“Raiders”
Ripple experienced a surge in price on February 29, reaching its peak at $0.63 and ending the month with a 30% gain. However, the decline in Bitcoin dominance could lead to even greater gains for leading altcoins like Ripple’s XRP in March.
Investors are starting to shift their capital towards the altcoin markets, which is expected to result in significant gains for XRP in March 2024.
Bitcoin dominated the crypto market headlines in February, achieving various price milestones and record-breaking ETF inflows. However, as the month came to a close, market trends indicated that investors were increasingly focusing on other sectors within the cryptocurrency market.
TradingView’s Bitcoin Dominance (BTC.D) chart provides real-time insights into investors’ risk appetite and investment preferences by expressing Bitcoin’s market capitalization as a percentage of the overall cryptocurrency market.
Since reaching a high of $64,000 on February 28, BTC.D has decreased from 55.2% to 54.3% as of March 1.
During this period, while the price of Bitcoin retreated to around $60,000, altcoin markets experienced significant growth. As shown in the chart, the decline in BTC.D coincided with a $175 billion inflow into the altcoin market, resulting in an 8.5% increase in the overall crypto market capitalization.
When Bitcoin’s dominance declines alongside a surge in the crypto market, it indicates that altcoins are gaining more prominence. This unique market dynamic demonstrates that as the crypto bull market intensifies, investors are growing more confident and allocating more capital towards altcoins.
In the past month, all altcoins in the top 10 rankings, including Ethereum (ETH), BNB, Solana (SOL), and Cardano (ADA), have reached new yearly highs, with XRP currently trading around the $0.60 range. To reach its previous peak of $0.65, XRP’s price would need to increase by another 9%.
Recent trends in the derivatives markets show that speculative traders have become more bullish on XRP since the decline in Bitcoin dominance on February 28. The funding rate for XRP spiked from 0.04% to 0.10% between February 27 and March 1, according to Santiment’s data.
Elevated values of favorable funding rates typically indicate that XRP long position holders are paying higher fees to short traders in order to keep their positions open. The last time XRP’s funding rate reached above 0.08% was in August 2023. Such consistent and prolonged spikes in the funding rate occur when leveraged long traders are confident that spot prices will rise in the short term, leading to substantial profits.
If this bullish scenario unfolds, XRP’s price could potentially reach a new peak above $0.65 in 2024, aligning with the performance of other altcoins in the top 10 market valuation rankings.
