Now that the global crypto market cap has once again fallen back to the $2.43 trillion mark, there is a lot of talk about an upcoming altcoin season.
Although the CoinMarketCap Altcoin Season Index – which defines Bitcoin or altcoin season based on the top 100 altcoins against Bitcoin over the past 3 months – stood at 32, the hype was still building.
If you look closely, the index has switched to an altseason since January 2026, only from March 16 to March 31. The rest of the time, the index merely indicated an ongoing Bitcoin season.
Additionally, TradingView’s Bitcoin Dominance chart has also been trading strongly over the past 90 days and has not fallen below 58%. Also at the time of writing, BTC.D was at 59.54%, indicating that Bitcoin season was strong.
The crypto community is considering an altcoin season
However, analysts in the crypto market think differently.
One of the well-known crypto analysts used the MACD indicator and found that “such a bullish crossover of MACD on the OTHERS vs. BTC chart was already formed in 2020.
As expected, the analyst added:
After that, we saw a legendary altcoin season. It’s happened again.
Echoing similar sentiments, another trader said the coming months will be “life-changing.” He predicted that Bitcoin in the next 6-12 months [BTC] will touch $150,000, Ethereum [ETH] will break $5000, and Solana [SOL] will reach $500.
The trader added even more to his prediction, noting:
Altcoins will explode.
Not everyone is sailing on the same boat
Needless to say, not everyone echoed similar sentiments as highlighted by another well-known analyst, who said:
Stocks are up 30x per year, while Altcoins are down -98% from their 2021 high.
He expressed his frustration and even went further, noting how five years of holding on led to him losing everything.
Outright bashing the crypto market, the analyst quoted:
Worst crypto bull market ever.
Recently, data aggregator CoinGecko also put it best when it noted:
Bitcoin’s all-time high of $126,000 is over, but altcoins are still in the gutter.
Requirements for a real altcoin season
Ergo, for altcoin season to actually happen, first and foremost, the most popular coins over the past 90 days must include some big names from the altcoin space.
Furthermore, the Altcoins Exchange Inflow Transaction Count (7-day cumulative) chart from CryptoQuant (CQ) also showed that altcoins faced strong selling pressure. Simply put, investors clearly moved more altcoins onto exchanges to sell, without a strong accumulation phase.
This sentiment was further confirmed by CQ’s 3-Month Taker Buy/Sell Strength by Coin (Normalized) chart. Altcoin, including SOL, Sui [SUI]Cardano [ADA]TRON [TRX]and Stellar [XLM] in red, showed continued selling pressure.
But despite such numbers, many still argue for an altseason, noting:
Altcoins will outperform $BTC.
Final summary
- Analysts and traders are calling for an altcoin season, but the numbers point to an ongoing Bitcoin season.
- To actually make it an altcoin season, selling pressure must be minimized with stable rebounds.