Altcoins are moving again, but ONE key metric says altseason isn’t here yet!

As the wider crypto market saw a boom, so did the altcoin market, with the latter’s market capitalization hitting $222 billion for the first time in 8 months.

However, while altcoins may be showing some signs of life, their rally still lacks the power needed to ignite a full-blown altseason.

Altcoin traders need to put in more work

According to Glassnode, despite this surge in market capitalization, altcoin leverage is reportedly still below a level that would historically be considered a major risk threshold.

In simple words, traders have not yet piled into altcoin futures positions to an extent typically associated with overheated markets. This can be concluded by the fact that the altcoin futures open interest relative to Bitcoin [BTC] was around -10% to -15% at press time, still below the red risk-threshold line near parity.

Historically, spikes towards or above that threshold have coincided with periods when altcoin leverage became stretched, increasing the risk of sharp liquidations.

However, with the metric below that level right now, the derivatives market may be relatively less crowded. This means that there may still be room for altcoins to attract more speculative capital before leverage reaches historically elevated levels.