I don’t know if you’ve felt this way, but when you look at the crypto market now, it seems like the old playbook suddenly doesn’t work anymore. A few years ago, trading crypto was pretty straightforward. When the market surged on rising volume, the pattern was BTC sucking up liquidity → ETH catching up → high-value or trending coins quickly following suit → altcoins joining the party. You could pick any popular coin, hold it for a while, and probably make a decent gain. When the market fell, funds fled across the board, and Bitcoin and smaller coins plunged together. The whole market moved up or down in unison, making the trend easy to read.
But since the dawn of the ETF era, many veteran traders have been lamenting that the old playbook no longer works. The broader market looks range-bound, and Bitcoin isn’t very volatile, yet altcoins are getting absolutely crushed. Sometimes BTC edges up a little, while most smaller coins don’t budge. Many people enter the market using trading strategies from a few years ago, repeatedly buying and selling, only to find that they’re not making money even when the index is up—or that their accounts have already taken a big hit even though the broader market has barely fallen.