Isn't that actually false? Don't you have to pay capital gains even on crypto to crypto gains?

So it wasn't so much as people were buying these alt coins but just the fact that BTC and ETH rose in value which caused the altcoins to rise in value as well?

I was looking at the price history of the top 50 coins and they all seem to have very similar price charts. They all seem to have spiked up the first half of this year even if they have been around for several years. My question is what caused all these altcoins to surge up in value so much?