Forget Bitcoin Bottom: Analyst Says These Altcoins Could Move First

According to the analyst, waiting for universal confirmation of a market bottom could mean missing the strongest early opportunities.

Crypto trader Axel Bitblaze has laid out a fresh market thesis built on a video from analyst Taiki Maeda, arguing that assets like Hyperliquid (HYPE), Lighter (LIT), and Zcash (ZEC) are already trading like winners of the next cycle while most investors are waiting for a fourth-quarter bottom.

He says that markets tend to move before the crowd agrees a bottom has formed, so the better window to position could be mid-to-late Q3 and not whenever things look safe.

The Case for HYPE, LIT, and ZEC

On July 15, Maeda shared a video on his X account in which he said that crypto was bottoming and that he would be longing HYPE, LIT, and ZEC.

His take was expanded on by Bitblaze in a July 16 post, who noted that Hyperliquid has bought back about 3.4% of the circulating HYPE supply this year, allowing the token to perform well even as sector mainstays such as Bitcoin (BTC) struggled.

“If BTC volatility causes another $HYPE dip without changing its fundamentals… that could be an accumulation opportunity,” wrote the analyst.

Lighter’s LIT token was presented as a higher-risk alternative, with Bitblaze crediting its reported partnership with Robinhood for giving the decentralized perpetual exchange access to a much wider audience. He also noted that buybacks have removed more than 6% of LIT’s circulating supply, helping to push it to an all-time high on the second-to-last day of 2025, when many altcoins were losing ground.

Meanwhile, ZEC carries the most caution. In his market update video, Maeda said he sold the privacy coin after the discovery of a vulnerability in its Orchard shielded pool that could have allowed bad actors to create unlimited amounts of fake ZEC, triggering a 60% collapse. He did, however, buy most of the ZEC back after reassessing the project’s outlook, with the Ironwood upgrade set for July 28 expected to introduce stronger quantum resistance and use formal verification to reduce the risk of hidden bugs.

That update, according to Bitblaze, could help push up the asset’s price. Recall that last week, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said that they were close to producing a mathematical proof that Ironwood’s new shielded pools have no undetectable counterfeiting bugs, taking ZEC’s price past $500.

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The token is trading at about 0.8% of Bitcoin’s market cap, and per Maeda’s model, it could go anywhere between $650 and $700 if that ratio climbs back to 1%.

Traders Urged Not to Wait for Bitcoin

Bitblaze said that crypto has been in a bear market since the euphoria experienced in mid-2025 when ETH was closing in on $5,000. Now, people are waiting for the bottom, which, according to him, has been penciled in for Q4 2026.

But he believes the market has a tendency to “front-run what everyone expects,” meaning it is better for traders to start positioning themselves between August and September “before the recovery becomes obvious.”

“Don’t wait for Bitcoin and the entire market to look perfect,” the analyst advised. “The next winner usually starts separating from the market before everyone accepts that the bottom is forming.”