Teach me some crypto history. Did alts price rise in the past when BTC was rising or are there any other patterns showing up?
Everybody's talking about altseason but i'm not sure if i understand the term correctly.
Which tools do you use to track you coins?
Thank you!
There's no hard and fast rule that always applies. However it is quite often the case that a big rise in Bitcoin price is then followed by a big rise in altcoin price. Not always, just quite often. As to why this happens, I think the main reasons are that a) Bitcoin is the usual gateway from fiat, and b) Bitcoin is by far the biggest coin in terms of total market capitalisation (price of 1 coin multiplied by the number of coins).
For point a), an example is new money coming in. If you have US dollars or some other fiat currency, and you want to buy some crypto, chances are you'll buy Bitcoin. Some other coins can be bought directly with $, such as Ethereum, but generally Bitcoin is the way in. This means more people wanting to buy Bitcoin, which causes buy pressure (demand from buyers is more than the supply available from sellers), which pushes the price up, whilst altcoins will remain unchanged. This is often what happens with an early bull market caused by new money coming into crypto. Bitcoin is the gateway, and Bitcoin price rises.
For point b), I mean that because Bitcoin is so much bigger than any altcoin, it sort of forces point 'a'. Mainstream news about crypto tend to focus on Bitcoin. 'Bitcoin was worth $X and is now worth $Y', etc. I'm sure you've seen the headlines from time to time. Bitcoin becomes bigger because it is already the biggest.
... so what happens after this? As Bitcoin rises and altcoins stay relatively stable, or alts increase by a smaller amount, the gap between Bitcoin and alts increases. Alts start to look underpriced. If one Bitcoin used to buy you 100 Ethereum, but it now buys you 1000 Ethereum, then Ethereum starts to look like a bargain - irrespective of the dollar price - and this causes buy pressure on alts, and alts then rise in price. The increasing gap causes alts to look cheap, and this is I think what causes 'alt season'.
Purely guesses and personal opinion though. Nothing in crypto is certain