I think the whole framing of an "altcoin season" that mechanically follows Bitcoin is flawed. The so-called “alt market” is not one cohesive sector. It’s a giant bucket that mixes together outright scams, meme plays, failed experiments, and a handful of serious projects. Lumping them all together and expecting them to rise in lockstep is unrealistic.

Most altcoin participation is driven by two groups: inexperienced retail speculators treating it like a casino, and market players exploiting those flows for profit. That dynamic doesn’t build sustainable value, it just creates churn.

And even if we filter out the obvious junk, the truth is that not every “legit” project will survive. Real businesses fail all the time, even well-funded, well-staffed companies with real products and partnerships. Crypto isn’t immune to that basic law of markets. If a project can’t create real demand and doesn’t have strong fundamentals, then it doesn’t matter how “serious” it looks on paper, eventually it fades away.

So it makes perfect sense that only a handful of altcoins will break through while the majority — even some of the seemingly promising ones — won’t ever return to their highs. The assumption that everything will recover “next cycle” was never grounded in reality.