Investors now see BTC as the benchmark trade, pivoting their capital to alts for just a few weeks before returning to the leading coin.
Since the end of 2024, market experts have been predicting the arrival of a huge altcoin season. 2025 is almost coming to an end, but their predictions have yet to come true. In fact, it looks like there won’t be an altseason at all as most altcoins have performed poorly in this bull cycle.
According to a tweet from crypto investor and trader Daan, only 29% of the top 50 altcoins have outperformed BTC this year. Traders remain hopeful, but because the bull cycle is in a later phase (following the four-year cycle pattern), the chances of an altseason have drastically decreased.
Are Altcoins Doomed?
In previous cycles, altcoins have outperformed when BTC has faltered in its dominance as the asset’s liquidity shifted to other projects. This led to the theory that Bitcoin’s dominance must weaken and assets need to be consolidated before altcoins can move. However, in this cycle the opposite has usually been the case.
With the exception of a few tokens, the altcoin sector has largely followed the dynamics of bitcoin: rising and falling alongside the king cryptocurrency. In some cases, they have even underperformed BTC during corrections, plunging twice as much as the asset.
Investors now see BTC as the benchmark trade, pivoting their capital to alts for just a few weeks before returning to the leading coin. Over the past six months, the percentage of the top 50 altcoins that have outperformed BTC has been limited to 39%. Altcoins are now experiencing short rallies that last no longer than two to three months. More recently, these price spikes have lasted only two to three weeks at best.
Another bull run
Contrary to this cycle’s data, altcoins had a huge rally during the last bull run. Daan noted that the COVID era of 2020-2021 was the last time the altcoin sector outperformed BTC for a sustained period. Now analysts have labeled most alts as bounce-to-sell. The tokens that have seen a sustained rally tend to be projects with good structure and community support.
Interestingly, some analysts predicted this pattern early this year. One of them is Ki Young Ju, founder of the market research company CryptoQuant. Ju revealed during the December market rally that the alternate season for this cycle will not go as expected. He emphasized that most altcoins will no longer be driven by BTC, but will have to build independent ecosystems to grow.
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