A TechFlowPost analysis argues that the recent surge in older altcoins has created a misleading sense that a broad-based "altcoin season" is back. Citing data shared by Arca chief investment officer Jeff Dorman, the report says that among the market’s top 50 assets, 39 are still trading well below their levels on Oct. 13, 2025, the prior cycle peak, with most still down roughly 30% to 50% from that benchmark. Recent rebounds have been sharp on a shorter time frame — ARB rose 177% from July 1, ENA gained 132%, and PUMP climbed 213% — but many of those moves came after deep drawdowns and still have not repaired losses from last year’s highs. The article says only eight names in Dorman’s comparison were above their Oct. 13, 2025 prices: VVV, ZEC, DRV, HYPE, NEAR, UNI, MORPHO, and SKY. It links several of those outperformers to protocol revenue, buyback-and-burn structures, governance changes, or new product lines. Hyperliquid’s HYPE, for example, was described as benefiting from fee and liquidation revenue that is used to buy HYPE on the secondary market before tokens are sent to an assistance fund and permanently burned. Uniswap’s UNI was tied to fee-switch-driven buybacks and burns after December 2025, while Pendle was cited as using 80% of yield and swap fees to repurchase PENDLE. The report also points to Zcash’s Nu7 upgrade and NEAR’s Confidential Intents product as examples of older tokens trying to rebuild their investment case through product and network changes rather than price momentum alone.

A new Bankless discussion focused on a market reaction that, on paper, should have looked much weaker. In the third week of September, crypto prices moved higher even though the U.S. Clarity Act failed to pass and the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds target range for the first time since 2023. Hosts Ryan and David framed that combination as a major test of market strength and argued that the lack of a sharp drawdown offered an early bull-market signal. The conversation moved across several fronts. It highlighted Michael Nadeau’s Bitcoin range of $69,900 to $80,400 as a key zone for judging whether the market remains in an early bullish phase, while also noting the possibility of a retest near $65,000 to $66,000. The hosts pointed to outsized moves in Zcash, Hyperliquid, and NEAR as evidence that capital may be returning to what they described as the market’s squeezed “middle layer,” especially projects tied to privacy and perpetuals. They also discussed the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield moving above 5%, the Fed’s new 3.75% to 4% target range, and political reactions around Fed Chair Warsh and Donald Trump. On regulation, the most immediate development was the SEC’s “innovation exemption,” which they said would allow fully backed tokenized stocks to trade legally on AMMs and DEXs in the U.S. under specific conditions, including KYC, voting rights, and strict volume caps. The episode also covered DeFi options, Kraken’s compliant access to Hyperliquid perpetuals, Venice AI token usage, Arc Chain’s launch, and S&P Global’s acquisition of OpenZeppelin.

Linera, a Layer 1 project once grouped with Aptos and Sui in the so-called "Move trio," has halted operations after its LNRA community token sale failed to reach the minimum fundraising threshold. The project launched its public sale on Sept. 1 at $0.16 per token, with an implied fully diluted valuation of $160 million, while offering some early participants access at prices as low as $0.02. In the end, 617 participants from 69 countries and regions pledged about $848,000, falling short of both the $8 million cap and the $1.5 million minimum required to complete the sale. Founder Mathieu Baudet said on Discord on Sept. 19 that all subscription funds had been returned and that the project would stop operating immediately. The team had also tried to secure emergency financing to keep the project alive until mainnet launch, but failed to raise the amount needed. The shutdown has triggered frustration among long-time community users who spent years interacting with the testnet, completing tasks, collecting badges, and building Discord roles in anticipation of an airdrop that never came. PANews uses Linera’s closure to frame a broader market shift: narrative, venture backing, and token incentives are no longer enough on their own. As more Layer 1 and Layer 2 projects shut down or pivot, the market is placing greater weight on recurring revenue, sustainable business models, and whether protocol value can be passed through to token holders.

NEAR climbed from around $2.3 to above $3.9 over the past week, with gains briefly topping 50%, making it one of the strongest-performing major altcoins in recent sessions. The move has coincided with a broader shift in how the project is positioning itself. Rather than leaning mainly on the older pitch of sharding, high throughput and low fees, NEAR is now tying together several active crypto themes: cross-chain execution, privacy-preserving trading, perpetual futures access and AI agent infrastructure. A key part of that push is the NEAR@3.33 milestone incentive program launched in June. The first reward pool includes 333,333 NEAR and is tied to two conditions: assets in near.com privacy accounts reaching $70 million, and NEAR’s three-day volume-weighted average price moving above $3.33. The first target was met on Sept. 17, triggering the initial snapshot. At $3.33 per token, the first-round rewards are worth about $1.11 million. At the product level, NEAR Intents has become central to the story. The protocol says it has connected more than 30 blockchains and processed over $30 billion in cross-chain volume. NEAR has also added Confidential Intents for private order flow, integrated Hyperliquid perpetuals on near.com, and continued building tools aimed at AI agents, though that part of the strategy remains at an earlier stage.

