The cryptocurrency markets appear to be in the midst of the fabled Christmas rally, with many altcoins surging 10% or more over the past 24 hours while Bitcoin stabilizes above $4,000. Although the latest rally is certainly a welcome change from the recent downturn the markets have experienced, there is still a long way to go before they reach their one-year highs.

Bitcoin Trades Flat, Could Retrace in the Coming Days

At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading up 2.5% at its current price of $4,100. Bitcoin’s ability to stabilize above $4,000 has contributed to the altcoin rally, which has led BTC’s market dominance to drop to 51% from its one-month highs of over 55%.

Although Bitcoin is not currently leading the markets, one popular cryptocurrency analyst on Twitter, The Crypto Dog, recently told his 107k followers that he wants Bitcoin to pullback further before he enters any long positions.

“BTC, so far just ‘little pullback’ and though it may be over cautious of me and I miss the rest of the rally, I want to see it go a bit deeper before I start taking long positions vs $USD again - ideally closer to 50% retracement,” he said, further predicting that Bitcoin will trade sideways until Christmas, and then retrace further.

Despite this, The Crypto Dog noted that he is currently long on multiple altcoins.

Altcoins Rally, XRP and Ethereum Lead the Markets

Bitcoin’s stability has allowed the altcoin markets to rally, with today’s surge being led by Ethereum and XRP.

At the time of writing, Ethereum (ETH) is trading up nearly 8% at its current price of $143.5 and is trading up 54.3% from its seven-day lows of $93.

Ethereum’s bullish performance over the past couple of days can likely be traced to its upcoming Constantinople fork, which will reduce the number of block rewards and in turn decrease the new ETH supply.

Alex Krüger, a popular economist who focuses primarily on the cryptocurrency markets, told his followers that in the long run, Constantinople will be bullish for Ethereum’s price.

“Ethereum's Constantinople fork is coming on block 7080000, around January 16, 2019. Constantinople will reduce the block rewards from 3 to 2, decreasing new $ETH supply accordingly. On the long run, this is decidedly bullish,” he said.

Along with Ethereum, XRP is also one of today’s best performing cryptocurrencies and is trading up nearly 11% at its current price of $0.413. XRP is up approximately 27% from its seven-day lows but has fallen slightly from its daily highs of $0.446.

If the markets can trend upwards for the coming weeks, it could set an overall positive tone for how the crypto markets will fare in 2019.

All the cryptocurrencies mentioned in this article are available to trade on covesting.io