Who else noticed?

Tezos is up 118% since January the first.

BNB is up over 38% since January the first.

Litecoin is up 16% since January the first.

BAT is up 10% since January the first.

Bitcoin is hardly up 15% since January the first. 

What the heck is going on here?

There are other alts that I could list here, and all of them outperformed Bitcoin by a decent stretch.

Even DAI has had s pretty good year, up by 0.36% which is quite rare for a stable coin.

That said, why is this happening? And whose fault is it? And will it stop anytime soon?

Here's why:

As any decent crypto trader or enthusiast will note, the price of altcoins is either directly or inversely linked to Bitcoin.

For the directly linked type, the price of the altcoin increases as the price of Bitcoin also increases.

And for the inversely linked type, the price of the altcoin decreases as the price of Bitcoin increases.

Those two statements explain everything in detail. But we have to look beyond the words.

The coins I mentioned above are all directly linked to Bitcoin, and this can be seen in their past price movements.

Of the bunch, BNB is the most closely correlated to Bitcoin, with a correlation factor of just 0.2. This is a very close number, and that means tiny drops in Bitcoin price might wreck BNB traders altogether.

But it also means that rises in Bitcoin's price lead to exponential rallies in it's own price. This is why we can see the rallies we see.

So why are all the rallies not like Tezos? Why is BNB up more than 90% less than XTZ?

Because of the correlation factor of both of them. The closer the correlation factor of the alt is to BTC, the more price fluctuations affect the alts price.

So when will this end?

Theoretically, BTC is in a very strong uptrend now. It has left most of its important supports behind, and is heading to new resistances. Everyone everywhere is bullish on Bitcoin.

But bull markets don't last forever. Analysts say this one will last for 3 months max before we enter a serious correction that will see us land back in resistances that will be turned to supports.

It is when that happens that the alts parabolic moves will be nipped in the bud. But their drops will be much more enormous than that of BTC.

But recall that there are two types of connections to Bitcoin

The inversely connected ones will then experience a big boom. This has been seen in the recently concluded bear market, where coins like ONT, WRX and the like were up in spades while Bitcoin was making me cry.

I hope this post helped answer that question.

Thanks for reading!