Original Title: The Hivemind - Alt Season is Already Here

Original Authors: Kevin Kelly, Jose Maria Macedo, Yan Liberman, Ceteris, Jason Pagoulatos

Compiled by: BlockBeats

Editor's Note: Over the past few weeks, discussions in the crypto market have been shifting from "how much higher can Bitcoin go" to "has alt season already begun." After a rally, BTC entered a consolidation phase, yet assets like ZEC, HYPE, and Lighter continued to strengthen, while on-chain trading and speculative activity on Robinhood Chain and Solana also heated up rapidly. In traditional experience, this would often be interpreted as a signal of risk appetite spreading from BTC to altcoins. But when "altcoins starting to outperform" has already become an observable fact in the market, a more fundamental question begins to emerge: behind this rally, is new capital actually entering the crypto market, or is existing capital being reallocated more aggressively?

In the latest edition of "The Hivemind," Delphi Digital directed its discussion squarely at this question. Participants Kevin Kelly, Jose Maria Macedo, Yan Liberman, Ceteris, and Jason Pagoulatos approached the true state of the so-called "Alt Season" from the perspectives of macro, on-chain capital flows, token fundamentals, and market structure.

In this conversation, what is most noteworthy about Delphi is how it breaks down "whether alt season has already arrived" into a set of more fundamental structural questions: where capital is coming from, how risk appetite is transmitted, which assets can truly capture incremental economic activity, and how far an altcoin rally can go without broad incremental liquidity.

First, alt season is shifting from "broad Beta" to "structural Alpha." Past typical alt seasons usually spread progressively from BTC to ETH, to large-cap altcoins, and then to small-cap assets, with the core driver being incremental liquidity continuously entering the market. But the current market does not fully fit this pattern: BTC, ETH, and SOL have not simultaneously seen large-scale breakouts, yet capital is highly concentrated in a handful of strong assets like ZEC, HYPE, and Lighter, as well as highly volatile on-chain trading opportunities. This means the current market is not one where "everything goes up," but is closer to what Yan calls an alt picker's environment—a stock-picker's market. As unified liquidity Beta weakens, revenue, fees, token emissions, and value capture mechanisms are once again becoming the reasons for divergence among assets.

Second, the recovery of on-chain risk appetite does not mean that the entire crypto market has welcomed new capital. In the past, an important basis for judging whether a bull market was expanding was whether external capital continued to enter. But Jose is more cautious in his judgment of the current market: many buy orders may simply be crypto investors who previously left returning, rather than true new capital. At the same time, products such as FOMO and Robinhood Chain have indeed begun to reach users who previously did not belong to the traditional Crypto Twitter circle. Both phenomena can hold true at the same time — there are new users in localized markets, but the asset class as a whole has not yet formed a sufficiently clear trend of incremental capital. Therefore, whether BTC, ETH, and SOL can subsequently re-expand becomes an important verification condition for judging whether this market move is a "rotation" or an "expansion."

Third, Tokenization and on-chain stocks are changing the way risk appetite is carried. In the past, most applications in the crypto market revolved around native tokens, with assets, liquidity, and trading demand highly self-circulating. Robinhood Chain, the on-chain stocks and their derivative plays that recently appeared on Solana, have for the first time more clearly brought assets with off-chain economic value, such as stocks, into the crypto-native trading system. In the short term, this still contains a large number of Meme, leverage, and speculative mechanisms; but from a longer-cycle perspective, the change is that on-chain applications can begin to build new trading, yield, and social products around traditional assets. What is truly worth observing is not how long a particular play can last, but whether on-chain finance is beginning to shift from "trading crypto assets" to "trading all assets with crypto infrastructure."

Fourth, "narrative benefit" and "value capture" are being re-distinguished. The development of RWA, Tokenization, and on-chain stocks can in theory benefit the entire public chain ecosystem, but Delphi does not believe that value will flow evenly to all underlying assets. On the contrary, who can directly obtain trading fees, stable revenue, and sustained buy orders may be more important than "which chain this trend happens on." For this reason, when the program discusses assets such as ETH and HYPE, what is really being compared is not which narrative is grander, but who can convert new activity into quantifiable economic value. This change is essentially also a migration of the altcoin market from simply trading stories to trading cash flow and supply-demand structure.

If this conversation is compressed into one judgment, it is this: an altcoin market move has already occurred, but a truly comprehensive Alt Season still needs new capital and broader risk diffusion to prove it.

In this sense, the subject discussed in this article is no longer just "the next altcoin that will rise," but a new capital structure that the crypto market is forming: when broad-based liquidity is no longer the only driving force, the divergence among assets, the ability to capture value, and where the next buyer actually comes from will be more important than the label "altcoin season" itself.

The following is the original content (edited for readability):

TL;DR

The current "altseason" is more of a structural market than a broad-based rally, essentially reflecting capital rotating from uniform Beta exposure into a handful of strong assets and specific sectors.

Altcoins outperforming does not equal large-scale new capital inflows; fundamentally, one must still distinguish between external capital inflows and internal rotation of existing capital within the crypto market.

