Investors who knew when to swap Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins could have boosted their gains significantly in 2020, co-ordinate to new inquiry from eToro, the popular social trading platform. The challenge, of course, is pinpointing when the coveted alt flavor begins.

In its latest quarterly report, eToro breaks downwards various cryptocurrency investment themes related to the 2020 balderdash market. It also devotes an entire section to alt season – the function of the cryptocurrency market cycle where altcoins rally against the dollar and, mayhap, outperform Bitcoin.

The research found that the top 100 altcoins, when held every bit, were "a more lucrative investment" than BTC for most of 2020 – until Dec. 18, to exist precise. However, investors who knew when to bike from BTC to altcoins and vice versa could have almost doubled their gains for the year.

As eToro explains:

"If you started with bitcoin, with but two swaps the entire twelvemonth – bitcoin to altcoin in May, and back into bitcoin in September – the 3x or 4x gains seen by either investment grows to over 7x."

Although eToro admits that predicting alt season and BTC flavour is notoriously difficult, the research looks at various metrics that may assistance investors pin-indicate market cycles.

Relative trade volume, social media action, new coin listings and the number of news manufactures published from crypto projects appear to have an impact on whether altcoins are nearly to have their time in the sun.

Of course, merchandise volumes present a classic chicken or egg situation, as it's not always clear whether trading activity is increasing organically or but because the price is rise.

On the topic of social media activeness, eToro uses information from The TIE, a crypto analytics company, to compare altcoin tweet book versus Bitcoin.

The information suggests that "alt season may be defined past the relative number of tweets well-nigh altcoins," the written report says.

It continues:

"This metric seems to not just capture the May and October swaps, but also potentially the short alt season in late February."

Dogecoin (DOGE), the meme-based cryptocurrency, has hogged the social media spotlight of late. Last calendar week, DOGE became the first altcoin to surpass Bitcoin in terms of daily trade volume, co-ordinate to The TIE.

Regarding exchange listings, eToro used The Necktie's data to bear witness at that place was a "articulate increase in the number of listings in late summer" 2020, which was during the aforementioned period that altcoins outperformed BTC the nearly significantly.

Spikes in news stories published directly by cryptocurrency companies also appears to exist correlated with alt season. "This makes intuitive sense," eToro says, as these articles usually pertain to project updates and other large announcements.