Altcoins Sell Off As Bitcoin And Ethereum Hodls

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At the time of writing, it looks like a selloff in altcoins is taking place. This retracement was due to come sooner rather than later as we’ve warned about multiple times last week. At this moment, the striking feature is that Bitcoin (and even Ethereum) seem to HODL whilst smaller altcoins are clearly having the ground pulled from underneath them.

#bitcoin only down 0.6% today

pretty wild tbh pic.twitter.com/E8OIu1ExHv

— Mike Dudas (@mdudas) February 15, 2021

Like a Tuesday

For those of you that are new to the cryptosphere, this is what a retracement looks like. I remember Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson explaining on one of his AMA sessions via YouTube a few weeks ago that institutional investors were surprised at the speed of swings in GameStop (during the Wallstreetbets versus Hedge Funds Short Sellers saga), as that stock would surge by 50% in a day and then retrace 30% afterwards.

Hoskinson said that:

In the cryptosphere, that is like a Tuesday.

There are no circuit breakersin crypto which stop everything during a 20% fall. This is not for the weak-at-heart.

We’re probably entering (I think) a brief and minor correction now, but we’re still in the midst of a violent bull run that will soon be more violent. Here’s a thread on psychology and health.

— Ari Paul ⛓️ (@AriDavidPaul) February 15, 2021

The fact that a coordinated action by whales can mean a selloff can start at any point combined with the fact that altcoins have rallied for most of 2021 so far (except for a few minor days), it was to be expected that this correction would come at a certain point.

The strange thing though is that whilst altoins are losing between 10 to 20% at this point, Bitcoin seems to hold and is losing no more than 3% . Even Ethereum can stem it’s losses to 4 to 5%. Looks like institutional money is buying the lower price points up easily of the two most famous cryptocurrencies.

As the founder of BlockTower Capital, Ari Paul, wrote earlier today:

We’re probably entering (I think) a brief and minor correction now, but we’re still in the midst of a violent bull run that will soon be more violent.

Dogecoin

One of the hardest hit was of course Dogecoin. The memecoin that has seen a spike in celebrity endorsements over the past weeks, was down almost 16% at the time of writing, but is still trading much higher than its average over 2020.

Looks fishy to me I’m HODLING #DOGE #DogecoinToTheMoon #dogetothemoon and congrats #DOGEFAMILY we are trending nice work!! #dogetinesday pic.twitter.com/t2PW8xG3J5

— Queen Doge (@QueenDoge2) February 15, 2021

If this correction would last longer than 24 hours, then don’t be surprised if we come out of this with certain altcoins down 30 to even 50 percent whilst Bitcoin might be resting around the $20k to $30k range. It will be interesting to see where most coins find support, and which coins will get wiped out.

With stock markets closed in the US for President’s Day, expect American media to glee as crypto sells off.