AltcoinsOpinion
|3 min ReadWhere Did Alt Season Go? Crypto Stocks Have the Answer
Maya Chen
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
The rotation moved to equities
You waited for alt season. It is here. You just looked in the wrong market.
Bitcoin dominance sits near 58 percent and has climbed since November 2022. The old pattern, where long-tail coins outrun BTC, has not returned. That does not mean the rotation vanished. It shifted.
Alt season is playing out in crypto equities. Prices are breaking out. Capital is moving. Winners are separating from the pack.
Institutions are buying tickers, not tokens
Fresh money is coming from institutions, not retail. They move with mandates and signoffs. They want legitimacy and rails they already use. They just got both.
In 2024 the SEC approved spot ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum. SEC Chair Atkin launched Project Crypto. Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman backed the tokenization of equities. That is the green light.
Funds can buy stocks today. They have custody, compliance, and brokers in place. Buying a long-tail token often sits outside their scope. So the flows chase listed names tied to crypto.
The scorecard proves it. Year to date, Coinbase is up 53 percent. Robinhood is up 299 percent. Galaxy is up 100 percent. Circle is up 368 percent since its June IPO, or 75 percent from first close.
Meanwhile Bitcoin is up 31 percent. Ethereum is up 35 percent. Solana is up 21 percent. The equity side is the hot tape.
Zoom out to the Bitcoin bottom on December 17, 2022, and the picture holds. Crypto stocks have outpaced the coins across the cycle.
More fuel is coming. A pipeline of crypto IPOs is lining up. Late-stage firms are preparing to file. That creates the same rotation we know from on-chain markets. Profit taking in stretched names. Fresh money into laggards with better risk reward. If CRCL trades at a 26x sales multiple, traders will harvest gains and re-deploy.
How this alt season plays out
This looks like a classic alt season, just on a different venue. The menu is concentrated. Only a handful of stocks give you crypto exposure. That mirrors early token cycles when maybe 100 coins mattered. It also means sharper moves. Equity investors can use leverage. That can amplify both melt-ups and flushes.
Expect sector waves. Stablecoin plays to exchanges. Exchanges to digital asset reserve companies. Then to the next theme. Narratives rotate. Liquidity follows.
Yes, an on-chain alt season can still come. It needs time. It needs new marginal capital with the ops stack to hold tokens. Until then, the path of least resistance sits in listed names.
If you want the alt season you remember, watch the equities tape. That is where institutions are already bidding. That is where the next rotation is setting up. And that is where this cycle’s opportunity is hiding in plain sight.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.