Altcoin Season Setup Advances: CEX Volume Hits Cycle Highs Despite Price Weakness

Altcoin season was broadly anticipated for 2025, however the actuality has unfolded very in a different way. Instead of a broad-based rally, most altcoins suffered deep and extended drawdowns, erasing years of positive factors and forcing many traders out of the market.

As 2026 approaches, sentiment round altcoins stays fragile. A rising variety of analysts now warn that the worst is probably not over, arguing that structural weak spot, declining liquidity, and fading retail participation might drive one other leg decrease throughout the sector.

Market knowledge reinforces this cautious outlook. The Crypto Total Market Cap, excluding the highest 10 belongings—generally known as the OTHERS index—has collapsed by greater than 50% since December 2024. Market capitalization has fallen from roughly $451 billion to round $182 billion in simply twelve months, highlighting the size of capital destruction throughout mid- and small-cap tokens.

This sharp contraction displays aggressive de-risking, weak demand, and sustained promoting stress throughout the altcoin market.

However, not all analysts are satisfied the altcoin cycle is completed. A smaller group factors to historic precedents, arguing that intervals of maximum underperformance and investor capitulation have typically preceded highly effective altcoin recoveries. From this angle, 2026 might mark the delayed arrival of an altcoin season—if liquidity situations enhance and capital rotation resumes.

Altcoin Trading Activity Remains Elevated Despite Price Weakness

A current CryptoQuant report challenges the broadly held perception that this cycle has produced “no altcoin season.” According to the information, centralized trade buying and selling quantity for altcoins—excluding the highest 5 belongings—has reached ranges considerably greater than these seen in earlier market cycles. In different phrases, altcoins are being traded extra actively than ever, at the same time as costs stay deeply depressed throughout a lot of the market.

This divergence between quantity and worth helps clarify the prevailing confusion. While many tokens have misplaced a considerable portion of their worth, on-chain and trade knowledge present that exercise has not disappeared. Instead, the market has undergone a structural shift.

Retail participation has largely light after months of losses, with many smaller traders capitulating and exiting positions. Their absence, nevertheless, has not resulted in decrease total buying and selling exercise.

CryptoQuant’s evaluation means that altcoin dominance has more and more concentrated amongst bigger gamers. Whales {and professional} individuals now account for a rising share of altcoin quantity, utilizing intervals of low liquidity and weak sentiment to build up positions or actively rotate capital.

From this angle, the present part could not sign the absence of an altcoin cycle, however somewhat its transformation. If whale-driven positioning continues and broader market situations enhance, these individuals are prone to push costs greater to maximise returns.

OTHERS Market Cap Shows Prolonged Compression

The OTHERS chart, which tracks the overall crypto market capitalization excluding the highest 10 belongings, highlights the depth and length of the continued altcoin correction. After peaking close to $450 billion in late 2024, the market has misplaced greater than half of its worth, stabilizing across the $200–210 billion zone. This sharp contraction confirms that the altcoin market has skilled a full reset somewhat than a shallow pullback.

From a technical perspective, the construction displays extended compression. Price is at the moment oscillating across the 200-week shifting common (crimson), a degree that traditionally acts as a long-term equilibrium zone throughout transitions between bearish and restoration phases. The failure to reclaim the 100-week and 50-week shifting averages means that upside momentum stays weak and that patrons lack conviction at greater ranges.

Volume dynamics reinforce this view. While periodic spikes seem throughout sell-offs and reduction rallies, there isn’t a sustained enlargement in quantity that might sign broad-based accumulation. This implies selective positioning somewhat than widespread danger urge for food.

Importantly, the market is now not making aggressive decrease lows, indicating that pressured promoting could also be largely exhausted. However, the absence of upper highs retains the construction neutral-to-bearish. For a significant altcoin restoration, OTHERS would want to reclaim the $260–280 billion vary and maintain above key shifting averages.

Until then, the chart suggests consolidation, dominance by bigger gamers, and a market nonetheless trying to find a sturdy backside somewhat than the beginning of a traditional altcoin season.

Featured picture from ChatGPT, chart from TradingView.com