Bitcoin saw a sharp decline this month, accompanied by a decline in its dominance rate, the share of BTC’s market capitalization relative to the total cryptocurrency market.
A lower dominance rate is often interpreted as investors moving away from bitcoin and into altcoins, fueling speculation that an “alt season” is coming.
Analysts caution, however, that this decline does not necessarily mean a simple rotation. Instead, many see the market as undergoing a reset, a broader realignment rather than a simple shift from BTC to altcoins.
According to analysts, price data, cross-pair performance, and on-chain activity all point to a regular deleveraging cycle instead of the opening stages of an altcoin season.
According to market data from CoinDesk, BTC has fallen almost sixteen percent over the past month, with its dominance rate dropping from 61.4% to 58.9%. Tokens such as ether , , and Solana recorded deeper losses.
XRP/BTC is one of the few pairs to show significant strength, while ETH/BTC has only pulled back slightly, indicating selective resilience rather than a widespread change in leadership. The market is absorbing the leverage that began with the October sell-off rather than moving into a risk-driven rotation.
“Bitcoin’s decline this month reflects a general deleveraging that began with the October selloff. Since then, the market has declined as leverage is removed,” Rohit Apte, head of markets at Hex Trust, told CoinDesk in a Telegram interview.
Apte says we’re not quite in altcoin season yet, as most altcoins have underperformed bitcoin and ether on a relative basis.
“For any sustainable rotation to alternatives, we would first need to see the majors stabilize and establish price consolidation,” he continued.
On-chain metrics reinforce this picture.
Blockscout data provided to CoinDesk shows that the Ethereum ecosystem is active but not overheating.
Base stands out as the current hotspot, processing approximately nineteen million transactions per day and seeing an increase in token creation through Coinbase’s Launchpad and Smart Wallet tools, according to data maintained by Blockscout. Other major networks, including Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Celo, are stable and process millions of daily transactions without increasing fees.
This context suggests that the market is neither in distress nor entering the kind of speculative fever that usually fuels an altcoin cycle. A true altcoin season tends to coincide with rising fees, visible chain congestion, and a surge in activity across multiple networks at once.
Currently, traders appear to be reducing their exposure without aggressively moving into higher beta assets, a sign that caution remains the prevailing sentiment.
Until BTC and ETH settle into a firmer range, the market appears poised to drift sideways rather than engage in the kind of momentum that leads to a true alt season.
