The long-awaited altcoin season may be a thing of the past, according to Shubh Varma, chief executive and co-founder of crypto analytics firm Hyblock Capital, who argues that the market structure has shifted in ways that make $5 XRP and $1 DOGE improbable.
In an interview with market analyst Ray Salmond, Varma said the classic pattern in which Bitcoin gains spill over into smaller tokens no longer holds because capital now has far more places to go inside crypto trading platforms. "I personally don't see it happening because there's so much other demand," he said of the two price targets.
Varma's case rests on how an altcoin season is measured. By his definition, a genuine season requires a broad majority of alternative coins to beat Bitcoin over a sustained stretch. "If you track 100 altcoins, usually if 75% of them are outperforming Bitcoin, you can call that as an altcoin season," he said. On that yardstick, the market has gone at least 18 to 24 months without one, even as Bitcoin itself has posted large moves. He reads that gap not as a pause but as a structural change.
The core of the argument is competition for capital. In earlier cycles, money entering crypto exchanges had few destinations beyond established altcoins, so rallies in Bitcoin reliably fed rotations into smaller tokens. Today, Varma said, those same platforms list products tied to real-world assets and artificial intelligence instruments, which now compete directly for the same dollars. "On these crypto exchanges, you can buy RWAs and you can buy AI equity perks," he said.
Note: Real-world assets refer to blockchain-based representations of traditional holdings such as bonds, funds, commodities and real estate.
Varma was careful not to predict a collapse in altcoins. His point is that the assumption of an automatic handoff from Bitcoin dominance to a broad altcoin rally can no longer be relied upon. The market, he said, has changed in structure rather than merely in sentiment.
That distinction matters for investors still working from 2020 or 2021 playbooks. Strategies built on the expectation that Bitcoin strength will eventually lift the entire altcoin complex may need to be reassessed, given the wider menu of products available on the same trading venues. The debate, in Varma's framing, is less about whether altcoins are strong or weak and more about how many alternatives now sit alongside them.
Hyblock Capital, a market analytics provider focused on data-driven insights for digital assets and exchanges, has tracked these performance shifts closely. Its chief executive's conclusion is that the rotation trade that once defined crypto cycles has been diluted by choice, leaving the most ambitious price targets for XRP and DOGE without the capital flows that would be needed to reach them.
