Tag: altcoin

SwissBorg founding partner Alex Fazel believes the market is entering a multi-year, structurally different bull phase that could deliver “generational wealth,” laying out what he called an “alt season bible” for 2025–2026 in a wide-ranging interview with Altcoin Daily.

Speaking in a probabilistic framework, Fazel argued that the confluence of a strengthening business cycle, easier monetary policy, and twin technology booms in crypto/Web3 and artificial intelligence creates the same kind of tailwinds that powered the post-dot-com “recovery cycle” in equities. “I really want to prove to everyone that this is the biggest cycle and the biggest chance for everyone to generate generational wealth,” he said, adding that his views are expressed in probabilities rather than certainties.

The 2025–26 Crypto Altcoin Cycle Will Be Historic

Fazel’s market structure thesis centers on a familiar rotation: Bitcoin leading, followed by Ethereum and the top-cap cohort, and then a broader dispersion into mid- and small-caps as Bitcoin dominance rolls over. He insisted that the current advance lacks the hallmark “euphoria stage”—a late-cycle condition he considers statistically common and, therefore, still ahead. “It is extremely rare… to have a bull cycle without euphoria,” he said, noting that sizable drawdowns will punctuate the trend without invalidating it. “We won’t see a long bear market anymore… We’re going to see a very extended bull run but with really big corrections along the way.”

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To gauge cycle magnitude, Fazel prefers total crypto market capitalization over date-calling. He mapped prior expansions—roughly 45x from 2014 to 2017 and ~27x into 2021—into a conservative inference that a 2x–3x from the last cycle’s ~$3 trillion top would imply a $6–$9 trillion total capitalization before this run is exhausted. That—along with a still-missing euphoria phase—forms one of his primary exit heuristics. “Rather than just thinking about how long, look at how high,” he said.

On sector leadership, Fazel’s team compiled a year-over-year basket (September 2024 to early September 2025) of tokens that outperformed Bitcoin on sustained timeframes to filter out “pump-and-dump noise.” The list he highlighted was dominated by DeFi and exchange-adjacent assets: Virtuals (AI-agent) with a 20x,Hyperliquid’s HYPE 7x, Sui and its DeepBook DEX as strong performers, Curve and Ethena Labs 2.5x–3x, SwissBorg’s BORG ~2.5x, and Raydium. His conclusion was blunt: “DeFi is the best sector to invest in,” with exchange tokens repeatedly among the most resilient leaders since 2018 due to clear product-market fit in speculation and fee generation.

Fazel stitched those returns to an explicit capital-flows mechanism: buybacks. He showed a positive correlation, in his view, between top token performers and sustained buyback programs, and drew a parallel to equities where many of the cycle’s strongest stocks—including AI bellwethers—have announced large, continuing repurchases. He cautioned, however, that buybacks can be overwhelmed by emissions. “If you have $20 million buying the token, but an airdrop is emitting $53 million, do the math,” he said, citing this dynamic to explain why some well-known tokens underperformed despite revenue.

What Else To Look For On Altcoins

From there, he proposed a simple four-quadrant framework for token “pumpamentals”: clear utility that investors perceive as valuable; loyalty via locking; strong, sustainable, and scalable buybacks; and burns or other mechanisms that reduce float. Layer-1s, he argued, typically tick only the first two boxes and still rely on inflationary issuance for staking yields. By contrast, exchange tokens and some DeFi assets can check all four—particularly if fee-linked buybacks are hard-wired, ongoing, and diversified across product lines.

Fazel also outlined an increasingly prominent buyer cohort of digital asset treasuries (DATs)—public companies that raise in fiat and accumulate crypto for their balance sheets—observing that this structure can “pump the stock and the token.” He pointed to high-profile examples in Bitcoin and Ethereum, stressing that balance-sheet accumulation simultaneously adds buy pressure and removes sell pressure. More broadly, he framed today’s market as a “supercycle” moment because retail, institutions, and corporate treasuries are now converging on crypto exposure—initially in BTC and ETH, but progressively further out the risk curve as confidence grows.

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Much of Fazel’s playbook is operational at SwissBorg itself. He disclosed that the company, founded in 2017 and now at “300+ employees” and “$2.4 billion” in assets under management, has shifted to a 50% revenue-to-buyback policy for its BORG token and intentionally delisted from centralized exchanges to “control supply” and concentrate liquidity and volume in-app.

Fazel repeatedly returned to risk management, urging investors to think in probabilities and to be willing to “divorce” underperforming tokens that lack real revenues or sound token economics. He also addressed dilution fears sparked by the proliferation of new tokens, contending that almost none reach meaningful size. “Out of all these coins… 0.00001% have a market cap above $1 million,” he said, arguing that the sheer number of microcap launches should not preclude an altseason in larger, revenue-generating names.

His timeline remains conditional, but his conviction in the structure is clear. He expects Bitcoin could suffer 30%–40% pullbacks without derailing a longer advance, believes the equity backdrop is still “AI-led” rather than in a blow-off, and contends crypto adoption curves move faster than Web2 because they build atop the existing internet. As for a headline Bitcoin target, he demurred on specifics, but hinted the ceiling is higher than casual forecasts imply. “Almost $200k for Bitcoin seems too small,” he said at one point, before pivoting back to total-market metrics and the presence—or not—of broad-based euphoria.

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $4.2 trillion.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com