‘Early Signals’ of Altcoin Season as OG Tokens Pump Following XRP, BTC All-time Highs

By Ryan S. Gladwin

Old-school cryptocurrencies are surging in the wake of XRP setting a new all-time high, after a painstaking seven-year wait. One expert believes it is an early sign of an altcoin season following Bitcoin’s all-time high on Monday, adding that newer altcoins could be next to pump.

Major retro altcoins Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash have all seen notable gains, with other altcoin such as Uniswap, Dogecoin, and Hedera also jumping in value.

“We're seeing early signals of an 'altcoin season', but it's not fully underway yet," Akshat Vaidya, CIO of venture capital firm Maelstrom, told Decrypt. He noted that while Bitcoin dominance is "starting to dip," it remains above 60%.  A rotation into altcoins such as Ethereum "clearly shows that momentum is building," Vaidya said, adding that, "It could very well be that history repeats itself, with a post-BTC all-time high altseason.”

Leading the pack is Ethereum Classic, which has soared 20.3% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko—though it remains down over 85% from its all-time high set in 2021.

Ethereum Classic was created in 2016 after a venture capital fund on Ethereum known as The DAO was hacked for $50 million—which represented a sizable portion of Ethereum’s market cap at the time. Many believed it posed an existential threat to the network and forced through a hard fork that would reverse the hack. Not everyone agreed, however, with those staunchly against the move remaining on what was now called Ethereum Classic.

Litecoin similarly jumped to a four-month high of $110.12, according to CoinGecko, before retracing to $108.73, up 9% on the day. The cryptocurrency was built by an ex-Google employee called Charlie Lee in 2011 as one of the earliest projects to follow in the footsteps of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 whitepaper. It was designed in the image of Bitcoin, although it aimed to be much faster than it.

Bitcoin Cash has also climbed 6.4% on the day as the 19th largest cryptocurrency, per CoinGecko, although it is currently down 86% from its 2017 all-time high.

Similarly to Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin Cash came following a network-wide disagreement and hard fork of Bitcoin in 2017. Rather than a hack, in this instance, developers and miners disagreed over a proposal to change Bitcoin’s block size, resulting in a split.

Ironically, Bitcoin Cash was hard forked two more times creating Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Cash ABC—which later rebranded to eCash. Both are significantly smaller than Bitcoin Cash in terms of market capitalization.

“It’s clear that older coins with deeper liquidity and investor familiarity are attracting capital first. You'll have to wait for a true altseason to see newer coins pump,” Vaidya added.

The OG altcoin jump comes in the wake of another old-school cryptocurrency, XRP, setting a new all-time high of $3.65 after seven years of waiting. The record price comes as the project’s long-running legal fight with the SEC appears to be winding down—despite not officially being over.

Other altcoins like Uniswap, Dogecoin, and Hedera saw notable gains of 17.5%, 11.3%, and 7.6% on the day respectively.

On Thursday, the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed the GENIUS Act, a landmark bill that creates a framework for creating and issuing stablecoins. It was seen as a major sign that President Trump’s administration is advancing on its pro-crypto agenda.

“Favourable U.S. government policy and well-timed institutional engagement has resulted in blood rushing back into the crypto market,” Sean Dawson, Head of Research at Derive, an on-chain options platform, told Decrypt.

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