Altcoin Season: What It Is and How to Tell

"Altseason is coming." It's one of the most repeated phrases in crypto, usually followed by rocket emojis. Sometimes it's right. Often it's wishful thinking from people holding coins they'd like to sell to you at a higher price.

Here's what altcoin season actually is, how people measure it, and how to approach it without getting hurt.

Altcoins and altseason

An altcoin is any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin: Ethereum, Solana, BNB, XRP, Dogecoin and thousands more.

Altcoin season, or altseason, is a stretch of time when most altcoins rise faster than Bitcoin. It's not an official event; it's a description of the market. One popular definition used by tracking sites: altseason is when most of the top 50 coins have outperformed Bitcoin over the previous 90 days or so.

Why it happens

Altseasons often follow a pattern, though never a guaranteed one:

1. Bitcoin rises first. New money tends to come into the best-known coin.
2. Bitcoin cools off. Traders who've made gains look for "the next big move".
3. Money rotates into large altcoins, such as Ethereum.
4. Then into smaller ones, where gains, and losses, can be much bigger.
5. It ends, often suddenly, when prices fall and money flows back to Bitcoin or out of crypto.

The excitement at stage 4 is when many people buy, and when the risk is highest.

How to tell if it's happening

Bitcoin dominance. This is Bitcoin's share of the total crypto market value. If the whole market is rising while Bitcoin's share falls, money is flowing into altcoins. Our explainer on market capitalisation covers how these totals are calculated.

Altseason trackers. Some crypto data sites publish an "altcoin season index" based on how many large coins have beaten Bitcoin recently.

The mood. When people around you start talking about coins they'd never heard of a month ago, or the Fear and Greed Index sits at extreme greed, you're probably late in the cycle.

The risks

• Small coins can fall 80 to 90 per cent when the season ends, and some never recover.
• Memecoins and new tokens attract pump-and-dump schemes. Read memecoins explained and what a rug pull is before buying anything new.
• Liquidity dries up. In a falling market, very small coins can be hard to sell at any sensible price.
• Signal groups promise to catch the next 10x. Many are paid to promote the coins they call.

A sensible way to approach it

Research before you buy. Our guide to researching a coin before buying has a checklist.

Size your bets. Only put into small altcoins what you'd be willing to lose.

Take profit on the way up. Decide your targets in advance and sell in steps, into USDT or naira. The method in taking profit on Bitcoin in naira works for altcoins too.

Don't chase. A coin that's already up 300 per cent this month isn't a bargain because it "might go to 1,000".

Turning gains into naira

KWIQ supports 20+ coins, including Ethereum, Solana, BNB, XRP and Dogecoin. When you take profit, you see the rate and the naira amount before you confirm, and swapping to naira is free. Check today's crypto to naira rates, then download the KWIQ app or sign up on the web.