I think too many people are either over-complicating the narrative, or oversimplifying as "alt season is a consistent cycle".

There hasn't actually been any clear or straight-forward cyclical alt-seasons, nor are they even following BTC's cycle directly.

It's been all over the place but with always one thing in common.

The patchy history of alt-seasons:

2013: BTC starts to hit its final mania phase in early November. About a week later, the mania starts to hit the main alt coins like LTC, XRP, PPC, etc... Alt season is very brief and lasts about a month.

2017: BTC starts to hit its final mania phase in late November. Alt season has its big rally the following month, then crashes by mid January, almost a month after BTC. But alt coins also had a big rally in July when BTC also had an impressive rally from $1.3k to almost $3K. Kind of a "mini mania".

2021: This was a weird cycle for alts. They start a big rally and start alt season near the start of the bull cycle, about a month after BTC starts its bullrun around November of 2020, with most of its cycle gains already in that first run. Then 3 months later, meme coins explode with the meme coin hype. Alts end their bullrun just days after BTC ends its bullrun. It's the longest alt-season.

2025: BTC already comes out from its bear market bottom with a pretty big breakout. Then on November of 2025, the big rally and bullrun starts like 2021. With a big chunk of BTC gain for the cycle already in the initial run. Like 2021, it looks like alt season might start early. But it's short lived. In May 2025, BTC breaks out from its sub $80K tariff-fear dip, and rallies above $100K. In July, alts have another big rally, some alts rallying even more than in December. We might be in "mini alt-season" territory, but it's short lived again.

We are now in Q4 of 2025 with no "mania" and no alt-season.

The history of alt-season might be patchy and seems all over the place, but the fundamentals are actually pretty straight forward.

The simple fundamentals of alt seasons:

Alt-season is the same result as anything else in the world of trading, markets, speculation, and greed vs fear. It follows all the same rules and psychology of a high risk speculative asset.

Alts are a very high risk/very high reward asset, where speculation rules, and follows the very height of greed and hype which is mania. Sprinkled with a few moments of random hype for random alts.

More importantly, they are a secondary asset in a market dominated by one primary asset.

What does alt-season really follow?

It's the same ingredients that pump alts each time: hype, FOMO, mania.

No BTC mania = no alt season.

And as long as BTC dominates crypto, that mania has to come from BTC.