To start off, whether we believe crypto is vaporwave or that it will revolutionize the financial system, there is no denying that crypto does sell a dream: to retire, to quit your job, financial freedom or making it, whatever it may mean to someone.
In prior cycles, crypto moved in phases whereby BTC first pumped, followed by ETH, then other majors, smaller majors and finally onchain microcaps. This is what I call the “money trickle effect”.
Getting rich from BTC meant people had more disposable money to gamble their luck with other alts. The latter having much smaller market caps than BTC, meant there’s a good chance it can pull many multiples and make the holders rich. 2021 was a glorious alt season, I’m sure everyone has a story to tell, how their 1000 USD became 100,000 USD in few weeks, before round-tripping everything at the end.
Fast forward to January 2024, the SEC had approved spot BTC ETFs and it kick-started a beautiful bull run in crypto. Everyone was looking to front run tradfi since they couldn’t buy till Spring of 2024. BTC went up, there was a wealth abundance and money trickled to alts.
What happened after the ETFs?
The money got stuck in BTC and ETH. Tradfi could buy spot ETFs and hold. There was, for the first time, no transfer of wealth from BTC to other alts, there was no trickle effect.
We continued to see BTC dominance go higher as BTC outperformed almost everything else.
This meant annihilation and exhaustion to most alt holders as they continued to hold onto the alt season dream, to no avail.
Many other examples.
June 2025 introduced a new scam in the financial space: crypto treasury companies, or as some call them “MSTR copycats”.
These are basically companies riding Microstrategy’s success. The treasury company insiders simply buy their (horrible) stock, then announce that they will buy crypto (eg. ETH), the stock rallies multiple fold over this news and the insiders dump their stock.
The treasury companies resulted in another scenario where money is trapped in crypto (no trickle effect). In this case, they bought ETH.
I am certain that we will never see an alt season similar to 2021 or 2017, with 2024 Q1-2 being the last real alt season. How can the money flow to other alts if it is trapped? There is no genuine money buying crypto, but rather shady entities using crypto’s hype to pump their stocks.
In my opinion, it is desperate people dreaming of alt season since “btc is too expensive” for them and they flunked 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. The only way, in their minds, they can ever escape is if their alt pulled a few x’s in 2025. Holding on dearly to a dream, even if it means going down with that ship.
”But retail is coming”
My friends, we are the retail. No one new is coming.
Welcome to Hive, great post that fits good on this chain
I don't share this view - there's lots of "retail" out there who can be brought into crypto, and all the peddlers of shitcoins are going to try their best to associate their wares with Bitcoin and other successful coins. "Have you seen what Bitcoin has done? Now it's too late, but let me introduce you to MY shitcoin who's going to make 1000x and make a rich man!"
People LOOVE to hear beautiful lies. The crypto industry is full of shameless liers that have a coin to sell by making people believe they buy "the next Bitcoin"
We are not the retail, we are the veterans. I lost a bunch in the 2017 - 2018 altcoin season. I don't see why what worked on me 8 years ago would suddenly stop working.
But the jury is out.
Welcome to Hive!
Interesting viewpoint, but think we will see an altseason again, as soon as the hype for alts come back, alts have a great advantage that they can pump several hundred x, which BTC and ETH cannot so easily any more.
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STOPThe game is too perfect. If there is no alt season why has BNB, Tron, Ethereum, XRP essentially hit alltime highes?
Been paying attention to this lately