Original title: Altcoins Look Dead. That’s the Setup.
Original author: @arndxt_xo
Original translation: zhouzhou, BlockBeats
Editors note: Bitcoin continues to hit record highs, attracting large institutional purchases and driving structural price increases. DeFi is accelerating the integration of AMM and money markets to achieve dual asset utilization and improve capital efficiency. The cross-chain liquidity layer tends to be flatter, and the user experience is smoother. The competition for stablecoin yields is fierce, and institutional yield demand is increasing. At the same time, points and identity verification airdrops have become new means of user growth. The NFT market is weak, and funds are flowing more to Memes with practicality and reward mechanisms. The ecological pattern is gradually evolving.
The following is the original content (for easier reading and understanding, the original content has been reorganized):
Altcoins look dead, and that’s exactly how it’s set up. The market is doing what it does best: testing your beliefs.
Altcoins continue to fall relative to Bitcoin, Bitcoins market dominance hovers near the cycle high, and market sentiment is split between boredom and a radical desire for low-market-cap coins. This is not to say that there will be a bull market in altcoins tomorrow, so dont panic and follow the trend blindly.
We are still in a bull market
Bitcoin is still the protagonist. From ETF inflows to corporate capital allocations (GameStop, Trump Media, Strive), institutional confidence keeps the Bitcoin engine firing.
This is one of the reasons why altcoins are weak, as Bitcoin is grabbing liquidity. Until this narrative cools, Ethereum and large-cap coins will not start, let alone low-cap coins.
Altcoin season will begin after a clear pullback in Bitcoin dominance — not while it’s still consolidating at cycle highs.
Cycles are important, but so is market structure
Indeed: crypto markets follow a roughly 4-year cadence driven by Bitcoin halvings, liquidity conditions, and technology adoption cycles. If you look further out, 2025 looks like the second half of the game, right when parabolic moves start to emerge.
But this is also a period of frequent false breakouts. In 2021, altcoins surged after Ethereum outperformed Bitcoin. Now? Ethereum is still weak against Bitcoin. If you rashly buy low-cap coins before Ethereum reverses, you are too early and exposed.
The smarter approach is to accumulate strength. Pay attention to which large-cap coins are really accumulating funds (such as $AAVE, $UNI, $LINK).
Short-term opportunities are better, but not yet confirmed
Traders are right to focus on the key range. A breakout above the range high could spark a rally in risky altcoins. But this must be done with discipline:
→ Use Bitcoin as a trigger signal instead of a direct transaction object.
→ Choose spot altcoins with clear trends such as $HYPE, $AAVE, and $CRV for low-risk bets.
→ Pay attention to Ethereum’s performance against Bitcoin. Without Ethereum’s strength, there will be no real altcoin season. It’s that simple.
You wont make 200 times your money overnight.
The real asymmetric returns come from being the first to enter the game and investing enough money in a narrative that truly accumulates value:
On-chain perpetual contracts (Hyperliquid, Virtual)
Long-term Ethereum protocol with real cash flow
·DeFi project that actually repurchases (AAVE)
On-chain native winners (Base, Solana, BNB — not small cap yet)
The order in which the altcoin season opens is: Bitcoin hits an all-time high (completed), then Ethereum breaks out (pending), large-caps rise (there are signs), mid-caps follow, and finally low-caps rise straight up.
We are now roughly between stage one and stage two.
Be patient and add to your position during pullbacks.
Weekly Updates
Capital efficiency is the new arms race
AMM (Automated Market Maker) and money markets are merging: EulerSwaps LP as collateral model and Hyperdrives loan versus portfolio concept point to a future where idle liquidity is unacceptable. Strategic advice: Emphasize this fusion in your content - Every asset should achieve double returns.
Bitcoin DeFi begins to move from narrative to practical
Mezo’s Bitcoin-backed MUSD and the acceptance of cbBTC in the Liquity fork show that developers are finally treating Bitcoin as a useful collateral, not just digital gold. If your audience is focused on yield, you can describe Bitcoin as “the new US Treasury bond in the crypto world” — securely collateralized and able to generate yield.
Hooks and modular infrastructure
Uniswap v4 hooks (Gamma) and Bittensors Uniswap porting on EVM show that permissionless expansion is giving rise to CEX-like functionality. Content perspective: Customized trading interfaces are expected to explode - position your tweet as Why hooks make every DEX a platform.
