Bitcoin did not move for two days. Four in five altcoins did

Bitcoin closed the last two days where it started them, down 0.08% at $79,557. Over the same 48 hours, 118 of the 152 liquid altcoins we track rose, with a median gain of 4.22%.

Traders sold one coin to buy another instead of adding money to the market. The leaderboard shows which coins they picked.

“The altcoin market has entered a state of optimism. 85% of alts reached funding rates above their mean... In an alt season, these conditions can last for many weeks.”

— Glassnode, BeInCrypto, 25 August 2026

Quote source: Glassnode, cited by BeInCrypto, 25 August 2026

Top 10 altcoins by 48-hour gain

We took the 500 largest coins on CoinGecko, dropped bitcoin, stablecoins and wrapped or staked derivatives, then kept everything above $80M of market cap and $8M of daily volume. That leaves 152 names, priced hourly, in a window ending 13:45 UTC on 7 September.

1. STONK, +254.68%. A Solana launchpad token with an empty profile page and no listed launch date.
2. Raydium (RAY), +42.38%. A Solana exchange with a $320M market cap.
3. UnifAI Network (UAI), +36.86%. AI agents that run DeFi strategies for you, on BNB Chain.
4. Arbitrum (ARB), +26.66%. The Ethereum layer 2 behind Robinhood Chain.
5. Backpack (BP), +26.53%. The exchange token, and the only name here within a third of its record.
6. Orca (ORCA), +23.04%. Another Solana exchange, turning over $100M a day on a $95M market cap.
7. Kaspa (KAS), +21.75%. A proof-of-work network worth a billion dollars, and it moved on day two.
8. Celestia (TIA), +21.38%. Modular data availability for other chains.
9. Injective (INJ), +17.26%. A finance-focused chain, up 15% on the week.
10. Zcash (ZEC), +17.25%. At $1,190 and $20 billion, the largest coin here by some distance.

The list splits into two days

Five of the ten did their work in the first 24 hours and have started giving it back: STONK gained 286% and then lost 8%, Arbitrum gained 47% and then lost 14%. Zcash and Raydium have gone sideways since.

The other five loaded up on day two. Backpack sat unchanged for 24 hours and then added 26%. Kaspa did 1%, then 21%. Orca, Injective and UnifAI all put more into the second day than the first, which is where you would look for a move still in motion.

Six of the ten sit more than 80% below their own records. Celestia is 98% down from its peak, Arbitrum and Raydium 93%, Orca 92%, Injective 89%, Kaspa 82%. UnifAI is the exception at 6% below its record, and it is the only AI-agent token in the ten.

Arbitrum has a reason and a date

Arbitrum is the only name in the ten with a catalyst you can point to. Robinhood Chain, built on Arbitrum technology, set records on 30 and 31 August with $989M of exchange volume and $2.66M of daily application revenue, and returns 10% of net protocol revenue to the ecosystem. We wrote about the memecoins driving that volume last week.

A supply release lands first. On 23 September, 139.15 million ARB unlock, about 1.4% of supply, and 53.8% of that tranche goes to insiders. A token already up 91% in a week meets its biggest supply release of the quarter in sixteen days. The first day of our window was its best, the second its worst.

What the gauges say

The Altcoin Season Index counts how many of the top 50 coins beat bitcoin over 90 days, and it reads 41 today, against the 75 needed to call a season. Its 30-day version tells the shorter story: 39 on Thursday, 61 today. Bitcoin dominance sits at 59.06% after closing above 60% in late August, and the 60.5% ceiling analysts had been watching turned it back.

Institutional money sat this one out. Last week bitcoin funds took more than 80% of everything that went into crypto ETFs, while altcoin products bled. The table above is spot buying by people already holding crypto and moving between coins they own.

The biggest gainer in the ten has no product page. The biggest coin is zcash, which spent the week paying out to memecoin holders. Buying most of this list means betting on a bounce off the floor, not on a new cycle.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.