A widely watched indicator has moved into “altcoin season,” for the opposite reason suggested by the label. Glassnode’s Altcoin cycle signal, which hovers above 50 when alternative coins, or alts, outperform bitcoin, has climbed to 86. Alts are not rallying. Bitcoin is falling faster than them.
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The signal tracks relative performance, so alts can lead either by increasing or decreasing less. This is the second case. After nearly two years of decline, alts are running out of sellers and stabilizing, while bitcoin has fallen sharply, falling back towards $63,600, according to CoinDesk data. Bitcoin, as Glassnode puts it, “still does most of the work.”
In a true altcoin season, capital turns into smaller tokens as they rise. This is the hollow version, where the reading becomes bullish for alts because Bitcoin is selling off, which is bearish for the market as a whole. Relative strength is not a rally.
Until alts start rising on their own rather than holding steady while bitcoin falls, the signal says more about bitcoin’s weakness than demand for anything else.
