Altcoin Season Index · updated hourly
Is it altcoin season?
One number answers it roughly and one picture answers it properly. The index below is CoinMarketCap’s count of how much of the top 50 has outrun bitcoin this quarter; the board under it is every large altcoin right now, coloured by how far ahead of bitcoin it actually is.
Highest in a year: 78 on 20 Sep 2025 Lowest: 14 on 19 Dec 2025 Index by CoinMarketCap, read 18 Aug 2026, 13:58 UTC
01 The reading
What 45 out of 100 means
The Altcoin Season Index counts how many of the top 50 coins have outperformed bitcoin over the past 90 days, and scales that count to 0–100. At 45 it is saying that bitcoin has had the better quarter against most of the top 50, without the sweep the index calls bitcoin season.
The thresholds are the index's own, not ours: 75 and above is called altcoin season, 25 and below bitcoin season, and the wide middle in between is neither — a market where some alts run and most do not. The number is published by CoinMarketCap and reproduced here as they publish it; the daily series in the chart above is ours, recorded from that same source, because they serve at most 90 days of it and a question about a cycle needs longer than a quarter.
02 Who is actually ahead
Beating and trailing bitcoin, last 24 hours
▲ Ahead of bitcoin
| Coin | vs BTC | in USD | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| VVVVenice Token | +19.09% | +20.03% | $33M |
| BTWBitway | +10.67% | +11.61% | $21M |
| PIEVERSEPieverse | +7.65% | +8.59% | $30M |
| POLPolygon (prev. MATIC) | +3.44% | +4.38% | $79M |
| MORPHOMorpho | +2.64% | +3.58% | $23M |
| SKYSky | +1.87% | +2.81% | $14M |
▼ Behind bitcoin
| Coin | vs BTC | in USD | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| VELVETVelvet | -14.92% | -13.98% | $28M |
| WLDWorldcoin | -10.09% | -9.15% | $195M |
| FILFilecoin | -8.27% | -7.33% | $73M |
| JTOJito | -7.39% | -6.45% | $16M |
| OKBOKB | -6.55% | -5.61% | $44M |
| PUMPPump.fun | -5.68% | -4.74% | $85M |
Every row shows two numbers, and the second one is the honest half: vs BTC is how far the coin ran ahead of bitcoin over the period, in USD is what it actually did to a wallet. They disagree constantly. In a week when bitcoin falls 8%, a coin that falls 3% leads it by five points and still lost you money; in a week when bitcoin gains 10%, a coin up 4% is a laggard on this page and a gain in your account.
Both tables are drawn from the 100 largest altcoins on this board, and every coin in them traded at least $10M in the past 24 hours — the same volume floor the whole-market board uses, and for the same reason: a 400% move on eleven thousand dollars of volume is one buyer, not a rotation.
03 Background
What altcoin season actually is
Crypto money moves in a rough order, and altcoin season is the name for one part of that order. New money tends to arrive in bitcoin first, because it is the asset with the deepest market, the clearest story and the fewest questions to answer. When it stops arriving there — when bitcoin flattens after a run — some of that money does not leave the market, it moves down the size curve: into ethereum, then into large alts, then into everything smaller and newer. Seen from the outside that looks like alts suddenly outperforming for weeks at a time, and that is what the index is measuring.
It is a description, not a mechanism. Nothing forces this rotation to happen, the order is a tendency rather than a rule, and each cycle it has been less tidy than the last: in 2017 almost everything ran together, in 2021 it split into distinct waves months apart, and the period since has spent long stretches with no rotation at all while a handful of sectors moved on their own. A high reading tells you money has been favouring alts for the past quarter. It does not tell you a season is starting, and nothing about the past 90 days constrains the next 90.
The other half of the phrase is worth stating plainly too: "altcoin" is not a category, it is everything that is not bitcoin. A layer-1 chain with real settlement volume, a stablecoin issuer's governance token and a dog-themed memecoin all count the same in the index, one coin each. That is exactly why the board is here — the index compresses a hundred different stories into one integer, and the picture under it does not.
04 Limits
What this number does not tell you
It is backward-looking by construction. Ninety days of past performance, counted and scaled — nothing in it is a forecast, and the reading is at its highest precisely when the move it describes has already happened. Reading a high number as an entry signal has the logic exactly backwards.
It counts coins, not money. Fifty coins each beating bitcoin by half a percent produce the same reading as fifty coins doubling, and a rotation into three large alts that carries most of the actual capital can leave the index low. It is a breadth measure, and breadth and size are different questions.
Its universe is the top 50, so it says nothing about the long tail where most new tokens live, and its membership changes as coins enter and leave that list. And it is denominated in bitcoin: a quarter in which bitcoin fell 30% and alts fell 20% is, to this index, alts outperforming. Green on this page has never meant "went up" — it means "lost less, or gained more, than bitcoin did".
The board's own limits are the ones every board here has, and the guide covers them properly: bubble size is market cap, which is not the money that went in and not what you could sell into; colour is a percentage over a window you chose, so the same coin flips between green and red as you change the buttons.
05 The app
The same board, without the fixed slice
This page is one question asked of 100 coins over four periods. The app it was cut from carries all 1,000 of them, with filters by category, chain ecosystem and exchange, favorites that stay put, and prices in 24 currencies. Free, no ads, no account, and it runs in a browser tab as well as on a phone.
Open the full board →