Coinbase Institutional Research said a full-scale “altcoin season” may be approaching, pointing to a sharp drop in Bitcoin’s market dominance and a rapid expansion in the value of alternative tokens. In its August outlook, the firm noted that Bitcoin’s share of total crypto capitalization has slipped to about 59% from 65% in May, while the combined altcoin market cap has climbed more than 50% since early July to roughly $1.4 trillion. Analysts led by research chief David Duong define an altcoin season as a period when at least 75% of the 50 largest non-Bitcoin tokens outperform the flagship asset over 90 days; the current ratio is 40%, indicating the rotation is still in its early stages. Liquidity across spot markets, order books and stablecoin issuance has also begun to recover, the report said. Institutional demand is concentrating on Ethereum, with corporate treasury and asset-tokenization projects holding about 2.95 million ETH—just over 2% of the cryptocurrency’s total supply. The rebound in Ether has lifted liquid-staking protocol Lido’s LDO token 58% over the past month, helped by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission staff guidance indicating that liquid-staking tokens may not be securities under certain conditions. Coinbase added that more than $7 trillion sitting in U.S. money-market funds could migrate into riskier assets if the Federal Reserve starts cutting interest rates, a move many investors expect as early as September. Such a pivot, combined with institutional positioning, could amplify the flow of capital from Bitcoin into alternative digital assets, the report concluded.