The post Crypto Bloodbath Today: Why Altcoins, Bitcoin Collapsed and What Comes Next appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

The post Crypto Bloodbath Today: Why Altcoins, Bitcoin Collapsed and What Comes Next appeared first on Coinpedia Fintech News Analyst Benjamin Cowen has a blunt explanation for the brutal altcoin crash shaking the market: this was never an altcoin cycle to begin with. As red candles flash across trading screens and social media fills with panic, one question keeps coming up. Why did altseason never arrive? And more importantly, is this the end for crypto or just another painful phase? According to Cowen, the answer lies in something most retail traders ignored this cycle: liquidity. A Cycle Dominated by Bitcoin, Not Altcoins For months, Bitcoin led the market while altcoins quietly bled out. Normally, crypto bull markets follow a pattern. Bitcoin rallies first. Then profits rotate into higher-risk altcoins. Euphoria builds. Social media explodes. Smaller tokens outperform. But this time, something was different. Cowen argues that this cycle topped on apathy, not euphoria. There was no explosive speculative mania in altcoins. No broad participation. No sustained rotation out of Bitcoin. Instead, capital flowed the opposite way. Altcoins bled into Bitcoin. Then Bitcoin began bleeding into stocks. Then stocks started losing ground to gold. That progression tells a much bigger story about the global economy. The Liquidity Problem Nobody Wanted to Hear About At the center of this “crypto bloodbath” is liquidity. Liquidity is basically how easy money is to access in the financial system. When central banks keep policy loose and money flows freely, risk assets thrive. When liquidity tightens, markets become fragile. Cowen points to a liquidity risk model built using: Policy interest rates The Fed funds rate versus the 2-year yield Dollar strength Central bank balance sheets Funding stress indicators The conclusion is simple but uncomfortable: Liquidity has been tight. And in tight liquidity environments, markets shift toward…

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Filed under: News - @ February 23, 2026 8:26 pm