Why BTC and ETH Outshine, While Altcoins Struggle in 2024

However, the collapse of many key institutional lenders (e.g. BlockFi, Celsius, Voyager, Genesis) hampered the speculative demand these same lenders helped fuel. Though we’ve started to see signs of a recovery, with new entrants like Coinbase’s institutional financing business, this area remains tepid compared to just a few years ago. In addition, today’s higher rate environment offers less incentive to move money on-chain into a choppy market, especially when the alternative is getting paid 5% on your cash or stablecoin holdings to wait and see.