Following a rollercoaster of price action in the first two weeks of the month, the altcoins’ market has slowly gained a sense of stability. All but Cardano’s ADA have posted red candles on the day, though weekly figures indicate an uptrend.
ADA, which set a three-week-high of $1.54 earlier today, is up by a whopping 32.85% in the last 7-days. Terra’s LUNA and Polygon’s utility token MATIC also have double figures in weekly gains with 13.07% and 10.23%, respectively.
Solana’s native coin SOL has moved up 4.56% in the last 7 days, while Avalanche’s AVAX has posted a 4.20% price upsurge in the same period.
The buzz surrounding Ethereum ‘killers’ continues to grow
Outside the market figures, industry experts and financial institutions have continued laying optimistic projections for Ethereum alternatives.
Last week, the Bank of America threw its weight behind the Solana blockchain, noting that the ecosystem could potentially grow to become the ‘visa’ of cryptocurrencies.
A separate report from JPMorgan similarly conveyed good prospects for Ethereum rivals. The report compiled by global bank’s analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou detailed that Ethereum’s dominance in the market will decrease further this year.
“In our mind, this optimistic view about ETH’s dominance is at risk. This is because the scaling of the Ethereum network, which is necessary for the Ethereum network to maintain its dominance, might arrive too late.”
Panigirtzoglou and his team observed that alts like LUNA, SOL, and MATIC are catching up and stealing ETH’s market share.
An analysis piece published at the start of 2022 by startup blockchain firm Electric Capital reported that Solana, Avalanche, and Terra (among others) saw faster initial ecosystem growth last year than the OG Ethereum.
“Polkadot, Solana, NEAR, BSC, Avalanche, and Terra are growing faster than Ethereum did at similar points in its history.”
In the last week of 2021, Pantera Capital chief Dan Morehead, in an interview on CNBC’s Crypto Night, also hailed Terra and its stable coin LUNA as vibrant projects. Morehead explained that the Terra ecosystem has a high ceiling thanks to its smart contract functionality. He also opined that LUNA’s growing adoption as a trading token made it one of the most promising coins.
Ex-hedge fund manager Raoul Pal foresees a good year for these top alts
Last Friday, real Vision chief executive Raoul Pal reiterated his previous prediction of layer-1 token performing well and interoperable blockchains attracting more users. In an interview with CoinMarketCap’s Jessica Walker, Pal pointed out that Bitcoin and Ethereum will hold their mantles as ‘base investments’ thanks to their market status.
“Ethereum’s the kind of biggest, most robust network […] that makes it one of your base investments. Bitcoin, being the OG in the space, is another base investment.”
The Real Vision co-founder singled out LUNA, AVAX, SOL, and MATIC as tokens worth keeping tabs on this year. He also cherry-picked the QNT token used to settle payments and pay transaction fees on the cross-chain network Quant as another promising asset.
“We’re seeing these layer-1s, stuff like Terra, Avalanche and probably Solana. I think maybe 2022 is going to be the year of interoperability, so we’re looking at Polygon, Quant.”
‘The year of the sovereign wealth fund’
Pal further observed that more financial institutions and other institutional investors like wealth funds would find their way into cryptocurrency. He particularly ear-marked those from the Middle East markets, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and UAE.
The former Goldman Sachs executive additionally forecasted a generally good year for the decentralized finance sector and the blooming NFT industry.
The latest remarks from Raoul Pal echo his comments from a November interview with Ash Bennington. The Real Vision chief held, at the time, that Ethereum could see a general price rally lasting until June this year.
He also argued that the Solana, Avalanche, Terra, and Cardano (excluded in the latest prediction) would see a meteoric rally in the same period. Pal, however, warned against betting on these Ethereum alternatives, justifying that even though they present a good investment opportunity, they carry more risk.
“Other layer-1s like Solana, Terra, Avalanche, Cardano, and some of the others are going to be super explosive […] But in a risk-reward basis, they’re riskier. They’re not as deep a network as Ethereum is.”
To learn more about these tokens visit Investing guides on Solana, Avalanche, Terra, Polygon, and Cardano.
