Will the Four-Year Cycle of Bull Markets in the Crypto Market Be Broken?

Talking about Li and Talking about the Outside: Will 2025 Still Have an Altcoin Season?

A few days ago, many people were still arguing that Bitcoin would drop to $80,000, but it seems that in the past couple of days, everyone has started to turn bullish again, calling for Bitcoin to reach $150,000 or even $200,000. The change in sentiment among everyone is faster than a weather forecast.

In the previous article (January 16), we discussed the Onchain Economy ETF and reviewed some recent favorable directions and factors for the market. Less than a day later, Trump started "promoting" again, and today there are rumors that he is open to creating a U.S.-first cryptocurrency reserve, prioritizing tokens like USDC, SOL, and XRP. As shown in the image below.

Subsequently, related tokens began to surge, and some KOLs quickly seized the opportunity, launching various versions of the "U.S. Cryptocurrency Reserve Candidate List" on social media (mainly listing cryptocurrencies established in the U.S.).

However, some people have raised different opinions about this news. For example, Quinn Thompson (founder of the hedge fund Lekker Capital) stated that the idea of the U.S. purchasing altcoins as strategic reserves is absurd and will never happen. As shown in the image below.

The reason why everyone is so enthusiastic about such rumors may be akin to the saying that Chen Sheng never said: The world has long suffered from altcoin seasons.

1. Will we still see an altcoin season in 2025?

Regarding whether we will still see an altcoin season in 2025, this is a question that many people have been asking in the public account's backend recently. Many people probably have their positions in altcoins and feel a bit reluctant as they watch Bitcoin continue to rise.

In fact, if you have read previous articles on the topic of altcoin seasons from Talking about Li and Talking about the Outside, you should be very clear about our viewpoint. From our perspective, we still maintain our previous speculation: there is still a chance for altcoins to emerge in this bull market, and optimistically, it may happen in the first quarter of 2025.

In previous articles, we also shared that historically, true altcoin seasons generally occur after BTC.D begins to decline rapidly. For example, this was the case in both the 2017 and 2021 bull markets, as shown in the image below.

Interestingly, we can also see from the image above that in previous bull markets, BTC.D began to decline rapidly in the first quarter (around March). Based on the current trend of BTC.D, we are still in a phase of a high point range. If (note that this is hypothetical) history can repeat itself, we might see a new altcoin season opportunity around March.

In addition to some on-chain data indicators and sentiment indicators as references, the "U.S. Altcoin Reserve Plan" mentioned above is also a significant positive factor. It is not hard to imagine that if the U.S. really establishes a reserve plan for certain altcoins and provides some legal support in policy, the emotional impact on the overall altcoin prices would be substantial. Of course, the news about the U.S. altcoin reserve plan is currently just a rumor, and its authenticity is unknown. We will only know after patiently waiting for Trump's performance after taking office.

Moreover, as we mentioned earlier, there are still many unresolved issues regarding altcoins, such as the problem of a massive number of new projects diluting market liquidity (most altcoins will ultimately wait for zero), the high FDV and low circulation issue (which exerts continuous selling pressure on the market), etc. Therefore, even if we do see a new altcoin season opportunity, not all altcoins will have significant upward potential. If you still wish to take some risks with altcoins, we only suggest that you focus on and explore project tokens under popular narratives like AI, DeFi, RWA, etc.

At the same time, it is also important to pay attention to the dynamics related to funding, such as focusing on the activity level of ecosystems and which ecological sectors are seeing capital inflows. As shown in the image below.

For more discussions and analyses on the topic of altcoin seasons, we have already covered a lot in previous articles from Talking about Li and Talking about the Outside. Interested partners can directly search the historical articles of the public account or download the e-book of Talking about Li and Talking about the Outside for a review.

In short, combining our articles from a couple of days ago and the current market sentiment, it seems that Trump's inauguration ceremony (January 20) may trigger a new round of market rebound in February.

2. Will the