Altcoins and the Crypto Winter: Which One Is the Winner?

The crypto winter has brought many shocks to the market across the board, triggering massive layoffs in companies and sell-offs in digital assets that appeared to be solid in terms of price action.

Bitcoin (BTC) has been treading the negative waters of $20,000, although it remains in a short-term recovery phase about such a threshold, with a market capitalization of over $398 billion, according to CoinMarketCap’s metrics.

But, the altcoins sphere is now catching the attention of the crypto investors around the world, which are pushing for a battle to become the best performer amid the strong red numbers witnessed over the last few months.

Altcoins like Ethereum (ETH) have been strongly plummeting, with ETH exchanging hands around the $1,195 mark after taking out the floor that was set around the psychological level of $2,000.

Also, Dogecoin (DOGE) is visiting the same numbers it tested at the beginning of 2021, around $0.06, after erasing all the gains from the all-time highs of $0.63. Now, it seems like DOGE is finding support at the current stage and wants to pick up momentum amid the rangebound.

Chainlink (LINK) is another cryptocurrency that had been strongly falling during the crypto winter, testing the $7.05 handle – a level not seen since the end of 2021. Moreover, Cardano (ADA) has been underperforming significantly, returning to 2020-year levels following a strong sell-off from a recent leg lower set during the March 28 week.

On other fronts, XRP keeps extending the bearish bias below the $0.40 threshold following a selling wave seen in March, strengthening the dominance of the bears amidst the crypto winter and hovering around the levels tested at the beginning of 2021.

Aside from Bitcoin (BTC), the question is: which altcoin could win the battle after the crypto winter? But, most importantly, which is the most interesting altcoin to invest in during the current market’s environment?

Not a Good Time to Invest in Altcoins?

Speaking with Finance Magnates, Maria Stankevich, the Chief Business Development Officer at EXMO UK, said there is no altcoin, or even BTC for that matter, she would invest in the current market. “With proper risk management, high-risk strategies are good for growing markets but are hardly justified during periods of recession and turbulence. The situation with Celsius and other major crypto platforms highlights the need for sound risk management and careful project selection,” she commented.

Additionally, Stankevich talked about the macroeconomic conditions that could have hurt the crypto sphere: “There is an opinion that the crypto market was affected by macroeconomic conditions, and not by the problems of Celsius. Against the backdrop of the tightening of the Fed’s policy and even just expectations of a key rate hike, many investors are trying to get rid of high-risk assets. Under such conditions, the liquidity of many tokens is reduced, making their prices more sensitive to ‘whale’ sales.”

Andrew Bittner, the CEO and Founder at Home DAO, told Finance Magnates that Ethereum is getting stronger and will likely emerge as the unrivaled champion of Layer 1s. “After this winter, I don’t think anyone is questioning ETH as anything but the main chain to safely build and use, and everyone else has stepped back significantly. Polygon is huge on my mind for its ability to drive the adoption of new projects on their chain even in a market downturn, and its use case for speed and low transaction cost,” he pointed out.

Interesting Altcoin Projects and Web3

Furthermore, Bittner commented on other crypto projects that could be worth watching amid the crypto winter: “Projects like IOTA, which will emerge from its shell because of its pure focus on utility and function and no marketing budget ever will see a large gain once their use case of free transactions and lighting quick speed hits the data and IOT markets for adoption. Helium is another pure use case type of functionality. As their infrastructure across the planet with their unique peer-to-peer wireless network continues to grow, and become more and more stable, the use case for it to start onboarding IOT devices is unparalleled. The Graph is also another huge opportunity for utility. This project has incredible utility being that it is the search engine for data on the blockchain, what I would call ‘the Google of blockchain’ and people are just now beginning to ‘use’ the tool.”

On the one hand, Stankevich said that it is not a good idea to buy altcoins from projects like Avalanche, Near and Polkadot or any from this list. On the other hand, Bittner said that crypto had experienced many runs: ICOs, Altcoins, DeFi, Memecoins, NFTs, but he thinks it is time for the actual use case and utility of Web3.