Benjamin Cowen, a renowned analyst, reaffirmed his direct assessment of altcoins: the majority of them are probably going to crash. Cowen cautioned investors against anticipating an alt season simply because powerful people say it will happen soon, arguing that such expectations are often detached from underlying conditions. He contends that the market structure itself encourages a cleansing phase, and that belief-driven narratives have consistently failed to match macro reality over time.
Much-neded cleansing
He claimed that weak projects are typically exposed in midterm years, framing the current cycle as a necessary reset for the crypto asset class rather than an anomaly. According to him, there are thousands of tokens that lack long-term demand, revenue or viable use cases, making their survival dependent on speculative momentum rather than fundamentals.
These projects, he argues, are the first to fail when risk appetite decreases and liquidity gets tighter, conditions that historically expose structural weaknesses. From that viewpoint, mass failure is a feature of the market rather than a bug, serving a functional role in capital allocation. The reaction was to be expected, as Cowen’s detractors accused him of being hypocritical and questioned how he was different from the gurus he criticizes if he was also offering guidance.
“Avoid altseasons”
Cowen’s answer was straightforward: consistency and performance history make a difference, especially over multiple market cycles. He asserts that he has spent years counseling people to avoid chasing speculative rotations and to fade altcoin hype, even when doing so was unpopular. He makes a distinction between encouraging optimism and encouraging risk management, whether or not one agrees with his conclusions.
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The important question here is how the market handles excess, not whether all altcoins are worthless in absolute terms. Because of its exceptionally low issuance barrier, cryptocurrency encourages quantity over quality, allowing thousands of projects to exist with minimal friction. Bull markets cover up this issue by raising everything indiscriminately, masking the lack of differentiation between strong and weak assets.
Conversely, bear and mid-cycle periods compel differentiation, forcing capital to be more selective. As marginal tokens disappear, capital concentrates into assets with security, liquidity and distinct monetary narratives that can persist beyond speculative cycles.