The most counterintuitive part of this round of knockoff (“shanzhai”) strength is whether it’s truly “money coming in,” or whether “the money inside is simply turning over faster.”
Glassnode’s observation is that the total spot trading volume across the market is now close to 4 times Bitcoin’s—its strongest reading since September 2025. The conclusion: “spot traders are rotating into altcoins.” But within the same dataset there’s an easily missed footnote: historically, this kind of pursuit of high-risk assets often appears around the local top of $BTC .
The signals from derivatives look quite different. On September 6, the open interest of altcoin perpetual contracts briefly exceeded Bitcoin’s for the first time since December 2024. But by September 23, although 72.5% of the tracked altcoins had outperformed $BTC within a week, the perpetual open interest of the native tokens had barely grown over the prior 30 days. This suggests the rally is mainly powered by spot activity, not built by leveraging and piling on.
Some analysts disagree, arguing that a higher spot share doesn’t necessarily mean stronger demand—it could just mean holders are accelerating their turnover. They also point out that the number of weekly deposits across the whole market has risen to the highest level since last October. More deposits in terms of direction are closer to “preparing to sell” rather than “preparing to buy.”
I tend to believe that spot-driven momentum is indeed more resilient than leverage-driven momentum, but its Achilles’ heel is that it’s hard to tell “who is buying.” If the surge is mainly accomplished through turnover rather than incremental capital inflows, then it needs more fuel than it might look at first glance.
So here’s a practical question for you: when judging whether the rotation is real, do you prioritize open interest or exchange net inflows?
#Altcoin Season Index Holds Above 60 for Five Straight Days
Glassnode’s observation is that the total spot trading volume across the market is now close to 4 times Bitcoin’s—its strongest reading since September 2025. The conclusion: “spot traders are rotating into altcoins.” But within the same dataset there’s an easily missed footnote: historically, this kind of pursuit of high-risk assets often appears around the local top of $BTC .
The signals from derivatives look quite different. On September 6, the open interest of altcoin perpetual contracts briefly exceeded Bitcoin’s for the first time since December 2024. But by September 23, although 72.5% of the tracked altcoins had outperformed $BTC within a week, the perpetual open interest of the native tokens had barely grown over the prior 30 days. This suggests the rally is mainly powered by spot activity, not built by leveraging and piling on.
Some analysts disagree, arguing that a higher spot share doesn’t necessarily mean stronger demand—it could just mean holders are accelerating their turnover. They also point out that the number of weekly deposits across the whole market has risen to the highest level since last October. More deposits in terms of direction are closer to “preparing to sell” rather than “preparing to buy.”
I tend to believe that spot-driven momentum is indeed more resilient than leverage-driven momentum, but its Achilles’ heel is that it’s hard to tell “who is buying.” If the surge is mainly accomplished through turnover rather than incremental capital inflows, then it needs more fuel than it might look at first glance.
So here’s a practical question for you: when judging whether the rotation is real, do you prioritize open interest or exchange net inflows?
#Altcoin Season Index Holds Above 60 for Five Straight Days