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Altcoins Are Breaking Out of Bitcoin’s Shadow

For years it seemed like the entire cryptocurrency world was moving in Bitcoin’s wake. As the original cryptocurrency with the highest market cap and highest individual prices, where Bitcoin went, so went the mood of investors across currencies.

But signs are emerging in 2019 that this may no longer be the case. The early part of the year has shown some crypto assets breaking through a key moving average while Bitcoin remained underwhelming. The key moving average specifically is the 200-day trading average. When an asset is trading above its 200-day average, it’s generally understood to be in a healthy market. The 200-day trading average is a key indicator or support levels and resistance levels pointing toward long-term trends.

By mid-March 2019, Litecoin, Ethereum, and several other cryptocurrencies were trading above average in either USD & Bitcoin pairing or BTC pair alone. That means these cryptocurrencies were moving faster than Bitcoin, breaking out from the wake of BTC that’s defined cryptocurrency trends for years now.

LTC and ETH Bull Markets?

As LTC and ETH pull away from BTC, investors should start paying attention to these cryptocurrencies that have built niches for themselves. In the increasingly crowded crypto market, there are a few niches where long-term layers are staking their survival. Litecoin is one of the biggest altcoins on the market, and the mining system is designed to release coins at four times the rate of Bitcoin. Meanwhile, ETH is making itself the first name in cryptocurrency as a business solution, cornering the smart contracts niche.

When you’re looking for a place to buy Litecoin and Ethereum, make sure you use a platform that’s friendly toward users in your country. Living outside of the U.S. can make it difficult to use American cryptocurrency exchanges. If you want to buy Bitcoin in Canada or other cryptocurrencies, you need a platform that allows you to transfer money from Canadian banks using Interac e-transfer. Don’t get stuck waiting days for your cryptocurrency transactions to go through. Get your cryptocurrencies faster using the right platform.

The Story with Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash is the Top 20 coin farthest from achieving a healthy market (trading over its 200-day average), but that’s likely due to the hard fork the coin underwent back in November 2018. The coin split between Bitcoin Cash ABC (which retained the BCH ticker and its history, potentially skewing results) and Bitcoin SV.

The fork was a result of developers and miners coming to a disagreement over software changes; a fork occurs when one group of nodes (computers connected to the network and trading on the blockchain) upgrades the software while another group refuses, operating on the old rules. It’s further evidence that the growth of hard forks due to ideological reasons over cryptocurrency can only be bad for mass adoption and price growth. Developers and miners are going to have to come to terms that they need to agree before crypto can grow into its new role on the market.