Altcoin season loading… or is it

Plus: Lunch with friends, paid in stablecoins

GM. Crunchier than an apple and twice as unpredictable – time to take a bite out of today’s charts.

💳 MoonPay and Mastercard are making stablecoin payments way easier.

🍋 News drops: Grok’s tweaking, the biggest darknet marketplace’s shutting down + more

🍍 Market flavor today

Maybe the charts aren’t as green as they were yesterday – but greed hasn’t left the chat, and prices are still holding up pretty nicely 👆

But… are we just getting started?..

According to crypto trader Cyclop, the answer is yes.

They’ve been in crypto for seven years and claim to have seen dozens of setups that usually mark the beginning of an altcoin season.

(That’s when altcoins – basically any crypto that isn’t Bitcoin – start outperforming Bitcoin in terms of price growth.)

And Cyclop thinks it’s happening now.

It starts with Bitcoin.

People don’t treat it like a lottery ticket anymore – it’s now one of the top global assets by market cap, used as a hedge against inflation, and supported by big institutions.

Basically, BTC has matured into a macro asset.

And when an asset gets that big, its price moves – both up and down – are smaller than before (because that’s just how scale works).

Less fun, maybe, but more stable.

Which brings us to alts. Altcoins are still the “risk” part of crypto. That’s where the wild action happens.

And now, Cyclop says there’s a shift happening: top altcoins aren’t just seen as “Bitcoin alternatives” anymore. They’re being treated like legit tech platforms.

Ethereum is being compared to Nvidia (powering decentralized apps), while Solana is seen as a high-performance infrastructure layer.

We’ve seen this kind of narrative change before – and it often lines up with the start of altseasons.

What else?

1/ ETH/BTC broke a 5-month downtrend

If ETH/BTC is rising, it means Ethereum is pumping faster than BTC – which is often an indicator that other altcoins (especially large-cap ones) might soon follow Ethereum’s lead.

2/ BTC dominance dropped

In fact, it’s the biggest drop since November 2024.

That means more capital is flowing into altcoins.

3/ Retail interest is still super low despite price increases

Infrastructure is improving, signals are turning bullish – but retail investors still aren’t back.

Sounds bad? It isn’t.

Altcoins usually hit their lowest points not when everyone’s panicking, but when no one’s paying attention. And that’s where we are now.

Alts still look rough, sure – but most of the fear has already played out, and there aren’t many obvious reasons left for prices to drop much further.

So here’s the setup: fundamentals improving, very little selling pressure, and sentiment still cold. This mix often creates the perfect conditions for a rally.

4/ Global liquidity is rising

That means there’s more money floating around in the financial system = people are more willing to take risks.

5/ Stablecoin activity is picking up

More stablecoins moving to exchanges or getting minted usually means that people are getting ready to buy.

That money isn’t being pulled out into fiat – it’s staying in the game, just waiting for the right entry.

All of these suggest that money might start flowing into alts again.

But heads up: if this is an altseason, it’s not gonna look like 2021.

Back in 2021, almost everything pumped. Now, tho’, there are way more tokens out there, so only a small group will likely take off.

Like, 10%. Only the ones with real use cases, strong narratives, or massive communities.

Let the sorting hat of altseason begin 🧙‍♂️

🥝 Memecoin harvest

Certified “yo WTF” material 😵

Data as of 06:25 AM EST.

Check out these memecoins and plenty more here.

Imagine you’re out grabbing lunch with friends. Earlier that day, you lost a bet – turns out, no, you can’t fit 15 marshmallows in your mouth – so the lunch is on you.

The bill comes. You whip out your phone, open your wallet app, tap to pay…

… and the money comes straight from your stablecoins.

Craaazy right.

Well, that actually can happen – MoonPay teamed up with Mastercard to let people pay with stablecoins using virtual Mastercards.

These cards connect directly to your crypto wallet and take funds from your stablecoin balance – no need to convert to fiat first.

You can use them anywhere Mastercard is accepted. That’s over 150 million places, btw.

And this is a big deal – ‘cuz it’s a huge step toward mainstream adoption.

For years, using crypto for everyday stuff was painful. You’d have to sell it for fiat, transfer the fiat to your bank account, and by the time it cleared, your burrito was cold.

With this MoonPay + Mastercard update, tho’, you skip all of that – the Mastercard system handles the conversion step.

All you gotta do is just tap your phone, like Apple Pay – but it pulls from your stablecoin balance instead of a bank.

This isn’t just convenient – it’s a real-world use case that makes crypto feel… normal. Like it finally belongs in your daily life.

🍋 News drops

👋 Haowang Guarantee (previously Huione Guarantee) has shut down after Telegram deleted thousands of its connected accounts. It was a darknet marketplace that provided various illegal services to crypto scammers.

🚔 Europol arrested 17 people for running a bank that laundered over €21M in crypto for criminals in China and the Middle East. The group ran most of its operations from Spain and worked with clients involved in drug and human trafficking.

🤨 Three Democratic members of Congress are going after crypto projects linked to Donald Trump. They’ve asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for all suspicious activity reports since 2023 that mention World Liberty Financial or the TRUMP token.

🤖 Grok’s tweaking. It kept talking about “white genocide” in conversations that have, uhh, NOTHING to do with the topic.

🚀 VanEck dropped a new ETF called NODE. It puts your money into a mix of blockchain-related stocks, like crypto miners, exchanges, infrastructure, and fintech platforms.

🍌 Juicy memes