Altcoin Season Unlikely as No Catalyst for Gains: Bitget COO

The crypto markets are unlikely to see an altcoin season where “everything will go up,” as many traders are now focused on narrower trends or are just focusing solely on Bitcoin, according to the operating chief of Bitget, one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges.

“I don’t think there will be an altseason,” Vugar Usi Zade told Cointelegraph at the Token2049 conference in Singapore on Wednesday.

“The whole idea that ‘this is altseason […] and everything will go up because it’s altseason,’ we won’t see that, and I’m very firm in that.”

“I don’t think we will see that huge pump, unfortunately, because there’s no logical reason behind it,” he added.

“There haven’t been any technological advancements. We haven’t seen any big things coming out of projects. Why would the price go up? Just because now it is the time? It’s not.”

Historically, altcoins — crypto tokens other than Bitcoin (BTC) — have rallied alongside Bitcoin. Altcoin season refers to the period when altcoins surpass Bitcoin due to their larger risk-to-reward ratios.

Crypto “seasons” over as Bitcoin decouples

Usi Zade said the crypto market is “moving very much away from seasons,” with shorter, more frequent cycles, as the crypto market no longer trades in tandem with Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin is its own rally; its impact is almost zero on the rest of the market,” he added. “Bitcoin decoupled not only from the stock market, but it also decoupled from altcoins.”

“We’ve seen so many instances that Bitcoin is the only one in the green, and then the entire market is red. Money is not flowing from Bitcoin down to the alts.”

It’s likely that crypto rallies, or seasons, will start to be based around popular narratives, with only those tokens involved in the sector that’s trending seeing gains, Usi Zade said.

“Today, we talk about RWA [real world assets], probably there will be a portfolio of RWAs going up, but that doesn’t extend to anything else,” he said.

Market attitude change needed for sustainable altcoins

Usi Zade said that crypto investors think in short cycles, making it “almost impossible” for projects to sustain themselves in the long term, as the market expects them to be profitable within a matter of months.

“It took Amazon more than 10 years to become profitable, and now we want a crypto venture to do that in eight months,” he said. “That is the biggest problem, the way the entire market is built.”

He said traditional businesses often see their initial investors sell to other venture firms when exiting, which helps keep companies flush with capital. However, with crypto, it “happens the other way around” with tokens immediately available to retail investors.

“The token is a separate product. You need to work with the traders and make sure that you are traded and your price doesn’t go down because when your price reaches virtually zero, your product, or your project, is dead, and there’s almost no way to bring it back,” Usi Zade said.

Bitcoin is becoming the only recommendation

Usi Zade said that many in crypto are now recommending newcomers to only hold Bitcoin and are shirking the widely promoted portfolio allocation of 70% Bitcoin and 30% Ether (ETH).

“Now, no one tells you Bitcoin and Ethereum anymore,” he said. “Everyone will tell you just Bitcoin.”

He added that Ether’s price is “much more stable” compared to Bitcoin, which has continued to rally to new highs for nearly a year, leaving investors with “no motivation” to buy ETH.

Bitcoin and Ether’s market dominance have remained relatively stable over the past year. Bitcoin currently maintains a 58% market share, down from a 12-month peak of 65%, while ETH’s market share is 12% gaining from multi-year lows of 7.3% in April, per CoinMarketCap 

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Additional reporting by Ciaran Lyons.