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I agree with the supply burden mentioned by bori. I think we could look at that not just by the number of assets, but also by changes in circulating supply for a single token.

CoinGecko's official formula is Circulating Market Cap = Current USD Price x Circulating Supply. For smart contract tokens, the circulating supply is calculated by subtracting locked tokens from the total supply, using information provided by project teams for locked addresses. They mention that unverified supply amounts are marked with a '-'.

The numbers below are purely hypothetical. If the price is $10 and the circulating supply is 100, the market cap is $1,000. If 50 locked tokens are added to the circulation and the price remains the same, the market cap becomes $1,500. While the price remains flat at 0%, the market cap increases by +50%. Conversely, if we calculate with a fixed market cap of $1,000, the price would be approximately $6.67.

This isn't a prediction of price drops following an unlock, but rather two sensitivity calculations breaking down Price x Circulating Supply. I should verify the official token unlock contracts, schedules, and definitions of circulating supply, then map out the scheduled unlocks, actual circulation, and prices for the same dates. Also, we shouldn't assume that everything unlocked has been sold.

Even if stablecoin activity increases, we can look at whether that actually translates to increased altcoin buying separately.

The ERC-20 transfer function records the sender's address, the recipient's address, and the amount, while totalSupply is a separate query field. The format itself doesn't indicate whether a payment or swap took place.

If we look at a single ledger, when 100 tokens move from A to B, B to C, and then C back to A, the total transfer volume is 300. Assuming no other movements or minting, the number of tokens entering from outside A, B, and C is 0, and new issuance is also 0.

This doesn't mean all movements are fake; they could have been used for payments. However, by recording internal transfers, inflows/outflows across group boundaries, minting/burning, and actual altcoin swaps in separate columns when looking at the same period's ledger, we can avoid conflating 'increased activity' with 'altcoin demand.' Since a single transaction might fall into multiple columns, we don't calculate total inflow by simply adding up the values in each column. Anything where the address owner or swap status cannot be verified is left as unclassified.

If an altcoin swap is verified, this path could be a clue linking it to altcoin trading activity, but net buying or price increases would need to be confirmed separately. This isn't to say I've analyzed the ledger right now; it's just a calculation example.

When discussing altcoin rallies, it's hard to conclude that an increase in futures funding rates directly indicates money flowing into the spot market. According to Bybit's USDT perpetual futures explanation, the funding fee is calculated by multiplying the position value by the funding rate. If the funding rate is positive, long positions pay short positions.

I didn't pull current figures; I just used a hypothetical calculation. If the position value remains at 1,000 USDT and you pay 0.01% every settlement period for three periods, you'd pay 0.10 USDT each time for a total of 0.30 USDT. This excludes any PnL from price movements or trading fees.

This 0.30 USDT is just the funding fee accumulated to maintain that position; it's not money entering the altcoin spot market. Settlement intervals can also vary by asset, so I didn't assume that paying it three times necessarily equates to a full day's worth.

Therefore, I prefer to look at the metrics for an altcoin rally separately from the costs incurred by maintaining futures positions.

If you want to compare the previous altcoin season to the current one, I don't think you should recreate a historical basket using only the projects that survived until today.

Looking at the historical snapshot on CMC from November 7, 2021, you can see the rankings, names, symbols, market caps, prices, and circulating supplies from that time. I think starting from a list with a fixed date like that would be a good approach.

For example, let's say you started with 100 in A, B, and C, and later they became 200, 50, and 0 respectively—this is just a hypothetical, not actual snapshot return data. If you calculate including all three, you went from an initial 300 to 250, which is about -16.7%. But if you calculate it as if you only picked A and B from the start, 200 became 250, resulting in +25%. It’s the same situation, but the results vary significantly depending on which ones you keep in the calculation.

I set C to 0 just as an example. I'm not saying we should automatically count delisted coins as 0. To compare properly, I think we need to set the list of projects and their weights at the start, and track delistings or mergers separately. We should also mark instances where price data is unavailable, because if you just remove them, the returns might look better than they actually were.

If it's an altcoin bull market, I want to see if the trade size holds up, not just the price on the screen.

Binance's official spot documentation shows the price and quantity for buy/sell orders, while recent actual trades are listed as a separate item including price, quantity, and time.

Hypothetical sell orders: 10 units at $1, 20 units at $1.02, 70 units at $1.10
Cost for 10: $10 → Average $1
Cost for 30: $30.4 → Average approx. $1.0133
Cost for 100: $107.4 → Average $1.074

The difference compared to the initial quote increases to 0%, approx. 1.3%, and 7.4%. This is a static calculation without fees and is not an actual order.

Fix the asset and quantity, and compare this curve across different times with actual trades. If the price is rising but the cost difference widens significantly at higher quantities, that asset might be experiencing a thin rebound rather than thick liquidity. Keep in mind that orders can be canceled, so this doesn't guarantee actual execution.

I think we need to define our criteria for an altseason to avoid confusion. CoinMarketCap looks at the top 100, excluding stablecoins and wrapped tokens, and checks the ratio of coins that have outperformed BTC over the last 90 days. They include ETH and use 75% as the threshold for an altseason.

But that's just CMC's criteria. Since a decrease in BTC dominance and various alts outperforming BTC are different things, we should also look at spot trading volume.

I’m in the camp that believes we won’t see another altseason like we used to.

Of course, that doesn't mean alts won't go up at all...

Back then, it felt like money flowed in a specific order—BTC rising, followed by ETH, then major alts, and finally the smaller coins. But it feels like the market has changed now.

For starters, there are just way too many coins. Looking at CoinGecko, over 11 million tokens went inactive in 2025 alone. At this rate, even with fresh capital coming in, it’ll be hard for the entire market to rally like it used to.

Also, even with institutions entering crypto, it’s questionable whether that money will actually flow into the alts we're holding. Wouldn't it more likely just pile into BTC or a few select majors?

Sure, some coins might still pump 10x or 20x, but can we really call that an altseason?

The definition of "altseason" is subjective and ambiguous anyway. People try to set standards for it, but it just feels like everyone’s just pushing their own narrative.