Here's why crypto altseason might be on the way

The altcoin market is starting to show signs of growth. According to data provided by Arcane Research and collated by Luno, mid-cap coins—defined as any cryptocurrency with a market capitalization between $1 billion and $10 billion—performed better than any other type of cryptocurrency in January.

In fact, these mid-cap coins gained an average of 68% in January, whereas Bitcoin (BTC) gained 27.8% during this time.

Among the top 50 altcoins, ICON and IOTA led the market in terms of growth, racking up 196.3% and 110.7% respectively throughout January. Much of IOTA's growth appears to be related to a secret project based on the platform known as only as JINN. Although details are scarce at the moment, according to Crypto News Flash, JINN appears to be a new type of microprocessor used for the Internet-of-Things and IOTA. It has also launched the alphanet for a more decentralized version of its network (an event known as Coordicide).

Not all altcoins saw such strong gains in the last month, with Cosmos (ATOM), Waves and Augur (REP) only managing to gain between 1-3% apiece.

Eroding Bitcoin's market dominance

Overall, this rapid growth in the mid-cap market has started to erode Bitcoin's market dominance. The percentage of the market that Bitcoin occupies has fallen from a peak of 69.13% last month down to just 66% at the end of the January. It is now at 65%.

If Bitcoin's market dominance continue to fall, and dropped as low as 62%, this would be its lowest value since July 2019.

In the chart above you can see when Bitcoin's market dominance suddenly dropped in both 2017 and 2018. It's hard to predict altcoin seasons since they typically sudden rise out of nowhere but there are signs that altcoins are starting to bounce back.