In a market saturated with analysts hunting for the deepest discounts, Kyle Doops is running a different kind of screen — and the results are sobering. Of the top 20 altcoins by market capitalization, only three currently sit within 36% of their all-time highs. That single data point says more about the state of the broader altcoin market than almost any macro indicator could.
The methodology Doops applies is rooted in relative strength analysis, a discipline borrowed from traditional equity markets and popularized by investors like William O'Neil. The core premise is counterintuitive to most retail participants: rather than hunting for assets that have fallen the furthest — the so-called "on sale" assets — you screen for those that have held up the best against the prevailing pressure. The logic is simple. An asset that stays near its highs while the rest of the market bleeds is demonstrating genuine demand. An asset that has cratered 70%, 80%, or 90% from its peak may look cheap, but it is more likely reflecting a structural problem than a buying opportunity.
Applying that lens to the top 20 altcoins produces a stark picture. Seventeen of the twenty largest tokens by market cap are trading more than 36% below their all-time highs. That is not a market in recovery — that is a market in which capital has either rotated out entirely or is consolidating into a very narrow set of winners. The 36% threshold is not arbitrary. It represents a meaningful ceiling: assets within that range still have a plausible path to price discovery without requiring heroic recovery rallies. Everything beyond that threshold needs to double, triple, or in some cases return ten times its current price just to reclaim former peaks.
The broader implication cuts against the narrative that has dominated altcoin discourse for much of the past two years: that the next cycle rotation will lift all boats. The historical pattern — Bitcoin leads, then Ethereum follows, then capital waterfalls down into mid- and small-cap altcoins — has been used to justify holding deeply underwater positions across the altcoin spectrum. Doops' screen suggests that narrative deserves skepticism. When only three assets in the top 20 can demonstrate relative strength at this stage of the cycle, the waterfall thesis looks shakier than the chart promoters would have you believe.
Relative strength as a selection discipline is also useful as a risk management tool. Institutions allocating to digital assets increasingly apply screens similar to what Doops describes — not because they want to buy near highs, but because assets exhibiting strength tend to break out with less effort than those requiring massive recovery rallies. For a fund manager with return targets and risk constraints, the math on a deeply beaten-down altcoin rarely pencils out cleanly when compared to an asset already demonstrating demand at elevated levels.
What this also reveals is the degree of damage that the broader altcoin market has absorbed over the current cycle. Seventeen of the twenty most prominent tokens — assets with genuine ecosystems, developer communities, and institutional followings — are sitting in territory that most traders would charitably call "deep value" and more accurately call "structural weakness." The fact that so few have managed to retain proximity to their highs speaks to the severity of the capital outflows and the selectivity of what is driving the market forward.
There is also a useful contrarian read here. The narrowness of the relative strength screen — three assets out of twenty — signals that we are not yet in the kind of indiscriminate, liquidity-driven altcoin expansion that typically marks a late-cycle euphoria phase. In that environment, everything gets bid up regardless of fundamentals. The current picture is the opposite: highly concentrated strength, widespread weakness, and a market still sorting out which projects warrant genuine capital allocation and which ones are surviving on residual name recognition alone.
Doops' screen is not a buy list. It is a diagnostic. And right now, the diagnosis for most of the altcoin market is that strength — real, measurable, chart-based strength — remains the exception, not the rule. Three out of twenty is not a rally. It is a shortlist.
Written by the editorial team — independent journalism powered by Bitcoin News.