The question of when the next altcoin season will begin has been actively debated in the crypto market for several months. While most market participants continue to wait for familiar signals and argue over whether the old cyclical model still applies, Arthur Hayes has offered a different perspective.
In a podcast published on YouTube on Thursday, Hayes said that, in his view, the altcoin season is not a future event — it is already happening. According to him, there is always an altcoin season; the issue is that not all investors are holding the assets that are currently rising.
“If you think there is no altcoin season, it simply means you don’t own the coins that went up,” Hayes said. In his opinion, those who continue to claim that the altcoin season has not started “did not hold what actually performed well.”
Hayes also emphasized that many traders remain overly focused on past market cycles. They expect the same narratives and the same cryptocurrencies to dominate each new phase, just as they did before. However, the BitMEX co-founder считает that this assumption is misguided, because each market cycle produces its own leaders.
“This is a new season, and new things are going up,” Hayes explained, adding that the key task for investors is to identify early which projects are attracting capital.
As examples, he pointed to the Hyperliquid token, which launched in the $2–3 range and later climbed to nearly $60. Hayes also mentioned Solana, which fell to around $7 after the 2022 crash and then returned to price levels close to $300 at the beginning of this year.
“There was an altcoin season. You just weren’t in it,” Hayes concluded.