Excluding Bitcoin: Most losses

82k, this is the second time Bitcoin has touched this level this month. The last time was in early September, after which it turned downwards and slid all the way down to around 76k. This time it was over the weekend, and after standing up, it did not fall back immediately, but settled steadily above $80,000. Market sentiment also changed, and social media was filled with shouts of "the bull market is coming back quickly."

Glassnode and Bybit wrote a report [1] that laid out the asset performance over the past two years, and the answer was both unexpected and reasonable: Bitcoin was the only major asset to achieve a significant increase over the past two years. The specific figures are: Over the past two years, Bitcoin has risen by 28%; during the same period, the median value of mid-cap altcoins has fallen by 74%; and Ethereum (ETH) has remained essentially stagnant. Two years, 28%, -74%, 0%—this is the brutal divergence of this cycle. The report defines this divergence as constituting the core characteristic of this cycle: Bitcoin is compounding upwards, while mid-cap altcoin assets are shrinking continuously. The so-called altcoin season, the scenario where funds overflow from Bitcoin and drive up smaller coins, has ultimately resulted in more disappointment than hope this time around. It should be noted that the data in this report is current as of the closing bell on August 23rd, and Glassnode's sample coverage is limited; it describes trading venues within its tracking scope, not the entire market. Where money goes can lie, but the location of leverage cannot. The report provides two comparisons: Bitcoin's futures open interest is approximately 2% of its market capitalization; while speculative small-cap coins are much higher, with a PE ratio approaching 24%. The same market, the same statistical method, yet a difference of more than ten times. If there's a bubble, it's not in Bitcoin itself, but concentrated in the most dangerous corners of the market. Where leverage is concentrated indicates where the most people want to make quick money. Meanwhile, the safest asset bears the entire weight of the market's upward movement. Fund flows are aligned. The Bitcoin ETF saw a cumulative net inflow of approximately $55.2 billion, while the ETH fund saw approximately $13.1 billion, a significant difference; the ETH fund has also recently recorded several days of net outflows. The SOL ETF saw an even smaller net inflow, with a cumulative inflow of approximately $29.7 million. The report's wording is worth noting: where funds flow depends on performance. Last week's rebound revealed the same thing. Bitcoin rallied against the trend starting Friday evening, surging past $80,000 and pulling the entire market up, increasing the total market capitalization by 4.6% to approximately $2.85 trillion; SOL rose about 10% that day, with blue-chip altcoins like Uniswap rising even more sharply, bringing back some of the long-absent broad-based rally. Similar single-day surges have occurred several times in the past two years, and the subsequent path has mostly been that Bitcoin continues to rise while other assets retrace. This time, the test is simple: see if incremental funds are willing to stay in mid-cap altcoins for more than a week. There is a resistance zone worth noting. Glassnode data [2] shows that BTC Treasury has only increased its holdings by about 5,900 BTC in the past three months, which is worth about $451 million based on a spot price of about $76,400. Most of the buying came from Strategy, including the 4,603 BTC purchased in late August. In contrast, BTC Treasury increased its holdings by more than 100,000 BTC in the same period last year, purchasing 89,000 BTC in July 2025 alone, which cost more than $8.9 billion that month. The average holding cost for Treasury firms is approximately $80,500, about 6% higher than the spot price at the time of the report's release, and they are still in a floating loss overall. Currently, 181 listed companies hold approximately 1.22 million BTC, of ​​which Strategy holds approximately 845,050. Glassnode's wording is straightforward: once the $80.5k threshold is reclaimed, the Treasury group will return to profitability, and there will be one less layer of supply above them; until then, their cost line remains a ceiling. This line almost coincides with the supply wall that was hotly debated in the market last week, and the concentrated liquidation zone of $83,000 to $86,000 is just above it. Seller costs, buyer liquidity, and short liquidation orders—three things overlapped in the same price range. Other demand indicators are also not particularly strong. Since the beginning of August, the US spot Bitcoin ETF has attracted billions of dollars, but the cumulative net inflow since the beginning of the year is still about $1 billion short of turning positive; the Coinbase premium index has been negative for most of the time since May, and only turned positive briefly on September 5. The negative value means that the demand of US buyers is weaker than that of traders in other regions; the total supply of stablecoins has remained at $300 billion to $310 billion this year, and there has been no significant growth recently [2]. According to the theory of blockchain, if the underlying value remains unchanged, but the total market value has skyrocketed, then it can only be that the leverage ratio has been increased. The bull market takes a step and then looks back, which is to keep bursting the leverage of aggressive gambling, so that the market can return to fairness and distribute the gains reasonably. Putting these things together, we can see two layers. The first layer is the structure. The absence of the altcoin season is not the failure of a certain project, but the result of the narrowing of the capital inflow. ETFs and institutional funds have locked up their holdings in more difficult-to-move areas, while the channels for incremental funds are concentrated in a few compliant products. Where funds flow depends on performance, and performance, in turn, depends on the concentration of funds—a self-reinforcing loop. The longer this loop continues, the greater the gap between the top and bottom performers becomes. The second layer is valuation. When incremental funds can only enter through a few narrow gates, the market's pricing of assets is no longer determined by the richness of the story, but by who can enter those narrow gates. The decline of mid-cap altcoin assets is less a rejection by the market and more an exclusion from this gate. Bitcoin's market capitalization share is still rising. This number itself has no stance; it simply records the choices of funds. In two years, the market has given an answer in the simplest way: in this industry, the depth of consensus is itself a scarce resource, and pricing power for scarce things is not easily relinquished. As for rotation, in the past two years, every time someone announced the start of an altcoin season, Bitcoin's market capitalization percentage jumped up. Therefore, what retail investors see as an altcoin season is essentially a harvesting machine in the hands of market manipulators.