Strong Rally by Altcoins Helps Bitcoin to Go Over $9,400 for 1st Time in 2 Weeks

On Wednesday (July 8), another strong performance by altcoins, led surprisingly by Dogecoin (DOGE), helped Bitcoin’s price to go above the $9,400 level for the first time since June 24.

Here is the one-month BTC-USD price chart from CryptoCompare:

As you can see in the chart above, Bitcoin had been spending most of the previous one-week period in the range $9,100 – $9,300, and at the start of today (00:00 UTC on July 8), Bitcoin was trading around $9,257.

Although several altcoins—especially tokens belonging to decentralized finance (DeFi) projects such as Aave (LEND) and Synthetix (SNX)—have done very well this year, Bitcoin’s year-to-date (YTD) return on investment (ROI) against USD is +31.24%, which is decent given that the COVID-19 pandemic is still with us and that during the same period the S&P 500’s ROI is -1.88%, but not amazing in the world of cryptoassets when you consider that some altcoins have enjoyed triple digit percentage gains (vs USD) so far in 2020.

Thankfully for Bitcoin HODLers, today was a special day because it was probably the best day for altcoins that we have seen this year, and surprisingly (and disappointingly as far as Bitcoin maximalists are concerned) the strong rally that altcoins enjoyed today was led by none other than Dogecoin (DOGE), which was introduced as a “joke” cryptocurrency in December 2013 even though on 2 April 2019 Tesla and SpaceX CEO called it “pretty cool” and possibly his “fav cryptocurrency” in one of his tweets.

Tyler Winklevoss, Co-Founder and CEO of digital asset exchange Gemini was not too happy that some users on TikTok were encouraging everyone to buy $10 worth of DOGE in the hope that the DOGE price will get to $1, thereby making them thousands of dollars:

Pumping use to be perpetrated by “brokers” sitting in boiler rooms in New Jersey peddling pink sheet, penny stocks. Now it’s done by TikTok bro influencers peddling shitcoins. Yikes.

— Tyler Winklevoss (@tylerwinklevoss) July 8, 2020

However, the Lead Technical Analyst at crypto-focused research firm blockfyre says that the pumping being done on TikTok will help to bring mainstream awareness to crypto in general:

Did I make life changing money in $DOGE? No

Will it trickle down into life changing money as a result to the attention it brought to the space. Probably

Zoomers + Robinhood traders will shower us with their life savings and there is nothing you or your friends can do to stop it pic.twitter.com/WzSXy8FAFx

— ₿ Pentoshi (@Pentosh1) July 8, 2020

And he might not be wrong. Just a few hours ago, even Bloomberg could not stop being excited about Dogecoin:

Much publicity. Very buying. Wow https://t.co/erdZNP6qXW pic.twitter.com/PkPRTqzGvH

— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) July 8, 2020

Once Barstool Sports Founder David Scott Portnoy, whose day trading of stocks in the past few months has captivated U.S. millennials and encouraged many to open Robinhood accounts, had mentioned Dogecoin in one his videos, Jacob Franek, a co-founder of cryptoasset network and market data provider Coin Metrics, tweeted that crypto seemed to indeed have gone mainstream:

Crypto going mainstream #CrypTok https://t.co/UgMrOKDCP1

— Jacob Franek (@panekkkk) July 8, 2020

When you look at the top 30 cryptoassets by market cap and see that every one of them is in the green, you know that that crypto investors and traders are feeling bullish. 

Then, when you take a closer look, and see the kind of gains we saw today—such as XRP up 11.67%, VeChain (VET) up 21.2%, and Dogecoin (DOGE) up 49.76%—it makes sense that many observers in the crypto space believe that alt season is definitely here.

And although it has traditionally been a rally by flagship cryptoasset Bitcoin that has helped the prices of altcoins to go up, this time, it appears to some members of the crypto community that this time things might be different, and that altcoins’s strong recent performance could help Bitcoin to get out of the slump it has been in since June 1 (when its intraday high was $10,221) during the coming days so that it can once again rise above the $10,000 level.

As can be seen in the 24-hour BTC-USD chart below, at 13:50 UTC (on July 8), Bitcoin managed to surge above the $9,400 level for the first time in two weeks: 

As for where the Bitcoin price is headed, one popular cryypto analyst and trader had this to say:

$BTC #BITCOIN

A flip of the $9,200 area is done.

Looks to me likely that we’ll have a continuation towards $9,600-9,700. pic.twitter.com/bqTBshyfxm

— Crypto Michaël (@CryptoMichNL) July 8, 2020

Featured Image by “WorldSpectrum” via Pixabay.com