Altcoin season unlikely without money printing, traders say

Two crypto traders, Crypto Kid and Player1Taco, told an interview on May 17 that a broad altcoin season is unlikely until large-scale monetary easing returns. At the time, Bitcoin traded near $77,000; the token later fell toward $61,282, a decline of about 24% over 30 days.

The Altcoin Season Index stood at 49, a reading that favors Bitcoin rather than a market-wide rotation into altcoins. The index measures how many of the top 50 coins outperformed Bitcoin over the trailing 90 days; a reading above 75 is commonly used to define an altcoin season. Dashboard data show 256 days since altcoins last led the market, while Bitcoin recorded a dominant period 21 days earlier. Historically, altcoin-led runs have averaged 17 days and appeared roughly every 67 days.

Crypto Kid linked the outlook to liquidity and investor behavior, describing many smaller tokens as assets that attract capital only when investors have excess funds. He framed smaller tokens as items investors buy when they have disposable capital and suggested they decline faster when monetary conditions tighten. He added that a market-wide altcoin season would likely require monetary easing on the scale seen in 2020 and 2021 and projected a realistic window for a broad rotation as late as 2028 or 2029.

Supply dynamics were cited as an additional constraint. The market counted roughly 3,000 coins in 2017 and now includes tens of millions of tokens, a proliferation that splits capital across far more projects. Many altcoins are inflationary and do not share Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply, which means recovering previous peak prices would need concentrated inflows. Analyst Benjamin Cowen has highlighted similar liquidity concerns for smaller tokens.

Player1Taco offered a more constructive view on specific themes while acknowledging the macro constraints. He pointed to artificial intelligence as the current market focus and highlighted Venice Token (VVV) as an example, with VVV trading near $15.72 after gaining more than 300% over the past year. “Right now I think the focus really is around the AI narrative,” he said, and he identified decentralized AI projects as likely to continue attracting capital as those ecosystems develop.

Taco also identified tokenized real-world assets and tokenized collectibles as active market areas and placed his strongest 12-month conviction on infrastructure plays. He cited decentralized physical infrastructure networks, or DePIN, which combine physical hardware and token incentives, and mentioned tokenized GPUs and data centers as central to that thesis, naming World Mobile and Helium as examples.

Both traders reported that, despite the absence of a broad altcoin season according to the index, targeted themes such as AI tokens, DePIN and tokenized RWAs can still produce notable rallies. They also noted that the current market environment remains one in which development activity is ongoing even if capital flows into many smaller tokens are constrained by liquidity and supply factors.