Altcoins Ready to Break Out as Ethereum, Arweave Lead Rally

After Bitcoin (BTC) had its run, at least for the moment, altcoins are starting to see some gains. While Ethereum (ETH) may not be leading the charge, the number two in crypto-land has seen some solid gains.

ETH is up almost 10% in the past seven days and is now closing in on the USD $3k (AUD $4.6k) mark—at the time of writing one ETH changes hands for USD $2,938.50 (AUD $4,503.17). It has been almost two years since ETH has seen these numbers.

Bitcoin Has Guiding Impact

The ETH and altcoin rally comes as the Bitcoin halving nears and the entire sector is starting to gain traction. Meanwhile, the gaming narrative seems to be heating up, and this of course an Ethereum layer-2 domain. Immutable zkEVM is a good example—the gaming-focused layer-2 is powered by Polygon’s zkEVM—which is going to be an interesting development worth watching.

But many analysts believe ETH is still largely depending on Bitcoin for price discovery. Just like popular analyst Ben Cowen said in a recent video and 10x Research analyst Markus Thielen confirms.

Crypto-equity stocks are still undervalued and will likely continue to attract buyers and attention from Wall Street, especially after the strong earnings beat from Coinbase. […] Bitcoin is the critical directional influencer.

Markus Thielen

Trader RektCapital’s analysis however suggests that the successful retests in the altcoin market cap—marked by green, yellow, and blue circles on the chart below—indicate a positive outlook, implying that further upward trends in altcoin valuations are expected. Each retest that confirms support or breakout levels reinforces investor confidence, contributing to the anticipation of continued growth in the altcoin sector.

Arweave Takes the Lead

Staying with altcoins, and Arweave takes the lead, gaining over 23% in the past 24 hours, overtaking Worldcoin—which itself has seen impressive gains on the back of the release of AI video tool Sora.

Arweave (AR) offers a blockchain-based solution for permanent data storage, diverging from traditional blockchain focuses to provide a decentralised, immutable network.

It uses a Proof of Access (PoA) consensus for security and data permanence across multiple nodes. AR, the network’s cryptocurrency, facilitates transactions with a one-time storage fee, ensuring indefinite data preservation without recurring costs.

Just recently the network marked its three-billionth transaction and has also seen some exciting developments around hyper-parallel computing. This combined with a resurging interest in storage tokens accounts for the strong growth of AR.