Most of the headlines in this recent cryptocurrency rally have been grabbed by the biggest coin, Bitcoin. Its January gains of 30 percent were heralded, and it’s recent move above $10,000 and as high as $10,300 at time of publishing has many investors excited for the future.

However, there is also a bubbling undercurrent of altcoins that are managing to ride the coattails of this new year rally. Many smaller altcoins have outperformed Bitcoin by many multiples, and are boosting the entire ecosystem. This has led many to believe the days of altcoin action may be returning following the ICO boom, then bust, of 2017/18.

The biggest gainer in the last few days has been Tezos which is up as much as 54 percent in the last seven days. It was also a big gainer in January, but was bested by Bitcoin SV grew to almost double its value – 187 percent in 31 days.

Usually, when there is a Bitcoin rally, certain smaller altcoins have been known to spike by huge amounts, but these coins are quite obscure and fall low in the market cap rankings. This time, the coins that are rallying alongside a moderate Bitcoin are found in the top 10 and top 20.

Branching out?

There are mixed feelings about the boom of altcoins. Some believe it is a good thing as many of these blockchains have certain niche’s that could be gaining traction and starting to be realized as the technology grows and is normalized.

If this is the case, coins like Tezos and Dash, which have grown more than 150 percent YTD, would be growing for the right reasons.

Tezos is one of the fastest rising blockchain networks at the moment and for good reason and we’ve been overhanded on it since the beginning of the year,” Analyst Mati Greenspan told Cointelegraph.

“Many of the new security token offering (STO) and tokenization projects are being built on it and the token economics are quite favorable as well.”

Dangerous investments

However, some of the coins which are benefiting from this rally are less favourable and have garnered a lot of scepticism from the general crypto community. The likes of Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Gold, have both had good returns, but are seen as controversial coins.

Recently, Bitcoin Gold was the subject of a rather large double spend hack while Bitcoin SV’s price seems heavily linked to the comings and goings of its own controversial head, Craig Wright.

