Litecoin, XRP and other altcoins are surging, and the “blue” bitcoin is entering a lull

While bitcoin and ether were flat on Wednesday, altcoins rose.

Litecoin rose 5.67% and XRP added 6%, as measured by Coinmetrics. The Sandbox token jumped 4%. The price of the Axie Infinity token added about 8%.

Among Ethereum competitors, Solana token gained 2%, Cardano’s Ada added 3.5% and Polkadot token jumped 3%.

Ripple, the global payments company behind XRP, on Wednesday announced the acquisition of Metaco, a Swiss crypto custody service. The transaction is expected to give Ripple access to clients such as Citi and BNP Paribas and expand its presence abroad.

Cryptocurrency price action has been relatively subdued over the past month, though volatility has returned a bit recently due to poor liquidity in the market. However, the 30-day realized volatility for both bitcoin and ether was outside record lows for the year, according to Glassnode.

With that, some investors have shifted their attention away from bitcoin and toward smaller, newer tokens, or “altcoins.” This is a recurring period in the Bitcoin cycle known as “altcoin season”. In recent months, many have viewed bitcoin and ether as assets called “blue chips” or “journeys to safety” in cryptocurrencies.

“Like macro markets, stock prices resilient with increasingly bleak economic data points, the cryptocurrency market is also dealing with duality. There are some signs of froth,” said Noelle Acheson, author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter.

Specifically, earlier this month, the price of ether rose briefly and the Bitcoin blockchain saw a record high in daily transactions amid increased interest around memecoins and NFT-like tokens on the Bitcoin network called ordinal.

“Despite these hints of froth, activity is low,” Atchison added. “Prices are down over 10% in the month, and volumes are trending lower.”

Bitcoin and ether continued to move around the flatline on Wednesday at the $27,000 and $1,800 levels, respectively.