They Say It’s Altseason. But What Does That Really Mean?

The Altseason Index, as calculated by Blockchaincenter, has hit its maximum possible value: 100 out of 100.

Sounds like that should settle the debate about whether an altseason is happening this cycle. Case closed: altseason isn’t coming — it’s already here. In fact, it doesn’t get any more “altseason” than this.

And yet… why aren’t my altcoins pumping?

Where’s the profit I was expecting from TON, ATOM, ICP, TRUMP, and a dozen other coins sitting dormant in my portfolio? Why haven’t they taken off?

Something doesn’t add up. Maybe I don’t actually understand what altseason means?

What Do People Usually Mean by Altseason?

The best-known Altseason Index defines altseason using a pretty straightforward method:

• It takes the top 50 cryptocurrencies (excluding Bitcoin, stablecoins, and wrapped tokens),
• Checks whether each one has gone up in price relative to Bitcoin over the past 90 days,
• If a coin has gone up — it scores 2 points, if it’s down — 0 points,
• If the total score is above 75 — then it’s officially altseason.

Right now, the score is 100. That means every single coin in the top 50 has outperformed Bitcoin over the last three months.

In other words, 90 days ago, you would’ve been better off investing in a basket of top altcoins than in BTC.

But it’s important to understand what the index doesn’t say:

• It doesn’t predict the future.
• It doesn’t tell you whether your altcoins are going up or down.
• It doesn’t account for dollar performance at all.

So:

• If BTC goes up, but altcoins go up even more — it’s altseason.
• If BTC goes down, and altcoins stay flat — still altseason.
• If BTC crashes hard, and altcoins also fall but slightly less — yep, still altseason.

At least, according to this index.

However, the average crypto investor usually imagines something completely different. In the public mind, altseason means that all (or most) altcoins are skyrocketing together — mooning fast and all at once.

That’s where the disconnect comes from: “If this is really altseason… then where are my 10x gains?!”

Why Do Altseasons Happen?

The two most famous altseasons — in 2017–2018 and 2020–2021 — happened when two key conditions lined up:

1. Traders lost faith that Bitcoin could keep growing in the short term;
2. Altcoins still looked promising and full of upside.

Let’s go back to 2017. Bitcoin started the year around $1,000 and climbed all the way to nearly $20,000 by December. Even that $1,000 level in January already felt high to many — and as the price soared, confidence in continued upside began to fade. “Isn’t it too late to get in now?” became a common question.

Same story in 2020–2021. After the COVID crash in March 2020, you could buy BTC for $4,000. By April 2021, it had hit $64,000. Again, the sheer speed of that growth made many investors skeptical: how much higher could it really go?

Meanwhile, altcoins still gave people hope.

• In 2017–2018, altcoins promised new technologies Bitcoin didn’t offer: faster transactions, higher throughput, smart contracts.
• In 2020–2021, it wasn’t just tech, but real use cases: DeFi, NFTs, metaverses.

And here’s something most newcomers don’t know. Back in 2017–2018, many altcoins could only be bought with Bitcoin.

That might sound strange today. If you trade on modern exchanges, you know that you often can’t even swap BTC directly for a newly listed altcoin. You have to go from BTC → USDT, then USDT → altcoin. Unless, of course, you’re using rabbit.io, where you can swap anything into anything:

• BTC to Kaspa? Sure.
• BTC to Render? Easy.
• Kaspa or Render to Monero? No problem.

In 2017, there were no widespread stablecoins. Bitcoin acted as the universal bridge between assets. So, if you wanted that hot new altcoin — you had to sell your BTC.

This led to a joke at the time: “Altcoins exist to trick us into giving up our Bitcoin.”

Traders began selling BTC and piling into alts. Altcoin prices, measured in BTC, surged. And that’s what people started calling altseason.

The earliest mention of altseason I could find was in a YouTube video by Carter Thomas titled “Alt Season 3 — Will It Happen?”, published on the Coin Mastery channel on March 2, 2018.

The term stuck — and was later applied to the market conditions of 2020–2021, even though the mechanics had changed.

By then, most major altcoins were traded directly against USD or USDT, so you no longer needed to sell your BTC to buy alts. Altcoins were rising against Bitcoin not because BTC was crashing, but because demand for BTC was cooling off — speculators no longer saw it as having much upside — while demand for altcoins was heating up.

Money was flowing into altcoins from two main sources:

• Newcomers entering the market and choosing alts over BTC,
• Traders who had already profited from Bitcoin’s rise — but instead of withdrawing to fiat, they chose to “reinvest” that profit into altcoins.

And of course, exchanges had every reason to encourage that. They didn’t want users cashing out — they wanted them to keep trading.

So they flooded their platforms with “educational content” about all the new DeFi opportunities. Just like in The Wolf of Wall Street — “don’t let them take the money out!”

And so, even though the underlying mechanics were very different, both cycles earned the same label: Altseason.

What they had in common was simple: Altcoins outperformed Bitcoin for a sustained period of time.

These conditions have occurred outside the two most famous cycles — the Altseason Index chart shows several other periods when top altcoins were rising against Bitcoin. But for some reason, the term “altseason” is rarely applied to those times.

Is What We’re Seeing Now an Altseason?

Will the second half of 2025 go down in history as an altseason? Metrics say yes. But vibes — not so much.

So what is it — an altseason or not?

Well, there is one thing this period has in common with the two most iconic altseasons of the past. It’s been more than a year since the most recent Bitcoin halving. And historically, that’s about when the bull trend in BTC fades and the bear phase begins. Right now, many traders are bracing for a reversal — meaning they’re not betting on 10x gains from Bitcoin anymore.

But there’s a major difference, too. There’s no strong narrative in the altcoin space right now that could spark real hype.

Take a look at the coins that have outperformed Bitcoin over the past year. According to CryptoRank, the 10 biggest gainers vs BTC include:

• 4 meme coins
• 3 DeFi tokens
• 1 token from a social network
• 1 AI agent infrastructure token
• 1 token for a data banking ecosystem

That’s not a theme — that’s a mess.

Yes, meme coins are leading the pack. But can they really be the driving force of a new altseason? They’ve been around forever. It’s hard to imagine what new twist could attract mass attention at this point.

If there is a strong candidate for the next narrative, I see potential in a different direction: the concept of token buybacks.

The idea of regular token buybacks is gaining traction — and it might catch on in crypto culture. After past altseasons left many retail traders stuck with bags of worthless tokens they couldn’t offload, the promise that devs will regularly buy back supply from the open market could spark new hope.

But here’s the big question. Can the buyback narrative scale fast enough to ignite a full-blown altseason?

If yes, tokens with real buyback mechanics might become the stars of this cycle — like DeFi tokens in 2020 or platform coins in 2017.

Sure, it won’t be an altseason for everything. But if more teams start aligning their tokenomics with this new story, we could see a much broader and brighter rally.

What else do you think could drive this altseason?