Altcoins
Why Altcoins were on fire today
The investment world is currently obsessed with cryptocurrencies.
Fear of missing out, or FOMO, can be a powerful incentive for investors, especially in the volatile world of cryptocurrencies. On Wednesday, the emotion helped push the world’s most popular digital coin to price levels it hasn’t seen in years.
As is often the case, following this increase, a large number of altcoins followed suit, with several of them increasing by double-digit percentages. As of this afternoon, Toncoin (TONNE -1.33%) is up 15%; Aptos (APT -1.66%) had grown at a rate of nearly 22%; And Ghost (FTM -1.03%) was up 4%. A rare exception was Theta Network (THETA 1.83%), which, after a bull run, stabilized with a correction of 0.5%.
Bitcoin just isn’t slowing down
The piece that many investors fear missing is – not surprisingly – Bitcoin (BTC -0.14%). The first and largest cryptocurrency crossed the $60,000 mark on Wednesday. At one point, it traded above $64,000 apiece before easing around the $61,000 level.
This is to be expected as investments continue to increase in recently listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). As of late last week, more than $5.7 billion of customer money had found its way into these securities, according to a CoinShares International study. Three trading days later, that total has likely surpassed $6 billion. That’s quite a lot, since the spot Bitcoin ETFs went live only a month and a half ago.
On the other side of the fence, it appears that at least one influential company in the financial sector wants to get into the Bitcoin ETF spot game. Crypto news and analysis site Coindesk.com reported on Wednesday that the traditional white-shoe investment bank Morgan Stanley was doing his due diligence in offering his. This would be made available through the company’s brokerage platform (it purchased E*Trade in 2020).
Who is ready for spot altcoin ETFs?
If there is this much rush and enthusiasm around spot Bitcoin ETFs, it is inevitable that the situation will be similar with spot altcoin ETFs. There have already been news and rumors that financial heavyweights are developing systems based on Ethereum, the leading altcoin. With Ethereum being the blockchain of the moment for decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts, incoming flows should also be robust.
The altcoin train will therefore likely continue to roll. The rise of Bitcoin has just gained solid momentum, and upcoming spot ETFs make them even more attractive to investors.
Eric Volkman has positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool posts and recommends Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool recommends Theta Token. The Mad Motley has a disclosure policy.