While much of the crypto market continues to debate when the next altcoin season will arrive, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes argues that it has already been playing out in real time. According to Hayes, traders waiting for a familiar, market-wide surge may have overlooked where real gains were happening during the current cycle.
Speaking on a podcast interview published on YouTube this week, Arthur Hayes said that the idea of a single, clearly defined altcoin season is misleading. In his view, capital has continued rotating into select tokens, but many traders failed to participate because they were focused on past playbooks rather than new narratives.
“There is always an altcoin season happening,” Hayes said, adding that traders who believe otherwise likely missed the assets that actually moved. He suggested that expectations shaped by previous market cycles have left investors anchored to outdated assumptions about how altcoin rallies should unfold.
Arthur Hayes urges traders to rethink old altcoin playbooks
Arthur Hayes said many market participants expect altcoin season to repeat earlier patterns, where the same projects and themes dominate returns. That mindset, he warned, can be costly in a market that constantly evolves.
“You wanted it to be like the last altcoin season because then you felt like you knew what you had to do,” Hayes said. He cautioned against buying assets simply because they performed well in prior cycles, stressing that new market conditions often reward different projects.
Hayes pointed to Hyperliquid as an example of where traders who adapted early were rewarded. He described the token’s rise from a launch price of around two to three dollars to nearly sixty dollars as one of the strongest narratives of the current cycle. According to Hayes, moves like this demonstrate that significant altcoin gains have already occurred, just not across the entire market.
He also highlighted Solana’s recovery as further evidence. After collapsing to nearly seven dollars during the 2022 downturn, Solana surged to almost three hundred dollars earlier this year. Hayes said such rebounds show that selective altcoin strength has been present, even if it has not resembled past broad-based rallies.
“Again, there’s been altcoin season. You just didn’t participate in it,” Hayes said.
Not everyone in the industry agrees with Arthur Hayes’ assessment. CoinQuant CEO Maen Ftoui told Cointelegraph that older cryptocurrencies, particularly those with existing or expected exchange-traded funds, are likely to attract much of the next wave of capital. From this perspective, ETF-linked assets may dominate future altcoin flows rather than newer or more speculative tokens.
Other analysts share a more cautious outlook. Bitfinex analysts said earlier that a widespread altcoin rally is unlikely until ETFs beyond Bitcoin and Ether receive regulatory approval. Many traders also continue to expect a traditional rotation, where Bitcoin reaches new highs first, followed by Ether and then smaller altcoins.
Despite these differing views, Arthur Hayes maintains that traders should focus less on timing a future altcoin season and more on identifying emerging opportunities as they appear. His comments underscore a growing divide within the crypto industry over whether altcoin season is a single event or an ongoing process shaped by shifting narratives and selective capital allocation.
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