What insights do the performances of altcoins in the previous bull markets bring us?

Looking back at the history of the Encryption industry, one can see that there is an altcoin season every four years. During this time, the market prospered, but there were also hidden risks. This article will explore the revelations of past altcoin seasons. This article is derived from an article written by BowTied Bull and compiled by Vernacular Block Chain. (Synopsis: How to avoid losing money in the altcoincoin season: 10 fatal mistakes and strategies to deal with it) (Background supplement: How to find alpha layout opportunities in the AI Agents Bull Market cycle? With the arrival of 2025, at the turn of the old and the new, it is customary for us to sum up the past and look to the future. Looking back at the past days of the Encryption industry, we can find an interesting phenomenon, that is, every four years there is an "altcoin season", during this period, you will find that everything in the industry is rising, and it is likely that you will hear that your alcoholic uncle also bought some animal Internet memes and made a fortune, and even did it while drunk. In 2025, the real altcoin season is arguably not yet fully here. While no one can predict how crazy this altcoin season will be, I would like to remind everyone that the trend of the Altcoins market is generally quick to get out of control and may end abruptly. In the event of a crash, the decline may not be just – 99.99%, it may even be a complete crash. But until then, everyone is immersed in all kinds of prosperity and entertainment. So, let's take a look back at past altcoin seasons to see how they've fared and if there are any valuable lessons to be learned from them? 2012-2013 altcoin season: early avid investors, up to $15 billion in Market Cap We know that those who blindly follow the trend in the current market are likely to appear again. This happened in 2013, and it became very interesting. During the 2013 "altcoin season," BTC was still in its infancy, with a total Market Cap of about $1 billion and a Whale transaction of only about $100,000. At the time, CEX Mt. Gox was still operating, and the investors were mostly those who regularly appeared at Magic Club trading card events (which is the backdrop to the Mt. Gox events). At that time, the idea of improving the speed of BTC transactions was proposed, arguing that transactions could be accelerated by reducing block time, which was seen as a far-reaching innovation at the time. Litecoin: still exists today, and the whole idea (proposed by Charlie Lee) was to reduce the block time from 10 minutes in BTC to 2.5 minutes. Litecoin's price rose from about 10 cents to $48, a rise of about 47900%, and in 2017 it saw another big rise, and then Charlie Lee dumped all the holdings at the top and claimed that "the BTC network is fine without him" (everyone knows what it means for founders to sell 100% of their holdings). Namecoin: This is a BTC forkcoin designed to build a network domain name for Decentralization (similar to ENS via ". eth" extension package concept). Its price once soared to about $13, but soon fell into a trough. From the lowest point to the highest, it rises about 30 times in price. In fact, it still exists today, currently trading close to $1. Peercoin (PPC): This is one of the first proof-of-stake tokens (a mechanism used today to secure ETH) that has gone through two big rises. The first was in 2013 and the other in 2017, when the ETH ICO frenzy exploded. At one point, its price soared to about $7, and the rise reached 60-70 times. Naturally, it didn't gain mainstream adoption and ended up falling to $0.42. (For now, though, the conclusion is that with the exception of pure Ponzi eyewash like Bitconnect or LUNA, nothing else on the market is really zero.) Frenzy: BTC eventually reached $1,200, and these cryptocurrencies jumped on the rise due to increased interest in encryption. Any project posted on BitcoinTalk can quickly rise to prominence based on speculation alone. Perhaps the closest thing to that situation today is Memecoin promoted by a celebrity or Memecoin named after a celebrity. Mt. Gox Crash: When Mt. Gox crashes, the party ends. The crash was due to a major hack that caused the price of BTC to drop significantly, probably 85-90% (depending on how you look at the bottom), while the Altcoins fell by more than 99%. 2017 altcoin season: ICO frenzy and the rise of Ethereum, Market Cap topped $800 billion A number of interesting events followed during the Bear Market. Ethereum was born as a smart contract platform with the aim of creating programmable coins. This is a true innovation as it not only enables people to transfer tokens, but also build smart contracts, which completely changes the rules of the game. Like many things in the cryptocurrency space, Ethereum comes with some common risks. Ethereum's DAO (Decentralization Autonomous Organization) was hacked and lost more than $100 million, eventually leading to a Block chain fork, forming two chains, ETH and ETC. To this day, there are still people who think that the fork decision was wrong, but we are not going to discuss it today, just briefly review this period of history. Around 2016, people realized that new tokens could be issuance on the EthereumBlock chain, which led to the first token issuance (ICO). In an ICO, the project party sells tokens directly to investors. In 2017, the ICO frenzy officially exploded, and many scams you can think of emerged at this time. Ethereum (ETH): Since ISSUANCE requires ETH for these tokens, it drove the price of ETH skyrocketing, soaring from about $8 to $1,400 in January 2018, an almost unimaginable return at the time. Currently, ETH is trading at around $3650. XRPcoin (XRP): XRPcoin is still considered a "bank coin" and its theory is that XRP will replace SWIFT (International Funds Clearing System) overnight as the de facto financial standard. Although XRP is centralized (and most people don't mind), it still attracts millions of dollars. The price of XRP soared from about 1 cent to $3.80 and is currently trading at $2.41. Curiously, XRPcoin's investor base is still predominantly retail investors. You can see a similar phenomenon in the recent wave of rises—XRPcoin dominates TikTok, attracting a lot of discussion, with some even asking, "What if its Market Cap could reach BTC-like levels?" This discussion of the "four-trillion dollar Market Cap" is somewhat bizarre. Litecoin: As mentioned earlier, Litecoin once again ...