NBA Legend Pippen Backs XRP, DOGE, ADA Amid Altseason Push

TL;DR

• Altcoins like Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), and others have recently outperformed Bitcoin (BTC), fueling speculation that altseason has officially begun.
• The NBA icon Scottie Pippen, seen by some as a BTC maximalist, shares that assumption, saying he is bullish on several digital assets.

Bullish on These Altcoins

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price has soared substantially in the past few weeks, briefly surpassing $105,000 just hours ago. It is up 25% on a monthly scale, but some leading altcoins have posted even more substantial increases.

Ethereum (ETH), for instance, has pumped by 40% in the past week, while Dogecoin (DOGE) and other meme coins have charted similar gains. With the altcoins stealing the show from BTC, speculation is growing that the long-anticipated altseason has arrived.

A supporter of that thesis is the basketball legend Scottie Pippen. He asked his over 720,000 followers on X what projects they are bullish on, saying that he pays special attention to Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE), Cardano (ADA), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Mog Coin (MOG), and others.

Some of the users commenting on the post expressed optimism in tokens like Pepe (PEPE), Bittensor (TAO), Sui (SUI), Hedera (HBAR), and more. Others were somewhat surprised by Pippen’s interest in altcoins, considering him mainly a BTC proponent.

The Dream That Almost Became Reality

It was September 2024 when the NBA icon stunned the crypto community with an interesting price prediction involving the biggest cryptocurrency. He said he had a dream with the mysterious creator of BTC, Satoshi Nakamoto, who forecasted that the price would reach $84,650 on November 5 last year. 

At that time, the valuation stood at roughly $57,000, and a 50% rally in such a short period seemed rather unlikely. However, November 5 marked Donald Trump’s presidential victory, which turned out to be the beginning of a massive rally that took BTC to an ATH of almost $110,000 in January this year. 

On the day of the elections, the price soared above $70,000, and less than a week later, it hit the target from Pippen’s dream. 

Around New Year’s Eve, the legendary player of the Chicago Bulls’ dream team in the 1990s made another BTC prediction, this time even more bullish. He envisioned a price explosion to the staggering one million per BTC, thus placing himself among firm advocates of the asset, including Arthur Hayes, Robert Kiyosaki, Cathie Wood, Michael Saylor, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), and more.