Analyst Matthew Hyland says the largest altcoin bull run ever is loading after 4 major market gauges broke year-plus downtrends against Bitcoin (BTC).
Key Points:
- Four altcoin gauges, including Ether and the OTHERS index, ended declines lasting more than a year by printing higher highs.
- Altcoin perpetual futures open interest passed Bitcoin's for the first time since December 2024, a shift that cuts both ways.
- Zcash cleared $1,200 and reached a $20.44 billion market value, displacing Hyperliquid from ninth place.
Hyland Says Altcoin Charts Confirm Breakout
In a post published Sunday, the analyst said Ethereum (ETH), Total 2, Total 3 and OTHERS had all ended declines lasting more than a year by printing higher highs.
He asked whether the move amounted to a bear market rally. Then he answered the question himself.
The largest altcoin bull run of all time is loading, Hyland wrote in a follow-up post, arguing the advance could end up larger than the one traders rode through 2020 and 2021.
His case rests on a chart setting the dominance of coins outside the top 10 against the S&P 500, a ratio sliding steadily since the 2017 initial coin offering peak.
Total 2 measures altcoins excluding Bitcoin, Total 3 strips out Ether as well, and OTHERS drops the ten largest names so that smaller tokens dominate the reading.
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Altcoin Open Interest Passes Bitcoin
Positioning data supports part of the thesis, although the same numbers raise the stakes for anyone buying this breakout at current prices. Aggregate open interest in altcoin perpetual futures moved above Bitcoin's on Saturday for the first time since December 2024.
Bitcoin held only about 37% of tracked perpetual positions, worth roughly $23.9 billion.
Spot buyers moved in step, lifting the combined value of altcoins outside the ten largest assets past $200 billion, a gain of more than 10% this month. Bitcoin itself traded near $79,575 on Sunday, down about 0.4% on the session.
Zcash Rally Shows the Leverage Risk
Zcash (ZEC) became the clearest example of both the upside traders are chasing and the danger underneath it. The privacy coin jumped past $1,200 on Sunday and peaked at $1,249, its highest mark since the fourth quarter of 2016, lifting its market value to $20.44 billion.
That was enough to push it past Hyperliquid (HYPE) into ninth place. Grayscale's spot Zcash fund, which began trading in late August, has since gathered about $463 million.
The rally also wiped out roughly $24 million in leveraged positions in a day, with short sellers absorbing $17.5 million of that total.
Traders have seen the pattern before.
September's rebound follows a punishing stretch for the sector, since coins outside Bitcoin and Ether lost close to 23% of their combined value in the first half of 2026 as liquidity pooled in stablecoins. The current run therefore starts from a low base rather than an established uptrend.
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