Litecoin increased 5.67 per cent and XRP gained 6 per cent, as per Coin Metrics

Bitcoin and ether were flat on Wednesday, while altcoins rose.

Litecoin increased 5.67 per cent and XRP gained 6 per cent, as per Coin Metrics. The Sandbox token climbed 4 per cent. The price of the Axie Infinity token gained around 8 per cent. Among the Ethereum rivals, the Solana token added 2 per cent, Cardano’s ada gained 3.5 and the Polkadot token climbed 3 per cent.

On Wednesday Ripple, the global payments firm behind XRP, declared its buyout of Metaco, a Swiss crypto custody services company. The deal is expected to provide Ripple with access to clients such as Citi and BNP Paribas and extend its global footprint.

Crypto price action has been comparatively muted for the last month, in spite of volatility returning a bit recently because of thin liquidity in the market. Despite this, realized 30-day volatility for bitcoin as well as ether is off their record lows of the year, as per Glassnode.

With that, some investors have turned their focus away from bitcoin and toward smaller and newer tokens, or “altcoins.” This is a recurring time in the bitcoin cycle called “altcoin season.”

Like macro markets, juggling strong stock prices with growingly weak economic data points, the crypto market is also dealing with duality. There are some indications of frothiness, stated Noelle Acheson, author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter.

Especially, earlier in May ether rallied for a short duration and the Bitcoin blockchain witnessed a record peak in daily transactions amid a soaring interest around memecoins and NFT-like tokens on the Bitcoin network known as ordinals.

Despite these indications of froth, activity is subdued, Acheson further said. Prices are more than 10 per cent lower on the month, and volumes are trending lower.