On the morning of Friday, November 22, Ethereum (ETH) surpassed Bitcoin (BTC) in terms of price increase as ETH rose by 8% in the past 24 hours while BTC rose less than that as the market opened today.
The price increase of 8% has pushed Ethereum to a trading level of $3,383.97 while Bitcoin stands at $98,384, aiming for the target of reaching the $10,000 mark it nearly achieved by the end of the day. This ETH price surge has further reinforced speculation about the upcoming 'Altcoin Season' with similar price increases seen in Solana, Cardano, and XRP.
The market capitalization of Ethereum also surged 7.73% to $407.61 billion while trading volume increased 46.45% in the past 24 hours to $51.51 billion as the market opened on November 22.
The growth in value of Ethereum has attracted the attention of investors as they try to track the price surge related to Donald Trump's pro-cryptocurrency policies alongside the ongoing bullish sentiment.
Although the cryptocurrency market has speculated about the Altcoin Season for over a week now, it has not yet materialized as cryptocurrency investors are still hesitant to fully invest in altcoins like XRP, SOL, ADA, and other altcoins because they want to capitalize on Bitcoin reaching the $100,000 mark. Now that this is nearly happening, the Altcoin Season is likely to begin by the weekend.
Data from the past shows that altcoins always experience strong rallies when Bitcoin reaches a consolidation phase after a significant price increase as seen recently. This causes profits to flow into smaller market cap tokens.
As of Friday, Bitcoin's dominance was 60%, leading analysts to forecast that the altcoin season will begin when BTC's dominance falls below 58%. The altcoin season index currently shows a value of 33, indicating that the bullish trend will continue.
All of this points to an increasing acceptance of altcoins even though Bitcoin remains the preferred choice of investors. This could lead to a potential breakout, and the recent ETH price surge could make that happen.
At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading at $3,300, down 1.01% in the past 24 hours with trading volume down 22% to $38.60 billion and market capitalization down to $398.07 billion.
