So, Crew? Still naively waiting for altseason?
I’ll say it straight: since February 2026, I’ve been actively rotating my altcoins into Bitcoin, and yes — I was doing it at a loss…
Almost everything went under the knife: my Cosmos portfolio for airdrop farming, L1 blockchains and a handful of meme coins.
With some positions I got lucky: DOGE at 2x, SHIB breakeven, BNB at around ~50% profit, and for SUI and APT I’m left with “free positions.”
But overall, most of it was down 50–80%, and I dropped the idea of getting back to breakeven — better to recover at least part of the losses on BTC growth than to lose everything.
The only good thing is that altcoins made up just 15–20% of my total portfolio, while the core has always been Bitcoin and Ethereum (yes, ETH is also an altcoin, but a more “special” one).
Still, the losses hit my wallet, and after thinking it through, I drew my conclusions and put together a plan for buying altcoins, which I want to share.
Max % of Your Portfolio
Let’s be honest: most altcoins are outright garbage that eventually lose up to 99% of their value — and the market has proven that more than once.
So I set a strict rule for myself: no more than 5% of my portfolio in altcoins (with Ethereum as the only exception).
If your capital is under $1,000 and you’re willing to take on more risk, you can push it to 10%, but definitely not more.
Altcoins don’t usually grow your portfolio — they drag it down.
Why wait for “mythical 100x gains” when you can generate steady, consistent income from liquidity pools right now?
Every dollar put into “promising tokens” is a reduction in your long-term cash flow.
That’s why I stick to BTC and ETH and work with them through DeFi!
Forget About DCA
DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging) is a strategy of regularly buying an asset with a fixed amount to average your entry and get a better price over time.
The approach works well in the stock market and even in crypto — but mainly when you’re buying Bitcoin or Ethereum. When it comes to altcoins, it often turns into a slow acceptance of losses…
The thing is, shitcoins don’t behave like stocks: if a token is already down 99%, it can easily drop another 99% — and it won’t hesitate to do it again!
That’s why I decided for myself to buy altcoins in just two entries, without endless averaging, and I’ll explain exactly when I do that later.
But the key idea is simple: it’s better to miss out on a crazy pump than to buy in and get stuck holding a dead asset for years.
Say No to “Free Money”
Altcoins don’t just dump for no reason, and one of the main drivers is free token distribution in DeFi.
Take Starknet as an example — you can still earn tokens there just by providing liquidity.
STRK gets distributed as rewards – investors sell it – pressure builds up – the price drops. This isn’t an exception — it’s a core market mechanic.
Any project that is heavily farmed, widely distributed, or offers high APR in staking is constantly under sell pressure.
Many influencers are now saying to buy AERO, since it’s backed by one of the strongest DEXs, Aerodrome, and indirectly by Coinbase.
The logic makes sense: Aerodrome is planning buybacks, the token generates yield, and it’s all tied to a solid product.
But here’s the real question:
Why buy a token that you can get for free?
A smarter approach is to buy BTC/ETH, provide liquidity on Aerodrome, and earn AERO as rewards — without taking on the direct risk of holding the token itself.
If you want to learn more about current strategies for farming “free” tokens through DeFi, check out my Telegram channel and subscribe.
Study the History
Dozens of new tokens launch every single day. Some grab attention and promise a “revolution,” while others just fade into the market.
But the reality is the same: at launch, you’re not buying into a project — you’re giving early investors and insiders a chance to cash out. While the crowd is buying in, bigger players are quietly exiting.
The ones who profit at listing aren’t the buyers — they’re the sellers.
That’s why I ignore new listings: a token needs at least a year of history so I can see how it reacts to news and whether there’s real demand behind it.
Otherwise, it’s not an investment — it’s just a lottery. Buying altcoins is already high risk, but investing in brand-new projects takes that risk to the extreme.
Value Comes First
There’s no point pretending to be smart and digging deep into tokenomics, team structures, vesting schedules, and other project details — if real value is there, it’s usually obvious.
A simple example is exchange tokens. Take BNB — it’s essentially a coin that also functions like a “stock” of the largest crypto exchange Binance.
BNB has everything you’d expect: backing from a major player, buybacks, burns, launchpool farming, and even its own widely used L1 network.
Of course, that doesn’t automatically make it a good investment, but it’s a clear and understandable value model.
Important: this doesn’t mean you should buy such tokens. For example, I don’t hold BNB in my portfolio and don’t see a need for it.
Among exchange tokens, the only one that interests me is Mantle (MNT) — it’s also backed by a major player in Bybit, has buybacks, burns, launchpools, and its own network.
But not all exchange tokens are equal, and you definitely shouldn’t hold more than one such project in your portfolio — it’s still higher risk.
Another example of a quality altcoin is AAVE — one of the key protocols in DeFi and a leader in the lending market segment.
Aave has a real, widely used product, generates steady lending revenue, buybacks, and avoids aggressive token emissions (unlike Uniswap).
That’s the difference: some projects distribute tokens and create selling pressure, while others build real businesses and earn from the market.
Lending markets are one of the most powerful tools for making money in crypto: understanding how they work and why they matter is essential for any crypto investor. You can start getting familiar with Aave through this video!
Buy When There’s Blood on the Streets
There’s no point in averaging into altcoins using DCA. A much more logical approach is to hold stablecoins, earn yield, and wait for the right moment.
The goal is simple: wait for maximum fear across the market — or in a specific project. And yes, that can take years.
Some of you probably remember how Solana dropped from $260 to $10 and then spent a long time in a sideways range. Or how Sui (SUI) fell after listing from around $2 to $0.4.
In moments like these, buying feels almost impossible, even when both projects are fundamentally strong — because the narrative is always the same: “delisting, scam, sell.”
Of course, it’s easy to say in hindsight, but those were exactly the moments when I entered and those trades became some of the best performers in my portfolio.
The point is not going all in, but allocating a small portion to assets with real value, staying patient, and acting when everyone else is panicking.
And if the position goes lower, I only allow myself one additional average-in, roughly around ~60% of the first entry.
By the way, at the time of writing, Aave is going through a rough phase. Even though the protocol remains fundamentally strong, the market is pricing in negativity.
If the price reaches the ~$80 zone, I’ll make my first entry.
The goal of investing in altcoins is simple: to outperform Bitcoin over at least one full market cycle (~4 years).
However, in the current cycle Bitcoin has grown from $15,000 to $126,000 — roughly an 8.5x return. Only a few assets have managed to outperform that, and among today’s examples, only Solana comes close.
This means that most “promising” projects have failed to even match Bitcoin’s performance, even though BTC itself was just sitting in a cold wallet.
And the interesting part is that Bitcoin could have been put to work in DeFi as well, generating additional yield of ~30% annually in BTC terms, which would have widened the performance gap even further.
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Altseason Is Not Coming? My 2026 Crypto Rules! was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
