$BTC | SatoshiMacro's Altcoin Season Index reads 42 today, Lean BTC, as of 7 November 2026. Only 21 of the 50 top altcoins it tracks have beaten Bitcoin's 16.8 percent run over the trailing 90 days. That sits well short of the 75 print needed to call it an actual Altcoin Season.

## What Does "Altcoin Season" Actually Mean on This Index?

The index counts how many of the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap outperformed Bitcoin over the trailing 90 days, then expresses that as a percentage. Bitcoin, stablecoins, wrapped tokens and staked derivatives are excluded, since their returns either mirror BTC or sit near zero and would distort the breadth read. A reading of 75 or above means three in four of the top 50 beat Bitcoin and is classified Altcoin Season. 25 or below is Bitcoin Season. Everything in between sits in two middle bands, Lean Alt and Lean BTC, and 42 lands in the latter.

## Why 75, and Not Something Lower?

On the desk I have watched traders treat any reading above 50 as a rotation signal. The methodology deliberately sets the bar higher. A 50 threshold would fire too often on noise, since markets drift back and forth across the midpoint constantly without any real capital rotation underway. 75 is the stricter convention, tracing back to the original BlockchainCenter design, and it has only been cleared in 8 of the 107 months SatoshiMacro has calculated since January 2018, about 7 percent of the time. Lean Alt readings, 50 to 74, cover another 26 percent, Lean BTC readings like today's 36 percent, and outright Bitcoin Season 31 percent.

## Why Did a 34 Percent Bitcoin Crash Still Count as Altcoin Season?

Here is the quirk that trips people up. August 2022 is logged as an Altcoin Season month, even though it was one of the ugliest stretches of the whole bear market. Bitcoin fell 34 percent over that 90 day window, and almost every altcoin fell too. The index still classified it Altcoin Season because the measure is breadth, not magnitude. It only asks how many of the 50 coins lost less than Bitcoin, never whether anyone actually made money.

Picture a simplified version of that month. Say 30 of the 50 alts fell somewhere between 10 and 25 percent while Bitcoin fell 34 percent. That is 60 percent of the index's universe technically beating Bitcoin, clearing the 75 threshold on some reads of that stretch, while every single position in the book is underwater. Rotating into alts on that signal alone would have moved capital from a 34 percent loss into a slightly smaller loss. It is a real limitation, not a hypothetical one: the index measures relative breadth, never whether the underlying trade made or lost money.

## Has a Real Altcoin Season Happened Since Then?

No. The last confirmed Altcoin Season spell ran March to June 2021, four months, the longest stretch on record. Since August 2022 the index has thrown two near misses, 70 in November 2024 and 71 in September 2025, and neither cleared 75. The most recent Bitcoin Season reading was as recent as January 2026. Four years without a confirmed Altcoin Season, against a backdrop of two genuine near misses, tells me capital rotation into alts has structurally weakened this cycle, likely because spot Bitcoin ETF flows now absorb demand that used to spill over into the top 50 late in a cycle.

## What Is My Actual Read on 42, Lean BTC?

My read is that 42 is closer to neutral than it looks on a four band scale, and it is not a rotation signal worth acting on by itself. The index is explicitly a confirmation tool, not a trigger, since by the time it crosses any threshold the 90 day move behind it has already happened. I would pair it with the Bitcoin Dominance chart, the stock measure to this index's flow measure, before treating any crossing as meaningful, and I would not size an alt rotation off a single breadth number regardless of which way it points.

## What Should You Actually Watch Out For?

Three honest limits worth naming. First, breadth versus magnitude, the August 2022 problem above. Second, the 90 day window is sensitive; SatoshiMacro's own testing shows 30 day and 180 day windows produce materially different readings from the same market. Third, only the top 50 names are counted, so a genuine rotation into smaller, faster moving tokens would never show up here at all.

One more AU specific note if you are thinking ahead to any eventual rotation: swapping BTC for an altcoin is a disposal under Australian tax law, and every swap can trigger a CGT event eligible for the ATO's 50 percent discount only once you have held past 12 months. That is worth modelling before a rotation happens, not after.

SatoshiMacro refreshed this index's full history in September 2026, replacing an earlier approximate reconstruction with real CoinMarketCap month end data back to January 2018, so the historical bands above are measured, not estimated.

https://satoshimacro.com/tools/crypto/cycle-indicators/altcoin-season-index/?utm_source=binance_square&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=autopilot_article

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