The finding of September 1, 2026
Why don’t altcoins rise along with Bitcoin?
The common assumption is: there was an altcoin season already, it just ran with different assets. On this data, that assumption has failed.
The core finding
Of the eleven measurable winners of the 2020/21 round, not one was ahead of Bitcoin a second time in the window from 2022 to 2025. Whether that will be the case again in the next round, this measurement does not say.
The counter-test, figure by figure
We took the 36 assets we had already measured for the 2020/21 cycle – winners and losers of that round. Twelve of them were ahead of Bitcoin back then. We measured what became of them in the window from November 21, 2022 to October 6, 2025.
Cohort
33
assets from the 2020/21 measurement that were also measurable in the cycle up to 2025
of them ahead
1
XRP – and XRP had been behind Bitcoin in 2020/21
Rate
3.0%
against 33 percent in the cycle before
Median altcoin
−85.6%
against Bitcoin in the same window
The group that “broke out twice” is empty
Not a single asset. Of the eleven measurable winners of the 2020/21 round, none was ahead of Bitcoin in the window from November 21, 2022 to October 6, 2025. The one asset that made it in the new window is XRP — and XRP had been behind Bitcoin in 2020/21.
What follows from this — and what does not
What follows: looking for the next multiplier among the last winners is the most expensive way to look. A hit rate of three percent means: of a hundred such bets, three work out.
What does not follow: that the remaining 32 assets are bad, that XRP would be a good choice, or that the pattern will repeat. A rate says nothing about which asset will be ahead next time.
The reservation belongs with it: the cohort consists only of survivors. Anything that has disappeared since drops out of the calculation — so the true rate is below 3.0 percent, not above.
What this site is not
No investment advice, no price forecast, no buy or sell recommendation. Past measurements say nothing about future prices.
Source: RESEARCH REPORT Price drivers, September 1, 2026 (German title: FORSCHUNGSBERICHT Preistreiber 01.09.2026) — stage 2, stage 2b and the cycle counter-test, folder 07 Forschungsfragen. The document is an internal working file and is therefore not linked here; it is not publicly available.