The crypto market’s “altcoin season” isn’t what it was once. In previous cycles, Bitcoin rallies gave strategy to altcoin booms, lifting nearly each token. Now, new market tendencies counsel these days of indiscriminate features are fading.
Analysts predict a extra selective altcoin cycle – “the era of everything pumping is over.” In an interview with BeInCrypto, Hitesh Malviya, the founding father of the crypto analytical instrument DYOR, stated that retail traders searching for the following large winner should adapt to those evolving tendencies.
How to Find Winning Altcoins Amidst Choppy Markets
Traditionally, altcoin season meant Bitcoin’s dominance fell, and most altcoins surged. That broad rally could also be ending.
“If the idea of a full-blown alt season comes from past cycles, then that’s something I really don’t expect. What we have seen so far in altcoins was simply the blooming and bursting of a bubble that happened over two bull cycles and two bear cycles,” Malviya advised BeInCrypto.
Market specialists foresee a extra nuanced part the place solely the strongest tasks thrive. In quick, as an alternative of a rising tide lifting all boats, the following altcoin season could favor high quality (tasks with actual utilization and income) over amount.
Investors ought to focus on fundamentals like utilization, income, and neighborhood development—the market now rewards substance over hype. Indeed, curiosity in speculative sectors corresponding to meme coins has drastically declined since late January 2025.
“The adoption curve will take a new shape upwards, while the speculative curve will lose its charm, introducing lower volatility in the market, providing more stable returns, and making the market less correlated to stocks. This will create a new asset class in crypto, which should have two major types of asset offerings—tokenized equities with strong cash flow (e.g., AAVE) and store-of-value assets (BTC, ETH),” Malviya continued.
A key motive for the evolution of the altcoin season is that liquidity now rotates between totally different narratives.
Liquidity flows towards compelling tales. There have been mini-cycles the place sure themes catch hearth – meme cash, AI tokens, DeFi tasks, metaverse gaming, and so on. Money chases one sizzling narrative, then strikes to the following.
Savvy traders watch social media, developer exercise, and information to catch rising narratives early and get in earlier than the group.
“Liquidity will always flow into different narratives at different times, as there are multiple categories within crypto—just like in stocks, where some categories always outperform others. The same market dynamics will be seen in crypto as well,” Malviya said.
How to Find Potential Altcoin Season Winner? Identifying Strength in Downtrends
Malviya believes that traders ought to look ahead to altcoins displaying relative power throughout downturns. If an altcoin can maintain its worth and even rise whereas Bitcoin slides, that resilience alerts sturdy demand (probably early accumulation).
“At DYOR, we offer a metric called Optimised Relative Strength, which helps track some of the best coins and narratives that have shown the highest strength in the past 7, 30 and 90 days. Coins that have outperformed against the broader market in the past 30 days have a great chance of rallying when the market finds a bottom and starts a fresh leg up,” Malviya defined.
Moreover, Malviya additionally mentioned different elementary metrics to trace. These embody:
- DEX Volume: Rising buying and selling volumes on decentralized exchanges can push the native token’s costs larger.
- Total Value Locked (TVL): Growth in deposits and complete worth locked implies consumer belief – bullish for the lending protocol’s token.
- Derivatives Volume: Increasing on-chain buying and selling exercise means extra merchants and costs supporting its token.
- Oracle Total Value Secured (TVS): Climbing complete worth secured by an oracle (e.g., Chainlink) reveals a better reliance on it, boosting token demand.
- DePIN Revenue: Actual income from a DePIN project (real-world service) alerts a sustainable mannequin, not simply hype.
Furthermore, Malviya additionally emphasised the tokenomics of a crypto undertaking. He believes that even a terrific undertaking can falter if its tokenomics are flawed.
Tokenomics – a token’s provide and incentive design could make or break an altcoin. Good tokenomics (truthful distribution, sturdy utility) create lasting demand, whereas poor tokenomics (extreme inflation or fixed insider unlocks) typically doom a undertaking.
“Ideally, the community and ecosystem fund should get at least 60% of the supply to generate actual demand for the product by incentivizing developers and users through planned token emissions at different stages. Tokens are actually created to drive real user demand for the product. They can be considered as bribes to get user attention, but since these bribes are also tradable in the market, they can create a ripple effect that could potentially lead to the product’s failure. This happens because retail sentiment often mixes both the product and the token, where, in most cases, the token price eventually determines how much adoption the product gets,” Malviya elaborated.
Lastly, he shares instruments that may assist customers doubtlessly discover the following winner for the altcoin season.
- DYOR – Users can use DYOR to search out relative power knowledge on greater than 200+ cash, detailed demand-side tokenomics knowledge on 70+ cash, and elementary knowledge on 65+ cash, together with detailed analysis reviews on high tasks.
- DeFiLlama – It tracks multi-chain DeFi knowledge like TVL and volumes.
- Dune Analytics – It is a community-driven platform providing customized on-chain knowledge dashboards.
“The community should learn to use DeFiLlama and DUNE dashboards to uncover some interesting alphas. Most on-chain data is tracked on both of these platforms—all you need to do is find the right dashboard, take notes of the different growth metrics you notice, and build your thesis around a coin using that data to reach better due diligence,” Malviya concluded.
Those armed with stable analysis stand one of the best likelihood of catching the following altcoin season winner.
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