Small Cap Altcoins Still crypto market kings, significantly outperforming Bitcoin
Small cap altcoins have continued to perform the best of all indices recently, while Bitcoin has accumulated the least returns.
All Altcoin indices managed to outperform Bitcoin recently
According to the latest weekly report from Arcane Research, the small cap’s outperformance has been driven by Asia-related tokens. The “altcoin indices” refer to groups of altcoins divided based on their market capitalization.
The indices, three in total, are based on the Bletchley indices and together represent the top 70 coins in the sector. The “large caps” index consists of the 10 largest tokens, while mid caps are the next 20, and small caps account for the remaining 40.
The main advantage of grouping altcoins like this is that the combined performance of the different sides of the market can be easily compared to each other this way.
Now, here’s a chart showing how the three altcoin indices (and Bitcoin) have done over the past 30 days:
Looks like the small caps have done significantly better than the rest in recent days | Source: Arcane Research's Ahead of the Curve - February 21
As shown in the graph above, overall, all of the altcoin indices have performed well over the past month, as they have all racked up double-digit gains over the period. But performance has certainly not been uniform across these groups.
Small caps have maintained the biggest returns over the past 30-day period, but the gap between them and the rest has widened, especially in the last week or so.
Currently, these alts stand at 28% in the green for this period. The next best, mid caps, have managed gains of around 13%, which, while still quite substantial gains, are much lower than what small caps were able to achieve.
The report notes that the strong performance of VeChain (VET) over the past week is one of the main driving factors behind mid caps ending up as the second strongest performer in the market.
Large cap altcoins and Bitcoin were the worst performers over the past month, as they were only able to accumulate profits of around 10% and 9% respectively.
A big reason for the small caps outperforming the rest has been the strong upside of Asia-related tokens over the past week. For example, Neo (NEO) has seen massive gains of nearly 58% during this period.
The report explains that this strong performance by the Asia-related coins has come after Hong Kong signaled more cryptocurrency-friendly regulation, creating a narrative of increased participation by Asian traders in the market.
BTC price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $24,100, up 9% in the past week.
The value of the crypto seems to have declined during the past day or so | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
Featured image from Art Rachen at Unsplash.com, Charts from TradingView.com, Arcane Research
