No one talks about the alt season anymore. Lately, I’ve been thinking that this might actually be a bullish sign.

When you look at Santiment’s social volume tracker, the frequency of the word “altseason” on social media has dropped to its lowest level in the past two years. This may look negative at first glance, but in terms of market psychology, it’s a paradoxical bullish signal.

Think about it. Isn’t the alt season essentially a barometer of small-lot investors’ speculative fervor? When everyone is making noise, it’s usually near the market peak; on the other hand, when no one is talking anymore, that’s actually the phase where big players are quietly adding to their positions. Looking at the data from the past two years, this pattern has repeated again and again.

It’s also only natural that altcoins are being treated so coldly right now. Dogecoin is down about 41% in a year, Solana is down about 36%, and Cardano has suffered losses of more than 62%. Since the crash in October, funds have concentrated into Bitcoin and stablecoins, leaving the altcoin market completely abandoned. In an environment like this, it’s only to be expected—just as Santiment’s data shows—that market interest would disappear.

But here’s the interesting part. When you look at on-chain data, wallets holding 100 BTC or more have, for the first time in late February, started to approach 20,000. In other words, large holders are quietly accumulating on pullbacks. The fear index is in the “Extreme Fear” zone—「極度の恐怖」圏—and US individual investors’ search trends are also weak.

Not all the conditions for an alt season are in place yet. After Bitcoin stabilizes, the market needs to shift into risk assets. But the sentiment environment is gradually coming together. The silence that Santiment has captured may actually be a preparatory stage.

The movement in XRP is also interesting. It’s currently trading around $1.35, supported by trading volume and whale accumulation. However, the downtrend is still ongoing, so a bullish reversal hasn’t been confirmed yet. Whether it can break above $1.40 to $1.42 may become an important pivot point. And the integration of XRP into Rakuten’s payment app for 44 million users is a big step forward in terms of real demand, too.

In the end, the fact that nobody talks about the alt season anymore is just a natural part of the market cycle. The very quietness shown by Santiment’s data might be the eve of the next move. At the very least, the ingredients that suggest that are already coming together.