The 2021 altseason will never happen again

The structure of the crypto market has fundamentally changed over the past few years.

In 2017, the main driver was ICOs. The market was small, narratives were limited, and the very idea of tokenization felt new. Capital was concentrated in a relatively small number of projects.

In 2021, the market entered the DeFi and NFT phase. A completely new financial layer emerged:

— yield farming;
— AMMs;
— NFTs;
— retail mania fueled by cheap money and near-zero rates.

In 2024–25, we saw the rise of memecoins and AI agents, but the market also began facing infrastructure fatigue. Hundreds of L2s, L3s, appchains, restaking protocols, and modular solutions are now competing not only for liquidity, but also for attention.
And attention has become the market’s scarcest resource.

Liquidity is no longer concentrated the way it used to be.

The total number of tokens keeps growing, diluting capital across the market. On top of that, prices are under pressure from the current VC model crisis.

Most new tokens launch with:
— massive FDVs;
— minimal circulating supply;
— multi-year unlock schedules;
— constant sell pressure from emissions.

In 2021, crypto was the center of speculative attention. By 2026, a significant portion of that capital had shifted into AI.

Today, AI plays the role crypto once did:
— fast-moving narratives;
— exponential expectations;
— venture capital euphoria;
— massive inflows of speculative capital;
— breakthrough technologies.

Against this backdrop, the model of a “broad altseason” — where almost the entire market rallies — is becoming increasingly unlikely.

The next cycle will most likely look different:

— narrower narratives;
— localized liquidity rotations;
— short-term pumps in individual tokens;
— fierce competition for attention;
— capital concentration in a limited number of strong ecosystems.