BTC, ETH, and SOL have yet to break out in sync, indicating that while risk appetite has already spread, it is not yet sufficient to prove the market has entered a phase driven by broad liquidity.

This is more like an alt picker's market, where differences in asset performance are increasingly determined by revenue, fees, token emissions, and value capture mechanisms.

The significance of on-chain equities and tokenization is not just about adding a new asset class; fundamentally, it marks crypto infrastructure beginning to move from "trading crypto assets" toward "carrying more traditional asset trading."

RWA and tokenization will not benefit all public blockchains and tokens equally; what truly determines valuation elasticity is who can convert new activity into sustained revenue and real buying pressure.

Whether this market can upgrade from "rotation" to a "full-blown Alt Season" depends not on how much altcoins have already risen, but on whether broader new capital and core assets step up in the follow-through.

When broad-based liquidity is no longer the sole driver, the market's core question shifts from "what to buy that will go up" to "who truly captures value, and where the next buyer comes from."

Key Points

Over the past few weeks, Bitcoin has not been the most active part of the crypto market.

Jason Pagoulatos of Delphi Digital observed that some of the conditions that previously drove Bitcoin's rally remain in place: spot ETF flows are relatively stable, derivatives have not shown the same degree of excessive leverage, and as Bitcoin entered consolidation after its rise, some altcoins began to take over the rally.

In his view, this actually fits a typical risk diffusion path: BTC rises first, then enters consolidation, and capital then seeks higher Beta assets. The difference is that this time, the rally did not spread evenly across all altcoins, but instead concentrated in a handful of strong assets and new on-chain speculative venues.

External market data also shows that the discussion on the show did indeed take place after an unusually strong altcoin rally. The Block's September 9 statistics showed that ZEC rose about 86% over the past 30 days, while HYPE rose about 53% over the same period; ZEC briefly broke through $1,000. Subsequently, the macro environment weakened. By September 11, ZEC had fallen from its high to about $1,134, and HYPE had dropped to about $79, but ZEC still recorded a weekly gain of about 34% and a monthly gain of 145% at that time. In other words, the prices mentioned on the show were more of a market snapshot at the time of recording, rather than current prices.

Altseason Has Begun, but It Is Not "Everything Rising Together"

Ceteris described the current market structure as a kind of "barbell."

On one end are assets that have already established trends, such as ZEC, HYPE, and Lighter; on the other end is highly active on-chain speculation within ecosystems such as Robinhood Chain and Solana. By contrast, traditional large-cap assets such as BTC, ETH, and SOL have not simultaneously seen breakthroughs of the same magnitude.

This means that the so-called "altseason" at present is, at least for now, not the broad-based rally commonly seen in the past.

This is also where Jose's concern lies. He believes that although the market has clearly become stronger, there is not yet enough clear evidence to prove that large-scale new capital from outside the crypto market is entering. More of the funds may be coming from investors who had previously held crypto assets, left, and are now buying back in.

In other words, price increases and the entry of new capital are not the same thing.

Ceteris's observation is slightly different. He believes that some new on-chain applications are indeed reaching younger users who previously did not belong to the traditional Crypto Twitter circle, so new users and new funds have already appeared in certain segments of the market. But if the question is expanded to the entire crypto market, he likewise believes the evidence is still insufficient.

His standard of judgment is straightforward: only if BTC, ETH, and SOL can break through further in the future would there be more reason to believe that broader new capital is entering; if the rally continues to be highly concentrated in a small number of assets, then the current market still looks more like a rotation of funds.

Yan Liberman believes that this does not prevent altcoins from continuing to perform.

The reason is that the crypto market does not need to wait for "all external capital to enter together" before individual tokens can have room to rise. If a project's TVL, revenue, and fees increase while token emissions decline, supply and demand themselves may change.

As a result, he calls the current market an alt picker's environment: rather than simply betting on an across-the-board exponential rally in altcoins, it's better to look for assets with improving fundamentals and declining supply pressure whose prices have not yet fully reflected this.

This also means that the keyword for this market cycle may not be "Beta," but divergence.

On-chain stocks are becoming the entry point for a new round of risk appetite

If strong altcoins represent existing capital seeking higher returns, then the recent changes at Robinhood Chain and Solana represent another trend worth paying closer attention to: traditional assets are beginning to be brought into the on-chain speculation system.

The show spent considerable time discussing on-chain stocks.

The most typical example is Robinhood Chain. Robinhood officially launched the network in July and made Stock Tokens one of its core assets. According to Robinhood's official description, these Stock Tokens are issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited and are essentially tokenized debt securities, backed 1:1 by the corresponding assets, but holders do not thereby directly acquire legal or beneficial ownership of the relevant listed companies.

This point is very important.

"Stocks on-chain" does not equal "moving a real stock certificate directly onto the blockchain." What investors get is on-chain exposure to the economic performance of the underlying stock, not direct shareholder status in the traditional sense.

