Altcoins rally across the board as bitcoin consolidates near $84,000
Quant jumped 39% over 24 hours and 93 of 100 CoinDesk 100 constituents rose, with the altcoin season index at its highest in more than three months.
The rotation follows the pattern of previous cycles, in which capital moves into more speculative bets once bitcoin has run hard and stalled, with the cost of holding a long position through elevated funding pushing traders to rotate.
Bitcoin has climbed from below $63,000 in August to almost $87,000 on Tuesday and has gone sideways since, and altcoins are benefitting as a result, CoinMarketCap's altcoin season index reading 56 out of 100 against 45 a week ago and 38 a month ago, its highest in more than three months.
Traders have also looked past the largest exchange hack in months, with Bitget losing $351.6 million overnight to attackers who compromised a backend system in its wallet infrastructure and spoofed transaction data to trigger the exchange's own authorisation process. Chief executive Gracy Chen said private key compromise has been ruled out and that a $464 million user protection fund covers the loss, though withdrawals remain suspended pending a security review.