Reflecting back on 3 bear markets and 2 bull runs for alt coins, my personal opinion is that the alt coin market does not change much as a whole until there is a major shift in US monetary policy and US macro economics. Why the US though? Because it is the largest economy in the world by a large margin. The charts I've been looking at 10+ years have been speaking, but I often don't hear the important parts because the hopium deafens me. I'm not a quant. I just see the numbers go up, sideways, or down. Those charts are the market speaking I don't make the rules and neither do you. The market makes the rules. I'm learning to hear it. When alt season? Maybe after the USA cuts rates, ends QT, starts QE, and prints more money. I don't know. Apparently is does not matter if a bunch of other countries aside from the US cuts rates and print money. They already did and not much came of it, yet. Even as recently as February 2025 I thought strong bullish news was enough to spark an alt bull run, but nay. April, May, June rolled by with very positive crypto legislation advancements - still no joy. July has crypto week coming up in the House of Reps. We will see what happens. Historically there are few small upticks only to return to a trend line, or setting a higher low depending on the time scale one zooms out into the past. Occasionally the latest wiz bang coin shows up and does well, displacing previous market share alts as it climbs the charts. For example Solana, Hype, SUI climbed the charts, EOS, Tezos, and others regressed down the top 100, Cardano held a strong position since launch like a honey badger. Why is the price of a coin important? Because people do not want to lose value. People do not want to miss opportunities to gain value either. No matter how virtuous it may sound to say that one does not care about the price, they actually do care about the price. Because if it goes to zero, nobody else wants it. The positive outlook for alts? US monetary policy may shift with the current bullish US administration. Investors may try their luck to not miss the opportunity of gains I mentioned above. The money printing of fiat could be turned back on. Yes, that same money printing crypto bros make fun of is that same money printing that the crypto bros benefit. Historically, look what happened to alt coins when the COVID money printing kicked in. Alt season showed up. What about Bitcoin?(as opposed to alts) Historically bitcoin has been around longer, with much more of a track record, and people have watched it outperform every other asset over the course of a decade. It's possible as opposed to seeing as a high risk asset, they see a greater risk of not holding BTC to retain value. "But Bitcoin is so slow!" Nobody cares, it's fast enough. They're happy with it. It will speed up in due time at the right layers. Same for Cardano. "But Rick, we created a new financial operating system, we don't need the old one!" ... It doesn't matter what you think, it only matters what the market thinks. How else are people supposed to buy crypto? We use a bridge from the old system to the new system called CEX and fiat. All these financial systems and markets are interdependent. Interoperability is important during transitions phases. How else would people buy crypto, or alts, or stable coins? Why do you think credit cards, at one point, have (had) raised numbers and magnetic stripes? To maintain compatibility with the old mechanical card imprint machines while also using electronic means. Think of interoperability as both a spectrum and a transition phase. It take 20+ years to have gone through these major technological changes. I am still very bullish on alts in the long term outlook, and especially Cardano, along with other extremely high reliability and high performance blockchains. What I don't know wtf is going to happen next or when. Not even 10 seconds into the future. It took over 10 years for internet mass adoption. Anyway, this post is not financial advice. Just my personal musings of my historical observations.