Arthur Hayes Declares: Altcoin Season Still On, But The Real Winners Were Hidden In Plain Sight

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes just threw cold water on the premature obituaries for altcoin season. The crypto veteran insists the party isn't over—you just needed to know where to look.

The Stealth Bull Market

Forget the noise. While mainstream headlines obsess over Bitcoin's every twitch, a different game has been playing out. The real action, according to Hayes, unfolded away from the spotlight. It wasn't a broad-based frenzy; it was a targeted surge, easy to miss if you were staring at the wrong charts. Winners emerged not from hype, but from fundamentals and utility that resonated in a post-hype landscape.

Separating Signal from Meme

The era of 'buy anything with a dog mascot' is dead. The new phase demands scrutiny. Projects with actual use cases, sustainable tokenomics, and resilient communities are pulling ahead. The rest? They're fading into background noise, a lesson in speculative excess that would make a traditional finance quant smirk—right before they short it.

The New Playbook

This isn't 2021. The path forward cuts through complexity and bypasses lazy narratives. It requires digging deeper than trending topics on Crypto Twitter. Active research, understanding protocol-level innovation, and identifying real-world adoption are now the only metrics that matter. The easy money is gone; the smart money is just getting started.

Hayes's message is clear: write off altcoins at your own peril. The season didn't end; it just evolved into something more mature, more nuanced, and far more profitable for those willing to do the work. The herd is still looking for the last cycle's patterns, while the next wave of gains builds quietly in the shadows.

Hayes uses Hyperliquid to prove point

Hayes mentioned Hyperliquid (HYPE) as one of the best stories of this crypto cycle, noting that it launched at $2 or $3 before skyrocketing to $60. He also noted that Solana crashed in 2022 to about $7 before jumping periodically to reach nearly $300 early this year.

“Again, there’s been altcoin season. You just didn’t participate in it.”

–Arthur Hayes, Co-founder of BitMex  

However, not everyone agrees with Hayes’ views on altcoin season. Some traders with differing perspectives are still waiting for the traditional crypto market to unfold in the same way, starting with Bitcoin, before capital shifts to Ethereum, and later to other smaller altcoins. 

Meanwhile, CoinQuant CEO Maen Ftoui recently claimed that older altcoins with ETFs will dominate a significant portion of the capital deployed in the next altcoin season. Bitfinex analysts previously claimed that altcoins were unlikely to see a meaningful rally until ETFs start offering exposure beyond the largest crypto assets. 

However, Hayes still believes that asking when or how the next altcoin season will occur is the wrong question. He noted that new products are introduced all the time, and it is up to traders to use their own judgment to determine what is good and what is not. He further urges traders to adjust to the times, rather than being stuck in the past.

Altcoin season index says it is not altcoin season yet

Altcoin season index data retrieved from the blockchain data aggregator BlockchainCenter.Net shows a score of 35, indicating that it is not yet an altcoin season. A quick summary reveals that it has been approximately 85 days since the last altcoin season, and the longest streak without an altcoin season was 486 days. Meanwhile, the longest season lasted 117 days, while the average length of an altcoin season has been around 17 days.

Meanwhile, several altcoins are trending today, including Chiliz (CHZ), which is trending on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. It is also a daily top winner based on trading volume, and it currently has a market cap of approximately $384 million. As of publication, CHZ is exchanging hands at $0.0378, representing a 1% rise in the past hour, a 25.4% increase in the past 24 hours, a 12.2% gain over the past seven days, and a 29.9% increase over the past 30 days. 

Bitlight (LIGHT) is the other daily top winner trending on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. It has a market cap of $113 million and is currently trading at $2.63. The price has jumped 0.1% in the past hour, 90.5% in the past 24 hours, 215.1% over the past seven days, and 234.4% over the past 30 days.

Other altcoins trending due to high trading volumes include Giggle Fund (GIGGLE), which is available on Binance. The other one is Humanity (H), which is available on Crypto.com.

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