Alt season has never disappeared! Arthur Hayes: You just bought the wrong Token.

Legendary trader Arthur Hayes stated that the alt season has always been happening; it's just that you didn't buy those tokens that experienced big pumps. Hayes pointed out that Hyperliquid surged from $2-3 to $60, and Solana skyrocketed from $7 to nearly $300. These are all evidence of the alt season, yet most traders remain trapped in old thinking, expecting past patterns to repeat, ultimately missing out on the real winners.

Trader's Fatal Mistake: Using an Old Map to Find a New Continent

(Right is Arthur Hayes, Source: Youtube)

Arthur Hayes stated in his latest YouTube podcast interview: “Altcoins will always have a season of pump, and if you keep saying that alt season hasn't come, it's because you don't hold those pumping altcoins.” This statement struck a nerve with countless traders who are still waiting. Hayes believes that many people miss the alt season because they use past experiences to understand the current market, expecting the same cryptocurrencies and the same patterns to repeat.

“You hope it will be like the last alt season, because then you feel like you know what to do,” Hayes pointed out the psychological blind spot of traders. This craving for certainty leads many to continue holding onto the popular coins from the last cycle, ignoring the structural changes that have already occurred in the market. When the old coins fall silent, traders mistakenly believe that the alt season has not yet arrived, when in reality, their portfolios have not kept up with the market rhythm.

Hayes warns traders to “adjust their strategies” and not look back at the past. “Oh, I have to buy these things because they were popular last season,” he mimics and criticizes the thought process of traders. This kind of inertia in thinking is especially deadly in the crypto market, as the speed of narrative and hotspot rotation far exceeds that of traditional financial markets. Star projects from the last cycle may remain unnoticed in the new cycle, while brand new narratives and technologies may create new hundred-fold coins.

Three Common Mindsets Traders Miss During Alt Season

The Sword Seeking on the Boat Method of Choosing Coins: Continuing to hold popular coins from the previous cycle, hoping they will shine again, while ignoring that the market narrative has shifted to new areas such as AI, DePIN, or modular blockchains.

Waiting for the Traditional Rotation Model: Adhering to the traditional rotation logic of “Bitcoin pumps first → Ethereum follows → Large altcoins → Small altcoins”, but in this cycle, many altcoins have decoupled from Bitcoin's trend, forming independent markets.

Ignoring Emerging Narratives and Tracks: Focusing on familiar DeFi or NFT projects, missing the explosive opportunities of emerging tracks such as Layer-2, modular blockchains, and AI agents.

Hyperliquid and Solana validate the new alt season logic

(Source: CMC)

Hayes uses two concrete examples to prove that the alt season has never stopped. Hyperliquid (HYPE) is considered by him to be the “best story” of this cryptocurrency cycle, initially priced at only 2-3 dollars, and then skyrocketing to 60 dollars, with an increase of over 20 times. This explosive growth is a typical characteristic of alt season, but many traders completely missed it due to their unfamiliarity with the new narrative of decentralized perpetual contract exchanges.

The case of Solana is more convincing. This public chain nearly gave back all its gains after the FTX collapse in 2022, dropping to nearly $7, and the market generally considered it dead. However, Solana soared to nearly $300 at the beginning of this year, with a gain of over 40 times. Hayes emphasized: “Once again, the alt season has always been there. It's just that you weren't participating.” Those investors who still believed in the technological value of Solana at $7 reaped substantial rewards, while those who insisted that Solana was dead completely missed out.

These two cases reveal the core characteristics of the new alt season: the winners are no longer simply a replay of the popular coins from the previous cycle, but rather those projects that achieve breakthroughs in technological innovation, narrative appeal, or ecosystem development. Hyperliquid represents a new paradigm for decentralized derivatives trading, while Solana redefines public chain competition through high performance and memecoin culture. The success of these projects is built on new value propositions rather than mere replicas of old narratives.

Industry Disagreement: The Definition Dispute of Alt Season

However, not all industry insiders agree with Hayes's viewpoint. CoinQuant CEO Maen Ftoui believes that established cryptocurrencies that have already launched exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or are expected to launch ETFs will absorb most of the funds in the next alt season. This perspective represents the thinking logic of traditional institutional capital, which believes that compliance and liquidity will become the dominant factors.

Analysts stated in August that altcoins are unlikely to experience widespread and significant pumps before the approval of ETFs that provide exposure to cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. This argument directly links the arrival of alt season to institutional capital inflows, implying that a market driven by retail investors is no longer sufficient to create a real alt season.

Some traders are still waiting for the traditional rotation pattern to start, first with Bitcoin reaching new highs, then funds rotating into Ethereum, and finally shifting towards smaller altcoins. This waiting itself validates Hayes' criticism: market participants are trapped in past frameworks and unable to recognize the opportunities currently unfolding.

The core of this debate lies in the definition of “alt season.” If alt season means that all or most altcoins rise simultaneously, then it has indeed not yet occurred. However, if alt season refers to the existence of significant investment opportunities and big pump cases in altcoins, then Hayes's argument holds water. Changes in market structure may mean that the traditional scenario of “all altcoins rising together” will no longer appear, replaced instead by a rotational explosion of specific tracks and narratives.

New Era Trading Strategies: Focus on Narrative Rather than History

Hayes's core advice is that cryptocurrency traders should rethink their trading strategies and focus on new trends in the market rather than relying on historical experience. “This is a new phase, and new factors will bring new momentum,” he emphasized. Specifically, traders need to identify the dominant narrative of the current cycle, whether it's the combination of AI and blockchain, modular blockchain, decentralized social, or other emerging fields.

A successful trading strategy requires balancing risk exposure, allocating mainstream coins that have existing ETFs or institutional endorsements for stability, while also making risk investments in emerging narratives to capture high-return opportunities. The key is not to let the entire investment portfolio fall into path dependency on past successful experiences.