Bankless co-founder David Hoffman said on Sept. 18 that the market has already entered altcoin season and that the real move arrived earlier than expected. Odaily followed that call with a long watchlist covering eight tokens: HYPE, LIT, UNI, PUMP, MORPHO, ZEC, NEAR, and VVV. The report ties the renewed attention to several factors already visible in the market, including Bitcoin moving back above $81,000, Ether reclaiming $2,600, and a policy backdrop shaped by recent signals from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The article runs through each project by sector rather than treating the rally as a single trade. Hyperliquid’s HYPE is framed around record open interest and token buybacks. Lighter’s LIT is presented as a compliance-focused perpetuals platform token with a large community allocation. UNI is linked to tokenized equities, permissioned pools, and renewed fee-switch deflation expectations. PUMP is described as a buyback-driven Solana meme launchpad token, while MORPHO is highlighted for its lending model and ties to Robinhood Chain activity. Odaily also spends significant space on privacy and AI-linked names. ZEC is described as the strongest privacy-token mover of the cycle, NEAR is recast through a privacy feature for perpetual trading, and VVV is positioned around AI privacy infrastructure on Base. The report closes by citing glassnode’s view that altcoin leverage remains below a risk threshold for now.

Monitoring data shows that an Ethereum veteran wallet dating back to 2017 has kept an ENA long position open for about 228 days. As of 10:34 Beijing time, the address was holding a long on roughly 10.0265 million ENA at an average entry price of $0.110537. The position was valued at about $2.0849 million, with unrealized profit of around $976,600. The trade uses 10x cross margin, while ENA was up about 88.12% from the cost basis. The address currently holds 41 long positions with a combined notional value of about $69.8481 million, and overall contract leverage of roughly 4.65x. The ENA position accounts for around 2.98% of the wallet’s contract exposure, and its unrealized gain ranks third among current holdings, behind NEAR at about $1.3695 million and AAVE at about $1.0225 million. The address previously held nearly $90 million worth of ETH, later transferring those holdings to Hyperliquid, where it had earlier been the largest holder of a HYPE long position.

A whale wallet beginning with 0xeadc has kept an ENA long position open for about 228 days, according to TradingBeats monitoring cited by BlockBeats on Sept. 20. As of 10:34 a.m. Beijing time, the address was still holding a long position of roughly 10.0265 million ENA, with an average entry price of $0.110537. The position was valued at about $2.0849 million and showed an unrealized profit of around $976,600. TradingBeats data showed ENA was up about 88.12% from the whale’s cost basis, while the position itself was using 10x cross leverage and had generated a return of about 881.18%. The address currently holds 41 long positions with a combined notional value of about $69.8481 million and overall contract leverage of roughly 4.65x. ENA accounts for only about 2.98% of the wallet’s total derivatives exposure, but its unrealized profit ranks third among the whale’s current positions, behind NEAR at about $1.3695 million and AAVE at about $1.0225 million. The address is described as an ETH OG that entered the market in 2017, once held nearly $90 million worth of ETH, moved those holdings to Hyperliquid, and had previously been the platform’s largest HYPE long.

PANews published a weekly roundup covering a broad set of crypto and adjacent market stories, with a heavy focus on AI, regulation, tokenized equities, onchain distribution and fast-moving token narratives. The selection included first-person accounts from AI engineers who say automation is beginning to replace specialized work, commentary from investor Zhu Xiaohu on where startup moats may survive after AI tools become widely accessible, and a data-driven look at the 630 companies backed by Y Combinator this year. PANews also highlighted financing moves by major Chinese tech firms as they race to fund AI infrastructure. On the policy side, the digest pointed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s five-year innovation exemption framework for tokenized NMS stocks, Hong Kong’s new digital asset roadmap, and the failed CLARITY Act vote, which PANews said ended 49-50. Market coverage ranged from Uniswap’s traffic gains tied to Arc and Robinhood Chain, to Arc mainnet’s first-day activity above 1 million transactions, and sharp moves in ARB, ZEC and NEAR. The roundup closed with a list of headline items spanning AI products, central bank policy, tokenized stock trading, security incidents and onchain fund flows.