The riskiest Altcoin in the cryptocurrency market are collapsing, with retail investors and speculators selling off their holdings and suffering heavy losses. The altcoin season that the crypto has been eagerly anticipating has failed to arrive during this period. Where did all the retail investors' money go?
The knock-off season didn't come?
While Bitcoin has been hitting new highs, the altcoin season that the crypto has been eagerly anticipating has yet to arrive. According to Coinglass's Altcoin seasonal index , the index is currently at a low of 30, far below the ICO boom of 2017 and the DeFi summer of 2021. The recent high point occurred in January 2024 with the listing of the Bitcoin ETF, and the market expected it to drive a comprehensive rise in Altcoin. However, to this day, SOL, XRP, DOGE, and LINK ETFs have all been listed, but the Altcoin market continues to be sluggish.
In a November interview with Bonnie Blockchain, renowned market cycle analyst Ben Cowen stated, "We're not experiencing an Altcoin at all." While some tokens have seen short-term surges, such as SOL and BNB, most Altcoin continue to underperform against Bitcoin, and the overall market hasn't witnessed the widespread boom of 2017 or 2021. He emphasized that a true Altcoin is characterized by sustained gains for most Altcoin against BTC, "but this cycle is seeing a series of selective hype and rebounds, not a full-blown bull market."
The meme craze has disappeared.
For many traders, the logic of the internet meme era is key: buy tokens early, hope others will follow suit, and then repeat the process. This kind of speculation has worked in the crypto for years, but it's no longer effective; prices no longer rise simply because new buyers are appearing.
The flash crash on October 11, which was described by the crypto community as the "crypto version of Black Friday," has further crippled Memecoin. According to Bloomberg, the monthly trading volume of the Memecoin platform Pump.fun has been declining almost continuously since May.
The era of market cycles driving widespread token appreciation is over.
Shuyao Kong, co-founder of MegaETH, stated:
"For years, many tokens appreciated simply because of market cycles rather than genuine progress—and that era is coming to an end. Today, cypherpunks, traders, Wall Street institutions, and even politics influence the market. A single narrative can no longer sway the market, and the rise of traditional valuation frameworks is making some people uneasy."
Investors are starting to evaluate tokens like they would traditional companies, looking at whether they have users, revenue, or available products.
Retail investors are turning to tokenized stocks and prediction market contracts.
Many emerging tokenization platforms feel safer or easier to understand. Crypto exchage like Bybit and Kraken have begun offering tokenized stocks of companies like Apple and Tesla. DeFi platform Ostium brings physical assets to the blockchain for trading, including market indices, commodities, and forex, providing transparent and non-custodial trading services with leverage up to 200x. While these products are currently small in scale, they already indicate a shift in speculative habits.
Since the October crash, daily trading volume for small- and mid-cap cryptocurrency derivatives on Hyperliquid, a cryptocurrency trading platform focused on perpetual futures, has plummeted. In contrast, prediction market trading activity on Polymarket has reached an all-time high.
Apps that once drove retail investor funds into Altcoin now offer alternative betting options. Robinhood is aggressively expanding its sports betting business. Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini is also preparing to launch prediction market contracts. Decentralized finance platform Hyperliquid allows users to create DIY contracts on a variety of assets, ranging from stock indices to private company stocks, while Coinbase Global Inc. has also expanded its services.
Speculative betting never disappears; it just keeps looking for the next target and casino.
Bloomberg columnist Muyao Shen believes that Altcoin will not disappear; the impulse to blindly follow trends will always find new outlets, but the reliable demand that has existed for the past few cycles has disappeared.
According to data from Token Terminal, of the thousands of cryptocurrency projects still trading in the past month, only about a dozen have generated over $1 million in revenue. The vast majority of projects are declining and lack factors to support their value.
Joshua Lim, co-head of global markets at cryptocurrency brokerage FalconX, said:
"Mainstream retail traders no longer see convex returns on Altcoin as they did before, but instead find upside potential in stocks related to artificial intelligence, quantum mechanics, nuclear energy, and other emerging speculative sectors."
Perhaps we should say that speculative betting will never disappear; it will just keep looking for the next target and casino .
This article, "Where Did Crypto Retail Investors Go to Find Another Battleground Since This Round of Copycat Season Didn't Arrive?", first appeared on ABMedia (a ABMedia ).
