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ETFs Changed Who Owns Bitcoin. That's Why Altseason Looks Broken. The 2021 playbook was predictable: BTC runs, dominance peaks, retail rotates gains into alts, altseason follows. The market has been waiting for that script to repeat in 2026. It hasn't. The structural reason is ETFs. Spot Bitcoin ETFs introduced a new type of BTC holder: institutional allocators, pension-adjacent accounts, retail investors in brokerage wrappers. People who have never self-custodied anything. These holders don't rotate into altcoins when BTC consolidates. They hold or redeem. There's no "move profits to ETH, then SOL, then whatever's trending" logic in their playbook. Bitcoin-to-altcoin trading pair volume collapsed to around 50 in June, roughly half of 2021 levels. That's not a temporary dip. It's a structural change in how capital moves through the market. The portion of BTC holdings that used to cycle through the altcoin ecosystem is now locked in products that don't have that exit. This doesn't mean alts can't move. Some are. But a broad, synchronized altseason where everything pumps together for weeks may need a different catalyst than previous cycles: fresh retail money entering the market, not recycled BTC profits rotating down the risk curve. If that's right, on-chain new wallet creation is a more meaningful leading indicator right now than BTC dominance percentages. Share your thoughts in the comments 👇