BTC/USD strong, but why are the altcoins lagging?

Now we're through the early European session data dump, we can get finally sink our teeth back into some of the newsworthy themes that I brought up in today's daily market themes blog.

I've wanted to chat a bit of cryptocurrencies and with bitcoin smashing through resistance and hitting the $8,000 psychological handle, now's the perfect time to do it:

So here's the relevant extract from the earlier blog I've linked to above:

"Cryptocurrency divergence between bitcoin and the rest

There's a lot of nerves from crypto traders about how weak the bitcoin markets (essentially cryptocurrencies that aren't Bitcoin) compared to BTC.

On both the way up, we got used to seeing the altcoin markets following bitcoin and then outperforming. But now on the way down, it's been more of the same in reverse. Altcoin investors are burning.

What's even more worrying is the fact that now Bitcoin is finding some bullish support, the alts are going in the opposite direction.

It's cyclical to a point, but I've got some charts to go through later to hopefully settle some nerves."

So to the charts, take a look at both the BTC/USD chart and then the following EOS/USD chart. EOS is one of the bigger altcoins and shows the point I'm trying to make really well.

First bitcoin:

I just feel that the divergence between bitcoin and the alts is down to the fact that BTC/USD has been at resistance in an overall downtrend and the alts are therefore just anticipating a move lower.

We've been here before a few times in this trend and as the alts follow bitcoin, they aren't going to show strength at an area where sellers are expected to come into bitcoin.

Look at EOS:

It's the same double top pattern, but the altcoin is waiting for bitcoin's lead.

Now that bitcoin has broken out of this structure, I can see the alts rallying to catch back up.