Cross-chain liquidity layer is flattening
Maldas cross-chain lending, Katanas VaultBridge, and Starknets USDC-to-Bitcoin bridge all replace the user experience of traditional bridges with native abstractions. Trends worth noting: Liquidity no longer cares about which chain it is on. Suggested content entry point: When users cant see the existence of the chain, the chain war is truly over.
The stablecoin yield war intensifies From TermMaxs 19% yield, to Ripples RLUSD incentive, to Pendles 20x multiplier, fixed-income style DeFi is maturing rapidly. For ultra-high net worth clients (such as Libertas), it emphasizes institutional-level returns without custodial compromises.
Points, tasks and airdrops are still the key to growth
Lagranges verifiable AI tasks and Humanitys palmprint gating hint at a Sybil-resistant reward system. In marketing, the shift to authentication airdrops is advocated to distinguish it from the rampant and disorderly airdrop activities.
· RWA and institutional bridges continue to expand
Curve’s Plume, Origin’s revenue buybacks, and Ripple’s RLUSD all integrate traditional finance mechanisms into DeFi infrastructure. Asset-backed narratives continue to attract attention — highlight transparency and real returns in your RWA content.
Narrative Overview Bitcoin is setting new all-time highs, but most crypto traders are extremely tired. This split in sentiment makes sense: almost all charts that retail investors pay attention to are altcoins, most of which have been range-bound for months. With summer approaching, traders are used to thin order books and sudden selling, so the Twitter timeline is full of tension.
Treasury Gold Rush
It seems like we have returned to 2020. In the past week, GameStop, SharpLink, Strive, Blockchain Group, and even Trump Media have collectively reserved more than $3 billion to buy Bitcoin directly. Their logic is simple: with cash actually depreciating by 5% and long-term bonds almost maintaining their value, Bitcoin is the only mainstream liquid asset that has beaten inflation in five years.
The impact of this asset migration is huge:
One is to absorb spot supply, just as ETF funds flowed in at the beginning of the year, making each additional satoshi more difficult to obtain.
Second, it sets a risk benchmark for fund managers: “If a retail investor known for hyping meme stocks puts 5% into Bitcoin, why can’t we?”
This is expected to transform the previous cyclical rebound into a more structural slow rise. Ironically, the better Bitcoin performs, the more likely the altcoin season will be delayed; although the dominance shows signs of peaking, the real holders are CFOs, not retail investors who frequently change positions.
The War for Capital Efficiency: AMMs Eat Money Markets
As treasurers continue to buy Bitcoin, DeFi designers spent May blurring the lines between swaps, staking, and fixed income.
Euler integrates Uniswap-v4 hooks into its lending engine, making LP tokens automatically become lending collateral - instant liquidity, no idle TVL. Hyperdrive allows Hyperliquid traders to use USDe or USDT 0 leverage dormant perpetual contract collateral, and Maldas ZK-driven borrow and lend layer makes cross-chain bridges a user experience detail.
The implication is that any asset in a smart contract should be used twice: once for exposure and once for revenue. This makes protocol users more sticky, professional arbitrageurs compress spreads, and reduce risks to move closer to real assets.
Liquidity Migration: The Quiet Rise of Layer-2
Hyperliquid’s TVL climbs every week, Base trading volume grows steadily in the Virtual ecosystem, and BNB chain DEX data explodes (Polyhedra’s growth is mainly due to bot wash trading competing for ZK points).
Ethereum is still the center of capital flow, but these flows are to large-cap currencies such as AAVE, UNI, LINK, PEPE, etc. The retail farm selling season has shifted to the sidechains, and the mainnet has become the main street.
Meme Velocity, Buybacks, and Beta Hunting
AAVEs governance-driven buybacks have made the token an institutional favorite, bringing the cleanest spot inflows since early spring. The meme split into two camps: rotation leaders (PEPE, VIRTUAL, SPX 6900) where institutions can intervene and abstentions (DINNER, Fartcoin) where retail investors speculate until the music stops.
An interesting phenomenon: the capital flow on Solana is more dispersed - MEWs Robinhood listing, JUPs continuous faucet, and potential stocks like BRETT and KAITO are attracting attention. If you are doing growth content, emphasizing this fragmentation can distinguish it from the Ethereum-centric narrative.
NFTs: The Forgotten Frontier
Ordinals popularity has faded, trading volume has remained flat, and old whales are unable to support the reserve price. In the absence of new easing policies or new stories to reposition JPEGs as practical tools rather than ostentatious assets, the funds that previously chased NFTs have turned to Memes with a points system.
