Bitcoin rose 28% over the past two years while the median mid-cap altcoin fell 74%, according to figures from Glassnode and Bybit. Ethereum was roughly flat across the same stretch.
That is a reversal of the pattern the market has been trained to expect, in which capital rotates out of Bitcoin and into smaller tokens as a rally matures. On these numbers it did not rotate. It concentrated.
Two things are worth knowing before the figures get used as an argument.
Where the Numbers Come From
They sit inside “The State of Crypto Derivatives”, a report published by Glassnode in partnership with the exchange Bybit and distributed on 18 September as a marketing release through PR Newswire.
The release’s own headline is not about altcoins. It is that Bybit captured 28% of tracked Bitcoin options volume. The document goes on to record that Bybit’s options book grew from $529 million to $2.33 billion, that it led Ether options trading for 143 consecutive days across four tracked venues, that it holds 97.1% of gold options open interest on those venues, and that it has run the largest tokenised-gold perpetual book for 476 consecutive days.
None of that makes the altcoin figures wrong. It does mean they arrive inside a document whose purpose is to sell an exchange’s derivatives business, which is worth stating plainly when the conclusion being drawn from them is what an investor ought to hold.
The methodology matters as well. Coverage varies by metric and reflects only the venues Glassnode tracks. The options analysis covers four crypto-native venues, one of which is Bybit. The futures analysis excludes CME, where a large share of institutional Bitcoin futures activity sits.
The Data Stops on 23 August
The report’s cut-off is the settled close on 23 August. It went out on 18 September and is being written up now, which puts roughly a month between the last data point and the reader.
That month has not been quiet. Bitcoin moved back above $80,000 after a dovish Federal Reserve forecast, and the bounce was led by exactly the assets the report is negative on. Solana gained around 10%, with NEAR and Uniswap posting larger moves, all of them outrunning Bitcoin in the rebound.
A few days do not undo two years. But a thesis that anything other than Bitcoin is a losing bet is being tested in the week it is published, and the evidence for it closed a month ago.
What Survives the Caveats
Stripped of the framing, the underlying picture holds up and it is useful.
Leverage is distributed unevenly and the distribution is telling. Bitcoin’s futures open interest runs at roughly 2% of its market capitalisation. PEPE’s runs at around 24%. The smaller the token, the more of its market is borrowed money, and that is the mechanism that turns an ordinary drawdown into a halving.
Institutional money has concentrated in the same place. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have taken about $55.2 billion in cumulative net inflows against roughly $13.1 billion into Ethereum funds. Solana’s spot ETFs have drawn around $29.7 million, though those launched far more recently, so that gap measures age as much as appetite.
The honest version of the finding is narrower than the headline it produced. The median mid-cap altcoin has been a poor place to sit for two years, leverage concentration explains a good deal of why, and Ethereum was flat rather than down.
