Investors now view BTC as the go-to trade, rotating their capital to alts for just a few weeks before returning to the leading coin.
Since late 2024, market experts have predicted the arrival of a massive altcoin season. The year 2025 is almost coming to an end, but its predictions have not yet come true. In fact, it seems that there will be no alternate season as most altcoins have performed poorly in this bull cycle.
According to a tweet from cryptocurrency investor and trader Daan, only 29% of the top 50 altcoins have performed better than BTC this year. Traders remain hopeful, but since the bull cycle is in its final stages (based on the four-year cycle pattern), the chances of an alternate season have decreased dramatically.
Are Altcoins doomed to failure?
In past cycles, altcoins performed better when BTC lost its dominance as liquidity shifted from the asset to other projects. This led to the theory that Bitcoin’s dominance must weaken and the asset must consolidate before altcoins can move. However, in this cycle the opposite has mainly occurred.
With the exception of a few tokens, the altcoin sector has largely followed the dynamics of bitcoin: rising and falling along with the reigning cryptocurrency. In some cases, they have even performed worse than BTC during corrections, plummeting twice as much as the asset.
Investors now view BTC as the go-to trade, rotating their capital to alts for just a few weeks before returning to the leading coin. Over the past six months, the percentage of top 50 altcoins that have outperformed BTC has been capped at 39%. Altcoins now experience brief rallies that do not exceed two or three months. More recently, these price increases have lasted only two or three weeks at best.
A different confinement
In contrast to this cycle’s data, altcoins had a massive rally during the last bull run. Daan noted that the COVID era in 2020-2021 was the last time the altcoin sector outperformed BTC for a sustainable period. Now, analysts have labeled most alternatives as “bounce to sell.” Tokens that have seen sustained rallies are mostly projects with good structure and community support.
Interestingly, some analysts predicted this pattern earlier this year. One of them is Ki Young Ju, founder of market research company CryptoQuant. Ju revealed during the market rally in December that this cycle’s alternate season will not play out as expected. He insisted that most altcoins will no longer be powered by BTC, but will need to build independent ecosystems to grow.
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