Bitcoin rose to around $126,000 in the autumn of 2025 to set a new record, but the altcoin season the market expected did not appear.
On April 18, blockchain outlet BeInCrypto reported that Into the Cryptoverse founder Benjamin Cowen (벤저민 코웬) said this cycle peaked amid indifference rather than euphoria, unlike in the past.
Cowen said in 2017 and 2021 bitcoin peaks formed when social interest was at its highest, and profit-taking funds moved into riskier altcoins. In 2025, by contrast, social participation stayed at a historically low level when bitcoin hit its peak. He said weak inflows of new retail investors meant there was no buying base to absorb altcoins.
That trend was also reflected in the total market capitalisation of altcoins. Instead of the post-bitcoin rotation the market expected, altcoins stayed weak against bitcoin through the bull market and the period that followed.
Cowen pointed to the macroeconomic environment as the backdrop. He argued that bitcoin halving cycles and on-chain indicators alone cannot explain this cycle, and that actual investor behaviour is also influenced by the economic cycle and liquidity conditions. He said 2025, like 2019, was closer to a late-cycle phase, and that in such periods investors shift funds into relatively safer assets such as bitcoin rather than taking on greater risk.
Liquidity indicators also pointed in the same direction. Cowen said a liquidity risk indicator is currently at 0.789, in a “very tight” range. He also compared 2019, when bitcoin peaked in June and quantitative tightening ended in August, with 2025, when a peak in October was followed by the end of quantitative tightening in December.
Still, he said he does not see the four-year cycle itself as broken. Bitcoin again kept the established pattern of peaking in the fourth quarter of the year after the halving, and he presented a base scenario in which a low could form around October 2026, about a year after the peak, in line with historical patterns.
