Is Ethereum’s rally leading the next altcoin season?

Over the past seven days, Ethereum has seen its fortunes take a turn for the better as it has risen by nearly 31% and currently trades around $2,495.

However, despite this seven-day run, two of the most watched altcoin-season trackers have not been convinced to call it an altseason. Traders, on the other hand, are left to weigh a fast ETH rally against gauges that remain stuck in neutral.

The rally is real, the breadth is not

ETH trades around $2,494.68, up 2.59% on the day and 31.01% over the week. Bitcoin, which sits around $78,411, saw a weekly gain of 23.25%.

XRP and Zcash (ZEC) are the few names that have performed better than ETH over the past seven days. XRP is up by around 49%, while ZEC is up by roughly 64% over the same period.

However, Bitcoin still leads the market in terms of total market value, accounting for over 59% of the market share. ETH’s share is around 11.4%. So, the funds have not clearly rotated away from BTC. Overall sentiment is stretched, with CoinMarketCap’s Fear and Greed reading at 80 out of 100.

What the indexes actually measure

Two indexes define the term most traders throw around. The altseason, which has been elusive for quite a while, is measured based on certain criteria by CoinMarketCap and BlockchainCenter. Both have indexes that help them ascertain whether the season is on or off.

According to CoinMarketCap, the altseason happens only when at least 75% of the top 100 coins beat Bitcoin over a rolling 90 days. When 25% or fewer beat it, the site labels the period Bitcoin season.

BlockchainCenter runs a similar rule on the top 50 coins. So if at least 75% of the top 50 coins perform better than Bitcoin over 90 days, then it is altseason. As of the time of checking, the gauge was 43, which is below the altseason threshold.

By its own count, BlockchainCenter listed that it has been over 332 days since the last altcoin season. Both exclude stablecoins such as Tether and asset-backed wrappers like WBTC and stETH.

Glassnode wrote on X on August 24 that the altcoin market “has entered a state of optimism,” reporting that 85% of alts had pushed funding rates above their mean, which the firm called the highest reading for that metric since Bitcoin traded at all-time highs. “In an alt season, these conditions can last for many weeks,” Glassnode added.

Hayes bets on Ether to lead

In an interview with Laura Shin, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said Ethereum is now his second-largest holding after Bitcoin, stating that ETH’s failure to reclaim its 2021 high leaves room to catch up and that it carries far less risk of going to zero than smaller tokens. He said a decisive break above $3,000 could carry the price past $5,000.

Speaking to the Altcoin Daily podcast, Hayes went further, predicting ETH would outperform every other large-cap asset in this liquidity-driven rebound and could help drag Bitcoin’s dominance down toward 40%.

Why the caution is warranted

The recent history explains the hesitation. Cryptopolitan reported in June that altcoin selling had reached all-time highs, with the season index at 49, and on June 30 that more than 84% of altcoins were trading below their 200-day moving average, the longest such stretch since the 2022 bear market.

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfrost noted then that altcoins had stayed tightly correlated to Bitcoin, so a strong BTC no longer automatically pulls the rest of the market up. That pattern has favored short, narrow “mini” rallies in a handful of liquid names over the broad, all-boats-rise runs the indexes are built to detect.