A closely followed crypto analyst believes that top altcoin projects could soon surge toward higher prices based on one key metric.

Jamie Coutts, the chief crypto analyst at Real Vision, says that “high quality” altcoins could be approaching a market bottom based on the top 200 equal weight index versus market cap ratio.

The top 200 equal weight index tracks the performance of the top 200 cryptocurrencies by market cap relative to Bitcoin (BTC).

He suggests that based on historical precedence, some alts may soon finish correcting and reverse course.

“My small-cap or alt-sentiment chart: the top 200 equal weight index versus market cap ratio chart (top) shows a continuation of the same theme from last month.

• Small cap underperformance is at extreme (blue sub-chart). Yes, opportunities for washed-out high-quality alts.
• While the ratio chart trend is down, until there is a reversal (turns green) an all-out ‘altseason’ is not possible.
• For now, small caps will struggle until BTC breaks the all-time high (still my base case for this year).”

Source: Jamie Coutts/X

The analyst also says that the broader altcoin market may not start to recover until late 2024 or early 2025 based on how many alts are underperforming against the top crypto asset.

“Another lens, my altseason indicator (number of assets outperforming BTC). Again, we are clearly at washed-out levels of negative alt sentiment with only 11% beating BTC in past 90 days.

Usually the bottoming process takes months to resolve before a recovery (expectation late Q4 or early 2025). My analysis points to this being akin to the 2020 pukes versus the end of cycle 2022 collapse.”

Source: Jamie Coutts/X

Generated Image: Midjourney