Author: Route 2 FI
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
Deep Tide Introduction: When ZEC rose from $50 to $1,300, and Starknet regained attention with its "quantum resistance" narrative, this altcoin rally is not the same as the FOMO relay races of the past. The author points out that what is truly worth watching is not the surge of individual tokens, but old projects regaining buy-side interest because of "full unlock + real technological narratives." For investors who lived through the previous cycle, this is a key signal of a paradigm shift.
Happy Monday, friends!
A quick chat about the recent crypto market conditions.
Also, something personal: I am still thinking about what path to take next, especially where to live. When all the options are laid out in front of you, it actually becomes harder to decide.
Everything is pumping. Since August 19, we have been in "easy mode."
But I have a feeling that many people have actually lost money. Why? Because many people have been chasing the hottest coin of the day. This is caused by FOMO. You see a coin that has already risen a lot, and then instead of buying that coin, people buy its "follow-on substitutes."
Let me give you an example.
$ZEC was $50 a year ago. Now it is $1,300. That is a 26x return; for example, $100,000 would become $2.6 million.
But instead of chasing $ZEC, people looked for its "follow-on substitutes," such as $NEAR, STRK, and so on, and then went long those coins.
Let's take a step back. What exactly is altseason?
Altseason is one of the most anticipated concepts in the crypto market: the moment when Bitcoin no longer monopolizes attention and the rest of the market begins to outperform.
But a few tokens surging and a true altseason are two different things.
A true altseason is broad. It means that over a sustained period, most altcoins are outperforming Bitcoin, not merely rising in USD terms. BlockchainCenter's index uses a specific standard: among the top 50 qualifying coins (excluding stablecoins and asset-backed tokens), at least 75% outperform Bitcoin over 90 days.
The common script goes like this: Bitcoin leads, confidence returns, and investors begin moving outward along the risk curve in search of opportunities. Attention first turns to large-cap altcoins, then to smaller projects and more speculative trades. This rotation is the classic description of altseason, but it is not a timetable the market must follow.
The benchmark is Bitcoin, not just the dollar.
An altcoin's price can rise and it can still underperform BTC. If most of the market does this, then it is not the broad relative outperformance measured by the altseason index. Likewise, the astonishing rallies of a few tokens do not say much about the health of the broader altcoin market.
Anyway, one recent trend is that everyone has started buying old coins again. The reason is simple: old coins really did try to solve problems back in the day. For example, ZCash wanted to build a version that was exactly like Bitcoin but with privacy.
Starknet is basically quantum-resistant, and people now think this matters because last week there was an article saying supercomputers and AI might be able to break non-quantum-resistant cryptocurrencies. Imagine all your digital assets disappearing from your wallet tomorrow? How terrible would that be?
I also wrote about this topic, which is the chart above.
That said, we used to joke that when these "dinosaur coins" start pumping, the rally is over...
Is this time different?
In the past, at times like this you should have sold everything... but the reason people are now buying these projects is that most of them are already fully unlocked (or close to fully unlocked), and they really did try to solve problems back in the day. For example, Starknet's Eli Ben-Sasson proposed the idea of leaving Ethereum to become an L1, building "the first fully quantum-resistant network," with the goal of achieving it as early as next year. Because of the recent massive FUD, people bought into this narrative. Justin Drake's "bunker mode" article said the cryptography protecting our wallets could be broken in "months, not years." If we did everything right in crypto, only to still lose all our money next year because of quantum technology, that would be crazy, right? Whether or not you think this will happen, this is why these coins now have buy-side interest.
See you next time.