NEAR
NEAR uses its Nightshade technology to improve transaction throughput massively. Nightshade is a variation of sharding, in which individual sets of validators process transactions in parallel across multiple sharded chains, improving the overall capacity of the blockchain. In contrast to “regular” sharding, shards in Nightshade produce a fraction of the next block, called “chunks.” In doing so, NEAR Protocol is able to achieve up to 100,000 transactions per second and achieve near-instant transaction finality thanks to a one-second block cadence while simultaneously keeping transaction fees at virtually zero.
NEAR Protocol also improves upon the convoluted onboarding process of other blockchains by having human-readable addresses and building decentralized applications with a similar registration flow to what users have already experienced. Moreover, it provides developers with modular components, helping them start projects like token contracts or NFTs more quickly.
6. BNB
Binance is a unique ecosystem of decentralized, blockchain-based networks. The company has grown to be the leading crypto exchange in a number of countries, and their side organizations are attracting significant interest as well.
Since launching the BNB, the exchange has also benefited from increased investor interest in the coin. BNB went through a significant price increase at the beginning of 2021, which has put it on the map of enterprise investors.
In the case of Binance, the crypto exchange began the program in late 2017 and has so far burned over 38 million tokens via its quarterly burn to date. The crypto exchange has in mind to destroy up to 100 million BNB tokens through its quarterly burns, accounting for 50% of its circulating supply.
BNB utilizes two coin-burning mechanisms. The first mechanism consists of burning a portion of the tokens spent on transaction fees on the BNB Chain, and the second is its quarterly BNB burning events.
Previously, the quarterly burn event was based on revenue generated from the Binance centralized exchange. But under the new BNB Auto-Burn program, the number of tokens to be burned is calculated using a formula based on the total number of blocks produced on the Binance Smart Chain and BNB’s average dollar-denominated price during the quarter.
As of July 2022, Binance had completed 20 BNB coin burn events. In total, 38,683,447.66 BNB tokens have been destroyed, reducing its initial 200M supply by 19.34%.