Why Altcoins Might Struggle Even as Bitcoin Soars, Says Andrew Kang

• Andrew Kang predicts altcoins may face a significant downturn, unlike previous cycles, even if Bitcoin hits new highs.
• According to Kang’s analysis, tokens connected to decentralized AI infrastructure might be the next market wave.

Andrew Kang, co-founder and general partner at Mechanism Capital, tweeted a thought-provoking critique of the altcoin market’s current position and future. Kang’s findings call into question long-held ideas that certain bitcoin market trends and heuristics will persist eternally.

Altcoin Update

There is a tendency among humans to believe that patterns and heuristics that have held true before, should always hold true.

One such case was that altcoin market caps (and ETH) should be making new highs in new cycles. Its increasingly clear that this is not… https://t.co/lYSfNLi94G pic.twitter.com/V8aDZWWhdF

— Andrew Kang (@Rewkang) August 16, 2024

Andrew Kang Questions Altcoins Ability to Reach New Highs in The Current Cycle 

Specifically, he challenged the widely held belief that cryptocurrency market caps, including Ethereum (ETH), should reach new highs with each market cycle.

However, Kang believes that this is no longer the case, and that many cryptocurrencies may be on a downward trajectory, analogous to an “euthanasia coaster.” Even if Bitcoin reaches new all-time highs, Kang believes that this does not guarantee that altcoins will follow suit.

This is the first cycle in which the aggregate altcoin market cap has failed to surpass its prior peak, raising the pressing question of whether the altcoin market cap will reach a new low.

While Kang remains unsure about the overall market, he does voice some skepticism about Solana, stating that he does not expect Solana to reach a lower bottom at this cycle’s trough. However, he adds that excluding Solana from the cryptocurrency market cap appears to increase the likelihood that the total market cap will fall to new lows.

Kang continues to predict that the market may bottom out around 2025, with tokens connected to decentralized AI infrastructure driving the following significant wave of growth.

He believes that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will necessitate a powerful and unstoppable infrastructure for a variety of reasons, including communication, value transfer, training, computation and inference, energy markets, and data storage.

Beside that, CNF has previously reported the possibility of a major rise in the Total Crypto Market Cap, citing a prior 174% jump. Institutional interest and stablecoin inflows are considered the key drivers of the possible increase in the entire crypto market valuation.

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