Stop fantasizing, the altcoin season may not come

Author | hitesh.eth

Translation | Odaily

Translator | Dingdang

Original Title | For Those Who Refuse to Evolve, Stop Dreaming of an Altcoin Season

If you are still waiting for an altcoin season, you have already lost.

It’s been almost three years since bitcoin’s last cycle bottom between $15,000 and $20,000. In the crypto world, three years is a long time. During these three years, those who have held positions from the last cycle are still in a loss, and many have been mentally destroyed. Many tokens have never recovered; narratives have died; the hype has faded; liquidity has dried up.

Most portfolios remain graveyards of dreams. Only a few tokens like Solana and BNB have brought about real wealth effects. Ethereum has made some moves, but not enough to save latecomers. Tokens that were hyped in the last cycle, such as DOT and MATIC, are still declining. Gaming tokens are basically declared dead. Those who believed in the metaverse and gaming narratives have watched their funds depreciate month after month. Yet they still hold and pray, as if religious faith could save them, but it won’t.

In the past three years, there have only been two real paths. The first group are the “holders” stuck in time, who blindly believe that the market will eventually rebound and their tokens will magically return to previous all-time highs. They haven’t rebalanced, haven’t evolved, haven’t researched new narratives. They haven’t built any on-chain skills, just holding the same useless positions, waiting for a miracle. Worst of all, many of them left their tokens on centralized exchanges. When exchanges like WazirX get hacked or freeze withdrawals, these people cry on Twitter. But they still learn nothing. Their entire strategy is hope. Hope is not a strategy; in crypto, hope is slow financial suicide.

The other path belongs to a new generation who entered in the past two or three years. They came in with no loyalty to old narratives, not caring about 2020 portfolios. They came for one thing: to extract profits from the market. These people entered through two doors: airdrop hunting and meme coin trading. They moved on-chain early. Some started from scratch and built up capital. Most ended up breaking even because they didn’t understand exit strategies, but at least they participated in the real game. Unlike timid bystanders who never left centralized exchanges.

Over the past three years, we’ve witnessed a series of narratives. Meme season, AI season, Meme AI season, two meme cycles, two AI cycles, a small DeFi cycle, a buyback and burn cycle, ongoing privacy cycles, ICM meta cycles, AI agent cycles. Narratives have become shorter and sharper, burning hot for two weeks and then dying out. The lazy complain about manipulation, the smart rotate and survive. This is not a market for believers; it’s a market for survivors.

Now everything is fragmented, and the market is no longer a unified community. It’s “trenches,” where people choose sides. Solana trench, BNB trench, Base trench, Meme trench, AI trench, DeFi trench, ICM trench. Each trench moves differently, each has its own insiders, leaders, information flow, and liquidity cycles. Those inside the trenches know where the money is flowing; they understand a simple fact: there will never be a unified altcoin season again, because liquidity is now scattered across narratives, cross-chain bridges, public chains, and cultures. If you’re not inside the trenches, you’ll never see an altcoin season again. You’ll only see red candles and frustration.

Retail investors sitting outside the trenches are still waiting for some macro switch to be flipped, pushing their dead positions to new highs. These people log into exchanges every day, staring at charts like addicts. Every week they shout “I’ve had enough,” then repeat the same cycle. They are the most self-deluded people in the industry. They still post charts of LINK to $1,000 or DOT to $200. They still believe that one day liquidity will rotate back to them out of goodwill. They don’t realize this market has no mercy and no memory. It doesn’t care who waits the longest; it only rewards those who adapt the fastest.

The altcoin season has already happened, just not for you. It happened in fragmented form; it happened in meme coins on the Base chain; it happened in Solana rotations; it happened in the Ponzi economics of airdrops; it happened among early AI leaders; it happened in burning meta tokens. It happened in high-speed rotations, while you kept staring at charts of altcoins that died in 2021. That was your choice; the market moved forward, you stayed behind.

You follow technical analysis influencers who have never made real money. You use 50x leverage on tokens you don’t understand, you get liquidated, you add margin, you get liquidated again. You call it bad luck. No. This isn’t bad luck; it’s a lack of skill. Unless you accept the truth, nothing will change. You lose money not because you’re unlucky, but because you refuse to learn.

People reject new opportunities because they’re addicted to their biases. When something new appears, they call it a scam before even reading about it. They see a new meta and ask about airdrops without reading the docs. They see smart people rotating and mock them. Then when those people post six-figure gains, they complain. You can call it insider trading if it makes you feel better. But the truth is simpler: you weren’t beaten, you were outperformed.

Look at Zcash, one of the clearest trades of this cycle. Strong narrative; strong support; organic promotion, with Naval publicly talking about it around $80. Whether you like Naval or not, this signal is undeniable. When a respected voice aligns with a strong narrative, and a passionate leader like Mert pushes it daily, that’s not noise. That’s a clear, builder-backed momentum play. But most people missed it because they compared it to Monero without understanding any technical or adoption nuances. They didn’t research, didn’t read, couldn’t even be bothered. They dismissed it effortlessly because denying is more comfortable than admitting laziness.

You can’t expect conviction without effort. If you’re unwilling to learn, you don’t deserve returns. Most people are too weak to commit, constantly testing with small trades, rotating without a thesis, jumping from one influencer to another like lost sheep. When real momentum comes, they panic buy the top, then sit holding positions hoping for 100x because some clown tweeted. This isn’t a strategy; it’s financial suicide disguised as ambition.

The market always shouts huge targets, but it doesn’t matter. The market shouts numbers to attract liquidity; greed bait is the oldest trick in the game. If you’re not mature enough to build your own exit plan, you’ll give back everything you earn. That’s for sure. With no rules, you’ll always be destroyed by greed.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: If you can’t protect your gains, you’ll lose everything. The market doesn’t take money from the weak; the weak hand it over willingly. Market makers don’t steal from you; they just wait for you to self-destruct. Retail users once owned bitcoin. Now institutions do. Retail users once had conviction; now they have only memes, self-consolation, and screenshots of profits they no longer hold.

This game isn’t about who’s the smartest, but about who evolves. If you don’t learn, you’re dying. If you don’t rotate, you’re declining. If you don’t learn on-chain knowledge, you’re irrelevant. You don’t need to be special, you don’t need inside channels, but you do need to put in the work. You need to read, track narratives, and learn to exit. You need to control your emotions and act when action is needed.

Crypto isn’t hard; people make it hard because they chase dopamine instead of discipline. They crave shortcuts so much they never build skills. That’s why, in a market that creates wealth every cycle, most people will always remain poor.

Those who succeed aren’t chosen, they aren’t lucky, they aren’t born different. They just show up and learn every day while others scroll. They build systems while others chase noise. They act early while others argue. They exit cleanly while others beg for another pump. They survive every cycle because they adapt every cycle.

If you’re still waiting for an altcoin season, you’ve already lost. The game has moved on—either evolve or be eliminated. No one is coming to save you, and a new bull market won’t magically fix bad habits. There’s only one rule now: learn, or be left behind.