Altcoin Season Unlikely as No Catalyst for Gains: Bitget COO


The crypto markets are unlikely to see an altcoin season where “everything will go up,” as many traders are now focused on narrower trends or are just focusing solely on Bitcoin, according to the operating chief of Bitget, one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges.

“I don’t think there will be an altseason,” Vugar Usi Zade told Cointelegraph at the Token2049 conference in Singapore on Wednesday.

“The whole idea that ‘this is altseason […] and everything will go up because it’s altseason,’ we won’t see that, and I’m very firm in that.”

“I don’t think we will see that huge pump, unfortunately, because there’s no logical reason behind it,” he added.

“There haven’t been any technological advancements. We haven’t seen any big things coming out of projects. Why would the price go up? Just because now it is the time? It’s not.”

Historically, altcoins — crypto tokens other than Bitcoin (BTC) — have rallied alongside Bitcoin. Altcoin season refers to the period when altcoins surpass Bitcoin due to their larger risk-to-reward ratios.

Crypto “seasons” over as Bitcoin decouples

Usi Zade said the crypto market is “moving very much away from seasons,” with shorter, more frequent cycles, as the crypto market no longer trades in tandem with Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin is its own rally; its impact is almost zero on the rest of the market,” he added. “Bitcoin decoupled not only from the stock market, but it also decoupled from altcoins.”

“We’ve seen so many instances that Bitcoin is the only one in the green, and then the entire market is red. Money is not flowing from Bitcoin down to the alts.”

It’s likely that crypto rallies, or seasons, will start to be based around popular narratives, with only those tokens involved in the sector that’s trending seeing gains, Usi Zade said.

Vugar Usi Zade speaking on stage at Taipei Blockchain Week in September. Source: Vugar Usi Zade

“Today, we talk about RWA [real world assets], probably there will be a portfolio of RWAs going up, but that doesn’t extend to anything else,” he said.

Market attitude change needed for sustainable altcoins

Usi Zade said that crypto investors think in short cycles, making it “almost impossible” for projects to sustain themselves in the long term, as the market expects them to be profitable within a matter of months.

“It took Amazon more than 10 years to become profitable, and now we want a crypto venture to do that in eight months,” he said. “That is the biggest problem, the way the entire market is built.”

He said traditional businesses often see their initial investors sell to other venture firms when exiting, which helps keep companies flush with capital. However, with crypto, it “happens the other way around” with tokens immediately available to retail investors.