Three Key Factors of the New Alt Season
Date: 2025-09-18 Author: Henry Casey Categories: CRYPTO PAYMENTS
The Alt Season Index has reached its highest value since late 2024, confirming the beginning of a phase of active altcoin growth. According to Blockchain Center, over the past three months, approximately 75% of the top 50 coins have outperformed Bitcoin. CoinGlass's Altcoin Season Index shows similar results, reaching 80 points on September 15.
At the same time, Bitcoin's share of the crypto market has decreased by 6% over the past six months, reaching 58%. A decline in this indicator traditionally indicates a shift in investor interest toward alternative assets. Forgd founder Shane Molidor notes that after a period of Bitcoin dominance, many have begun to reallocate capital to other coins.
Factor 1: Federal Reserve Policy
The first catalyst is the expected Federal Reserve rate cut. All market participants are confident that the regulator will ease monetary policy on September 17, which will increase liquidity and stimulate interest in risky assets. According to MV Global founder Kyle Shass, a sharper 0.5% decline instead of the projected 0.25% could trigger a powerful rally in the crypto market.
Factor 2: Corporate Reserves
The growing demand for cryptocurrencies is also reflected in corporate interest. According to Molidore, the focus is on second-level tokens and ecosystem coins with high TVL, trading volumes, and yields. These are increasingly being considered for inclusion in corporate reserves.
Derive Head of Research Sean Dawson argues that the purchase of cryptocurrencies while simultaneously issuing debt instruments creates a self-sustaining cycle of price growth. Altius founder Annabelle Huang adds that the trend of public companies accumulating digital assets will continue, but will only affect projects with stable economies and reliable metrics. Among these, experts highlight Ethereum, Solana, and BNB. Bloomberg analyst James Seyffarth previously dubbed this phenomenon "corporate alt season."
Factor 3: Regulation and ETFs
The third driver is regulatory certainty. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins emphasized that most cryptocurrencies do not qualify as securities and advocated for uniform rules for the entire industry. The regulator is currently reviewing over 90 applications to launch spot ETFs based on assets such as Solana, XRP, and Litecoin. Approval of such funds is expected to be a significant bullish signal for the market.
Bitfinex analysts believe that full-scale growth of altcoins is impossible without the emergence of these instruments. However, some experts, including CryptoQuant on-chain analyst Timo Oinonen, believe that the era of "massive alt seasons" is a thing of the past, and that success will be achieved only by individual, high-quality projects.
