The current "altcoin season" has produced serious returns but remains subdued when viewed in Bitcoin terms.

ADA coin, the native token of the Cardano smart contract platform, has joined the altcoin season hitting new all-time highs this week.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows ADA/USD price hitting over $1.70 for the first time on May 7.

Cardano underscores "alt season 2.0" appetite

In a move that an increasing number of large-cap of altcoins are seeking to copy, ADA price gained impressively during the past few days, going from below price of $1.30 to the highs as sell walls disappeared.

Now, analysts are eyeing short-term level targets of $5 as Bitcoin continues to range, giving fuel to an already lively altcoin scene.

"The thing I don't like on Cardano right now: There were a lot of volumes, and now there's not," popular trader Scott Melker said in a note of caution during a market overview earlier in the week.

He added that the ADA/USD price chart nonetheless still "looked fine" but that the pair was currently better suited to investors rather than short-term level traders.

Against BTC, Cardano remains far below its all-time high a trait common to many altcoins despite their U.S. dollar performance. ADA/BTC pair reached 0.000071 BTC in January 2018 and currently resides at a price of 0.00003 BTC.

As Cointelegraph reported, altcoin season action remains led by freak moves on tokens that have seen few or no events from a technical or adoption perspective.

First Dogecoin and then Ethereum Classic became standouts, the latter seeing all-time highs of its own on May 7 as DOGE/USD pair cooled from its recent run.

Famous cryptocurrency names have even taken to mainstream platforms to draw consumers' attention to fundamental differences between Bitcoin and altcoins.

"In terms of Dogecoin price, it's no different than GameStop, where GameStop is a real company but became a bit of a meme with a certain contingent of the retail trading audience," Ryan Selkis, founder of analytics platform Messari, told CNBC on Thursday.

Bitcoin's BTC dominance of the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization meanwhile continues to decline, hitting one-year lows below 45%.

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