Ethereum rises 31% in a week as altcoin-season gauges remain subdued
Key Takeaways
- •Ethereum climbed roughly 31% over the past seven days to trade near $2,495, while Bitcoin gained about 23% to around $78,411.
- •Neither CoinMarketCap nor BlockchainCenter has signaled an altseason, as both indexes require 75% or more of tracked top coins to outperform Bitcoin across a rolling 90-day period, and BlockchainCenter's gauge read just 43.
- •Bitcoin still accounts for more than 59% of total market value versus about 11.4% for Ethereum, indicating capital has not clearly rotated away from BTC.
- •Glassnode reported that 85% of altcoins had pushed perpetual futures funding rates above their mean, the highest such reading since Bitcoin traded at all-time highs.
- •Arthur Hayes said Ethereum is now his second-largest holding after Bitcoin and that a decisive move above $3,000 could lift the price beyond $5,000.
Over the past seven days, Ethereum has improved sharply, rising by nearly 31% and trading around $2,495.
Even so, two of the most closely watched altcoin-season trackers have not yet signaled the start of an altseason — the shorthand traders use for a stretch in which alternative cryptocurrencies broadly outperform Bitcoin, rather than one or two names leading the market. Traders are left to compare a rapid ETH rally with indicators that remain in neutral.
The rally is real, the breadth is not
ETH is trading around $2,494.68, up 2.59% on the day and 31.01% over the week. Bitcoin, which is trading around $78,411, posted a weekly gain of 23.25%.
XRP and Zcash (ZEC) are among the few assets that have outperformed ETH over the past seven days. XRP is up by around 49%, while ZEC has gained roughly 64% over the same period.
Bitcoin still dominates the market by total value, accounting for more than 59% of market share. ETH’s share is around 11.4%. That means capital has not clearly rotated away from BTC. Overall sentiment is also elevated, with CoinMarketCap’s Fear and Greed reading at 80 out of 100, a score that falls in the index’s “extreme greed” band.
What the indexes measure
Two indexes are commonly used to define the term many traders refer to as altseason. CoinMarketCap and BlockchainCenter both track whether the market is in altcoin season or Bitcoin season.
According to CoinMarketCap, altseason occurs only when at least 75% of the top 100 coins outperform Bitcoin over a rolling 90-day period. When 25% or fewer beat Bitcoin, the site labels the period Bitcoin season.
BlockchainCenter uses a similar rule for the top 50 coins. If at least 75% of the top 50 coins outperform Bitcoin over 90 days, it classifies the market as altseason. At the time of checking, its gauge was 43, which is below the altseason threshold — meaning fewer than half of the top 50 coins had beaten Bitcoin over the window. Because both indexes use rolling 90-day windows, a single strong week from one asset, even a 31% one, moves the breadth reading only gradually.
BlockchainCenter said it has been more than 332 days since the last altcoin season. Both trackers exclude stablecoins such as Tether and asset-backed wrappers such as WBTC and stETH.
Glassnode wrote on X on August 24 that the altcoin market “has entered a state of optimism,” saying that 85% of alts had pushed funding rates — the recurring payments that keep perpetual futures prices anchored to spot, and a widely read gauge of leveraged positioning — above their mean. The firm described that as the highest reading for that metric since Bitcoin traded at all-time highs. “In an alt season, these conditions can last for many weeks,” Glassnode added.
Hayes sees Ether leading
In an interview with Laura Shin, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said Ethereum is now his second-largest holding after Bitcoin. He said ETH’s failure to reclaim its 2021 high of roughly $4,878 leaves room to catch up and argued that it carries far less risk of going to zero than smaller tokens. Hayes said a decisive break above $3,000 could take the price past $5,000.
Speaking on the Altcoin Daily podcast, Hayes went further, saying ETH would outperform every other large-cap asset in this liquidity-driven rebound and could help pull Bitcoin’s dominance down toward 40%.
Why caution remains
Recent market history helps explain the hesitation. Cryptopolitan reported in June that altcoin selling had reached all-time highs, with the season index at 49. On June 30, Cryptopolitan also reported that more than 84% of altcoins were trading below their 200-day moving average — a long-run trend benchmark traders use to separate sustained downtrends from shorter dips — the longest such stretch since the 2022 bear market.
CryptoQuant analyst Darkfrost said at the time that altcoins had remained tightly correlated with Bitcoin, meaning a strong BTC move no longer automatically lifts the rest of the market. That pattern has favored short, narrow “mini” rallies in a handful of liquid names rather than the broad, all-boats-rise moves the indexes are designed to capture.
