Altcoin Season occurs when top alternative cryptocurrencies, or ‘altcoins’ outperform Bitcoin for three months straight, a phenomenon that every crypto trader plans ahead for. Every four years, Bitcoin undergoes its ‘Halving’ event, a pre-programmed moment when the issuance of new BTC to bitcoin miners is cut in half, causing an economic supply shock that sends BTC into a speculation bubble.
The bubble is driven primarily by retail investors, who are mostly motivated by hype and media manipulation tactics convincing them to buy as much as possible while they still can, and the rapidly rising price of BTC only fuels their FOMO. People go into debt, bet life savings, empty their children’s college funds, and withdraw their retirement accounts to ride the bubble, forgetting that what goes up must always come down, and when crypto comes down it crashes harder than any other asset class. Underestimating this phenomenon results in most people getting wrecked by crypto, while the few who understand it make enviable gains.
During Bitcoin bull-markets, each ‘leg’ of the bubble will always peak, crash, and then trade sideways, at which point Altcoin Season begins. As Anycoin Direct explains, Altcoin Season is confirmed when 75 percent of the top 50 altcoins outperform BTC for 90 days in terms of total market value, and can be tracked by a chart provided by Blockchain Center. Often, Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency ETH (ether) is the first to pop, followed by the top 50 altcoins. However, it is not these altcoins that excite crypto traders during Altcoin Season. It’s the smaller cryptocurrencies that make crypto fortunes, but only for those who got in early.
How Does Altcoin Season Work?
Altcoin Season flows through the crypto market in waves, beginning with the largest market cap tokens and working down to the smallest projects, which can be…
