A prominent crypto co-founder has delivered a blunt assessment of the altcoin market, arguing that the sector’s prolonged struggles stem from structural flaws rather than macroeconomic conditions and that the latest cycle represented its final act of distribution.
Glyde co-founder, Sweep on X, contends that the industry has been in decline for six years and that this round simply completed the process. The real bubble was not in prices but in valuations. Headline figures of $4 trillion created an illusion of vast capital inflows, while the actual money that entered the space was only a fraction of that total. Most of the reported values consisted of locked or team-controlled supplies multiplied by thinly traded prices that insiders could influence.
Sweep says comparing crypto’s headline caps to those of gold, silver, or equities amounted to pitting real invested capital against numbers that never truly existed. For instance, a token with a $2 billion market cap on just 5% float reflected perhaps $100 million in genuine tradable value alongside nearly $2 billion in unsold team inventory.
Across thousands of projects, the same four-stage extraction pattern played out at varying speeds. It typically began with launches that kept 70 to 90% of the supply locked in multisignature wallets, while the circulating float remained at 5 to 15%, and the fully diluted valuation was then presented as the market cap.
Next came engineered price action in thin order books, where market makers provided liquidity through loans and options while teams timed exchange listings.
 
The third phase recruited shorts by highlighting overvaluation, only for funding rates to flip negative so that shorts paid longs every eight hours –effectively collecting fees from the very traders they had lured in.
The final stage saw sustained drawdowns that failed to rebound because the supposed supporting capital had already been sold during rallies.
Sweep concludes that the model performed exactly as intended, as only retail participants were never its intended beneficiaries. He views the recent collapse as a necessary clearing out that sets the stage for genuine recovery.
Meanwhile, the current environment accentuates the thesis.
CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index is at 41 out of 100, up modestly from 37 yesterday and 31 last week, but well below the yearly high of 78 reached in September 2025 and far from the Bitcoin-dominated low of 12 recorded in April 2025.
Over the past 90 days, only a handful of tokens have posted outsized gains. The top three are SIREN, up 872.94%; DEXE, up 396.78%; and EDGE, up 247.27%.
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