As the cryptocurrency market is showing signs of bullish continuation on Jan. 15, Raoul Pal, the CEO of Real Vision Group and an avid Bitcoin (BTC) investor, is optimistic most the price of Ether (ETH). Pal  also says he's looking to add "higher risk alts."

ETH/USDT iv-hour toll nautical chart (Binance). Source: TradingView.com

Is an altseason coming?

Post-obit Bitcoin's rally higher up $42,000, many alternative cryptocurrencies, or altcoins, have indeed performed strongly, which is historically in line with altcoins performing well in Q1.

The rally of altcoins has in part been led past the momentum of Ethereum. After ETH surpassed a major resistance level at $600, information technology continued to rally above $i,000.

ETH is at present close to reaching its all-time loftier above $ane,400, rising 60% in the commencement two weeks of 2021. Pal wrote:

"By the way, ETH is upwardly 60% in the beginning 14 days of the year. I call up information technology outperforms all year simply I nonetheless ain much more than BTC but accept been adding to ETH. Next end will exist higher take chances alts.... but much much smaller. More than risk = smaller size."

Mayhap due to the improving market sentiment around ETH, altcoins have also performed particularly well in the by week.

Equally Cointelegraph reported, large-cap altcoins, such every bit Polkadot (DOT) and Creation (ATOM) take seen big gains against both Bitcoin and the U.Southward. dollar so far in Jan.

Aave, YFI, Sushi daily sentiment vs. Tweet volume. Source: TheTie

At the same time, decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens, such as Aave, Yearn.finance, and SushiSwap heavily outperformed both Bitcoin and Ether in the last two weeks with data confirming a continuous rise in sentiment and social media activity in recent months.

Meanwhile, the uptrend of DOT and Cantlet could be driven by the frenzy around DeFi tokens, because that the demand for alternative blockchain networks has increased.

The Ethereum blockchain network has become increasingly congested every bit of late, every bit the user activity on DeFi protocols significantly rose to push button up fees in the process.

BTC vs. ETH (orangish), DOT (blue), AAVE (yellow), YFI (royal) yr-to-date. Source: Tradingview

Protocols like Aave, SushiSwap, and Synthetix saw rapid growth since November, propelling Aave and Synthetix to billion-dollar market caps.

Wangarian, a upper-case letter allocator at the DeFi-focused fund Disobedience Capital, told Pal:

"In all seriousness, Decentralised Finance will blow your mind if you confront the negative bias associated with altcoins. High quality ones: $AAVE $SNX $UNI $YFI."

What's next for ETH and altcoins?

On Jan. 7, in a tweet thread, Pal said that he believes Ether could attain $x,000 to $20,000, if it follows the aforementioned cycle as Bitcoin.

Pal pinpointed Metcalfe's police force, which states the issue of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system, to support a bull case for Ether. He wrote:

"Ooops... ETH looks just similar BTC - Metcalfe's Law seems to be the key to price for both ETH And BTC… Simply ETH market cap is growing faster than BTC at the same signal ( from beginning 1m active addresses). 'Oh shit, really? Is ETH identical in price structure to BTC when information technology had same number of active addresses?? Simply, but ,I thought it was a worthless shitcoin???.'"

Although there is no specific correlation between Ether and the rest of the altcoin market, if Ether grows to a trillion-dollar blockchain protocol, major projects developed on top of Ethereum could grow proportionally.

Near notably, DeFi tokens would likely do good the about from Ethereum'due south network effect and rapid growth if it grows at the pace of Bitcoin in 2016.