Funds are flocking to top-tier ETFs, why is altseason still delayed?

The number of approved compliant products keeps rising, yet capital still circulates among top-tier players, as the old cycle playbook begins to falter.

Written by: Oluwapelumi Adejumo

Translated by: Saoirse, Foresight News

On September 9, U.S. exchange-traded funds tracking Ethereum, XRP, and Solana absorbed nearly $59 million in capital, while Bitcoin-related products saw outflows of $120.24 million. This phenomenon once again highlights that capital is rotating among different compliant cryptocurrency assets.

However, the broader market has hardly reflected this rotation effect. The Altcoin Season Index calculated by BlockchainCenter stands at 37, far below the critical threshold of 75; reaching this threshold means that three-quarters of the top 50 qualifying tokens by market cap have outperformed Bitcoin over the past 90 days.

This divergence is becoming a typical characteristic of the expanding crypto ETF market. Investors now have more avenues to allocate assets beyond Bitcoin, but capital remains clustered in a few top-tier assets and has not diffused into the broader token market.

Wall Street's Capital Rotation Is Constrained to a Narrow Core Circle of ETFs

The market performance on September 9 illustrates that institutional-grade altcoin trading can gain scale, but it does not necessarily evolve into a broad-based market rally.