Altcoins Pump

As bitcoin cracked $100k, altcoins have started to pump. This is to be expected. It has happened in previous bull markets. Bitcoin leads, the rest follow.

The proximate cause is Donald Trump’s shoe-in of crypto-friendly Paul Atkins as Securities and Exchange (SEC) chair. Out goes Gary Gensler, seen by many as something of a crypto grinch.

Below is a chart of Solana, which has formed a double top at the previous high of $240.

Solana

Source: CoinMarketCap

Expect to see some hesitation at these levels. Solana has seen staking volumes reduce as “validators” (those who verify and confirm transactions on the network) started pulling out funds. It’s taken more than two years to get to this level, so a bout of profit taking is in order.

A pullback to $230 could see bulls re-enter the market for a push through $250. Then it’s a clear path to $260-$270.

What’s interesting about Solana? It transacts at fantastic speeds and is built for high volumes of transactions. It currently handles 4,369 transactions a second at a cost of $0.0025 per transaction – almost free. Visa (the card network) is reportedly capable of handling 26,000 transactions a second but in actuality handles around 1,700.

If you are going to be a global financial operator, you need to be able to take on the likes of Visa, and Solana is gearing up for that.

Solana’s currently the fifth largest crypto by market cap ($9 billion) just behind Ripple/XRP ($16 billion market cap).

XRP (Ripple)

Source: CoinMarketCap

XRP has been on a tear, behaving rather like Ethereum (ETH) in its early days – dribbling along and then all of a sudden exploding.

Its price is up nearly 400% over the last month due to its recent legal victory over the SEC, which categorised it as a security and accused Ripple of operating without the required license. A US court found it was not a security when traded on public exchanges, though it was forced to pay $125 million in fines for selling XRP to institutional investors.

The real excitement about Ripple is its potential use for cross-border payments at much lower costs – and greater speeds – than traditional forms of payment. There are also a number of applications for XRP exchange traded funds (ETFs), which are likely to get an easy ride now that bitcoin and Ethereum have been welcomed to the ETF club.

Tron

Source: CoinMarketCap

And then there’s Tron, which – like Ripple – was on the wrong side of an SEC lawsuit for fraud and securities violations. Donald Trump’s new man at the SEC is crypto-friendly and could drop these charges. Then there’s its emerging dominance in stablecoin payments, with volumes reaching $196 billion on a single day on November – more than Visa does in a day.

Tron is the 10th largest crypto in terms of market cap. Traders are eyeing a sustained breakout above 40c which then puts 60c within reach. The Tron token itself is deflationary, with the number in issue being reduced (rather than expanded as is the case with many others) which means its relative scarcity should drive its price higher.

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