THE REAL ALT SEASON IS IN CRYPTO EQUITIES

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

Bitcoin dominance sits at 58% in a steady uptrend since November 2022 without the historical pattern where Bitcoin appreciation precedes altcoin outperformance, suggesting alt season is occurring in crypto equities rather than crypto assets as institutions deploy fresh capital into familiar accessible formats. Crypto equities show dramatic outperformance with Coinbase up 53% YTD, Robinhood up 299%, Galaxy up 100%, and Circle up 368% since its June IPO, compared to Bitcoin's 31%, Ethereum's 35%, and Solana's 21% gains over the same period. Institutional capital flows into equities rather than crypto assets because institutions already have operational infrastructure for custody, compliance, and dealer relationships, while purchasing crypto tokens requires new capabilities that may fall outside their mandates entirely. The crypto equities alt season shares characteristics with historical crypto alt seasons including asset concentration with only a handful of attractive equities similar to under 100 tokens in past cycles, access to leverage through traditional equity lending desks unlike collapsed crypto-native lending infrastructure, and likely rotation between different equity metas from stablecoin stocks to exchanges to digital asset treasuries as traders take profits from expensive assets and redeploy capital.