If This Is the Bull Market, Then Altcoins Are Finished

This cycle feels completely off for anyone who isn’t holding Bitcoin.

I’m not talking about meme coins or the latest #1832 CMC gem promoted by a YouTube gambler. I mean the supposed blue chips. The serious, established projects that actually built, shipped, and survived.

Here’s where things stand (approx. numbers):

• ADA peaked around $2.90, now sits near $0.85, about 70% down.
• LINK has improved but is still roughly 50–60% below its ATH. Market CAP close to ATH (sh*t tokenomics?)
• DOT peaked near $55, now $4.29, over 90% drop.
• AAVE has recovered somewhat but still trades at roughly half its ATH.
• ALGO has been bleeding for two years with no clear bottom in sight.

These are not vaporware projects. They have real ecosystems, partnerships, and communities. Yet the market refuses to reward them. Even after two years of recovery, they are still deep in red territory.

Now let's look at Ethereum.

ETH should be leading this cycle. Instead, it is just hovering around its previous ATH. At this stage, ETH should be in clear price discovery, not struggling to hold ground.

Every other week someone posts about “supply shock” and “institutional demand.” Charts showing exchange reserves collapsing from 16 million to 9 million ETH. Every previous time this happened, a massive rally followed.

This time, nothing.

So where is the rally? Where is the institutional bid that was supposed to push ETH into a new era? If this is the cycle top, then something is broken.

And where is retail?

Yes, we know the global economy is weak. The US economy is shaky, inflation is sticky, interest rates are high, the job market is rolling over, and retail investors have been burned too many times. People are tired. They remember Terra, Celsius, FTX, and every other implosion that wiped out savings. They learned their lesson. They are sitting out, holding cash, or chasing AI stocks instead (the new crypto get rich quick scheme).

But if the “smart money” and the “supply shock” narratives are both real, why is price action this lifeless? Where is the demand that’s supposed to absorb the drained supply?

But that’s not the whole story.

Because the truth is, money is flowing. Just not here.

The S&P 500, Nasdaq, and even gold are at or near all-time highs. Liquidity is alive and well. Capital hasn’t disappeared. It’s simply choosing not to touch altcoins. Institutions are back in equities and Bitcoin. Retail is speculating on Nvidia instead of LINK or DOT. The excuse that “the macro environment is too tough” doesn’t hold when traditional markets are booming and Bitcoin is making new highs. The problem isn’t (only) the economy, it’s demand for alts.

Old playbook: dead?

Maybe the uncomfortable reality is that the old playbook no longer works. The traditional rotation pattern of BTC pumping first, ETH following, and alts going parabolic appears to be finished. Capital now stops at Bitcoin and Ethereum. Sometimes it touches Solana and a few new narratives. A big part of liquidity in crypto is also spread thin across thousands of useless projects that still somehow trade daily. That’s it.

If even Ethereum, with its ETF narrative, deflationary supply, and “institutional adoption” story, cannot decisively break its previous highs, what chance do the others have?

If ADA, LINK, DOT, AAVE, and ALGO fail to reach their previous peaks in this environment, they will not recover in the next one. The next bear market will bury them for good.

This may be the first cycle where altcoin believers realize that not every “strong project” will come back. Bitcoin and a handful of layer-1s will survive. The rest will quietly fade away.

Maybe alt season is not delayed. Maybe it didn’t ever start. Maybe it ended already four years ago?

And maybe this cycle is the moment when everyone finally looks around and says, “Is this really it?”

If ETH and alts don’t pick up by the end of the year, the entire crypto market faces two possible outcomes:

1. Most Altcoins collapse completely in the next bear market. Retail won’t come back. Total market liquidity shrinks. The old pattern of alt buyers eventually converting into long-term Bitcoin holders disappears. Even Bitcoin takes a hit, because as much as people like to pretend otherwise, institutions still need retail to dump on.
2. Everyone simply buys Bitcoin next time. Retail and institutions both pile into BTC, ignoring altcoins altogether. One-off alts will still rise, but mostly not. Bitcoin becomes the only real trade left. But this is less likely, since the main appeal of altcoins has always been their higher risk-to-reward upside.

Either way, if nothing changes soon, crypto’s future may be far more narrow than most people think.

TL;DR Blue-chip alts like ADA, LINK, DOT, AAVE, ALGO, and even ETH are still far below their 2021 highs. Retail is gone, institutions are all talk, and the classic “BTC -> ETH -> alts” rotation seems dead. If ETH and alts don’t move by year-end, the next bear could wipe out most of the alt market for good, leaving only Bitcoin and a few survivors.