But from a trading perspective, this is already enough to open up a large number of new portfolio constructions.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said on September 9 that Robinhood Chain already had about 200 types of Stock Tokens at the time and was serving eligible users in more than 120 countries and regions. Data from The Block shows that as of September 4, the value of tokenized assets on Robinhood Chain had grown from $11.9 million on July 1 to $149.4 million, with about 77% coming from stock-related tokens.

Subsequently, playbooks familiar to the crypto market quickly stacked on top of these assets.

On the show, Ceteris mentioned that some projects began pairing Meme Tokens with stock assets, creating new trading structures among stocks, Meme coins, and liquidity pools; new Launchpads built around stock assets and Meme Tokens also appeared on Solana.

This hype isn't just narrative. On September 2, Pons, a token issuance platform on Robinhood Chain, saw its single-day fees briefly reach about $5.95 million, with daily trading volume around $544 million and nearly 25,000 tokens created.

In Ceteris's view, these short-term plays still carry very obvious speculative and gambling characteristics, but what's more noteworthy isn't how long a particular meme coin can rally, but that assets with off-chain fundamental value, such as stocks, are beginning to truly become the underlying raw material for on-chain applications.

In the past, many crypto applications were highly "self-referential": crypto assets provided liquidity for crypto protocols, and then crypto users traded new crypto assets.

On-chain stocks offer another path—developers can build trading, lending, yield, collateral, and social products around real-world assets. Ceteris therefore judges that even if the current meme frenzy cools down quickly, "stocks on-chain" itself could still be an important direction for the next one to two years.

Tokenization a boon for ETH? Delphi cares more about who actually captures the revenue

This also raises another question: if tokenization and RWA become an important narrative for the next phase, does that mean ETH will naturally become the biggest beneficiary?

The Delphi guest didn't give such a direct answer.

Ceteris believes that if the market continues to trade around currency debasement and on-chain asset expansion, ETH does have the possibility of regaining its "on-chain money" narrative. But from an actual allocation perspective, he hasn't significantly increased his ETH position because of this.

Jason's judgment goes further: even if tokenization itself benefits the entire on-chain ecosystem, the protocols that truly capture trading volume, fees, and liquidity may not be ETH itself.

For example, assets like HYPE and Lighter that directly capture trading activity may show higher performance elasticity and price beta under the same RWA and tokenization logic.

In other words, from an asset pricing perspective, "which chain a trend happens on" and "who ultimately captures the economic value created by that trend" are two different questions.

This is also another layer of meaning behind the so-called "coin-picking market."

When the entire market no longer relies on a unified wave of liquidity to rise, investors begin to ask again: Where does revenue flow? Who captures the fees? Is there continuous token emission? Has revenue formed buybacks or other value capture mechanisms?

In such a market, one narrative can benefit many projects at the same time, but final price performance may be highly divergent.

What really matters next is not the "altcoin season index," but new buyers

Delphi guests remain generally positive on the market overall, but the risks they discussed at the end of the show actually reveal the most important validation conditions for this rally.

First is the macroeconomic policy environment.

The show repeatedly mentioned the so-called debasement trade. This does not mean the U.S. government has formally announced that it will push for dollar depreciation, but rather a trading narrative that links fiscal pressure, debt management, and liquidity support policies with scarce assets such as gold and Bitcoin.

This backdrop did not appear entirely out of thin air. On August 19, the U.S. Treasury announced that it would raise the single-operation cap for liquidity support buybacks of 10-year to 30-year Treasuries from $2 billion to at least $4 billion, effective September 9. Reuters subsequently reported that the related policy had at one point pushed down long-end yields and the dollar, and strengthened the "debasement trade" narrative for gold and Bitcoin.

Jason therefore believes that what could truly change the current risk appetite environment may not necessarily be a crypto-native event, but a sudden reversal in policy conditions. For example, if inflation rises persistently again and forces monetary policy to be tighter than the market expects, then the backdrop that previously supported risk assets may change.

Yan's judgment is more specific: if BTC continues to rise, but expectations for further policy easing do not strengthen in tandem, he would instead become more cautious.

The logic is simple — the higher asset prices go, the higher the demands on the "next buyer." If prices keep rising but there is no explanation for where new purchasing power is coming from, then it becomes harder for the rally to continue expanding.

The second thing to watch is whether BTC, ETH, and SOL can take over.

If these core assets break out again while on-chain activity continues to grow, then the current localized altcoin rally is more likely to escalate further into broad capital inflows.

Conversely, if the market long remains in a structure of "a few strong coins rising + highly speculative on-chain assets exploding," then the so-called altcoin season may still be just a highly concentrated zero-sum game.

For this reason, the most valuable takeaway from this issue of Hivemind is not the claim that "alt season is already here" in itself. More precisely, the altcoin rally has already arrived, but whether a full-blown bull market has come still needs to be proven by fresh capital inflows.

And before that answer emerges, this looks more like a market where coin selection, rotation, and risk management are happening all at once: finding the fastest-rising assets is important, but after prices have already surged, who is still willing to keep buying, where the money will come from, and when to start taking profits may be the real variables that determine how far this rally can go.

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