Coins such as Zcash and Quant, along with some other tokens, have risen, but Liu says their gains are highly isolated and do not confirm a broad rotation into altcoins.
Analyst Dennis Liu, who posts on X under the name VirtualBacon, says altcoin season has not started yet because the average altcoin is only about 10% ahead of Bitcoin since the leading cryptocurrency hit its low.
According to him, a handful of strong coins are making the market look hotter than the data supports.
### Most altcoins are still lagging behind Bitcoin
Leo’s argument is based on relative performance rather than a few eye-catching rallies. He pointed to the Total 2-to-Bitcoin ratio, which compares the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin with BTC, and described the chart as “very flat.”
Since Bitcoin’s low, the average altcoin has gained only 10% more than BTC, he noted. That is a far cry from the broad outperformance associated with previous altcoin seasons.
The list of outperformers is short. Zcash has done well year to date, while Venice and Quant have also outperformed recently. The privacy coin has risen more than 726% in a year, and Quant surged 530% in a matter of days, from $59 to $370, before settling near $255. But Leo stressed that these are isolated examples.
Even XRP has not outperformed Bitcoin, while Ethereum, Solana, and BNB are barely ahead.
> “That’s why I say altcoins are still actually very cheap. And we haven’t yet confirmed a full altcoin season scenario. We’ve barely started,” Leo explained.
When asked how far away that was, the analyst replied: “Very far.”
Bitcoin itself remained stuck. It was rejected at $87,000 on Monday, bounced from $85,000, and has traded sideways between those levels and $86,000 ever since, with a market cap of $1.72 trillion and a share of nearly 58% of the total crypto market.
The larger altcoins were sluggish over the past 24 hours. Ethereum is holding above $2,700, and XRP is trading at $1.50. BNB, Solana, Dogecoin, and Chainlink are slightly lower, while RAIN was among the biggest 24-hour losers, down more than 7%. FIL and ZRO, meanwhile, rose 8% and 10%, respectively.
### Why isolated rallies can be misleading
Leo also cautioned traders against waiting for Bitcoin to reach a new all-time high before considering altcoins. He noted that this pattern worked in 2017 and late 2020, but failed in 2024, when Bitcoin broke its previous record while many altcoins continued to lose ground against it. So his approach is to trade individual altcoin rallies rather than wait for a broad signal.
In a separate video, the market watcher described $83,000 as Bitcoin’s daily pivot. A break below it could send the price toward bull-market support at $78,000, while holding above it would leave room to move above $87,000.