Glassnode reports altcoin leverage remains subdued amid price rise

Altcoins are going up, and for once, they’re doing it without the usual pile of borrowed money underneath them. Glassnode, the on-chain analytics firm, flagged on September 18 that altcoin leverage levels remain comfortably below the thresholds that typically precede painful market unwinds. The key metric here is the ratio of altcoin open interest relative to Bitcoin’s. When that gap narrows to just a few percentage points, it historically signals that traders have gotten overly aggressive with leveraged altcoin bets. Right now, that ratio has not approached those historical thresholds. A 21% rally without the reckless bets The altcoin market cap climbed roughly 21% over the month leading up to September 10. Glassnode’s analysis from early to mid-September found no evidence of significant large-scale capital rotation from Bitcoin into higher-risk altcoins. That’s the kind of rotation that tends to show up near cycle peaks, when late-arriving capital floods into small-cap tokens chasing outsized returns. Instead, the current setup looks more like a broad-based market updraft rather than a speculative frenzy concentrated in alts. Bitcoin continues to outperform altcoins on most metri...