Altcoins Rebound From War Fears, With More Than 200 of Top 300 Tokens Rising [Kang Min-seung’s Altcoin Now]

The altcoin market is rebounding after war fears and profit-taking pressure briefly stalled gains. Risk appetite for speculative assets also recovered somewhat after Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said he could support holding rates steady in September if inflation continues to cool. Even so, market watchers say it is too early to call the move a full-fledged bullish turn because trading volume and liquidity inflows remain insufficient.

More Than 200 of Top 300 Tokens Rise as PONS, Helium and Other Catalyst-Driven Names Surge

Over the past week, more than 200 of the top 300 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization advanced, while only about 90 fell. The rebound has broadened across the market, but gains have not been evenly distributed. Buying has instead been concentrated in tokens with clear, coin-specific catalysts such as exchange listings, mainnet upgrades and DePIN adoption.

CoinMarketCap data on Sept. 4 showed Robinhood Chain-based token launchpad PONS posting the biggest gain among the advancers, soaring 445%. Investor interest appears to have strengthened after the token was listed on KuCoin late last month and launchpad trading recently surged. PONS generated about $5.95 million in fees on Sept. 1 alone, a sign that trading activity on Robinhood Chain is rising quickly.

New meme coin MARSCOIN also jumped 229%. Helium rose 221% and Useless Coin climbed 216%, both posting triple-digit gains. Helium was boosted by news that Celina, Texas, had established communications coverage based on the Helium network using existing public facilities and downtown Wi-Fi infrastructure.

AKE rose 90.3% and SKR gained 88.7%. SKR is the native token of the Solana Mobile ecosystem, and buying appeared to be driven by expectations for broader staking rewards and expanded ecosystem incentives.

Tokens linked to Robinhood Chain also showed strength. Arbitrum climbed 51.8% on expectations that rising Robinhood Chain activity will expand ecosystem revenue. Robinhood Chain is built on the Arbitrum technology stack and pays part of net protocol revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem. Uniswap gained 36.1%, reflecting expectations that it could benefit from increased decentralized exchange trading because the protocol operates on Robinhood Chain.

CHIP rose 52.6% after news that it had secured a $100 million lending facility from crypto platform Bullish for a GPU-collateralized lending business. MultiversX gained 35.4% as a mainnet upgrade and expectations for the next hard fork drew attention.

By contrast, The Black Bull fell 34.2%, while PulseX dropped 22.5%, HEX lost 22.2% and FARTCOIN slid 19.5%. CAP fell 19.1%, ZANO dropped 17.3%, PulseChain declined 14.3%, Polygon fell 12% and Jito lost 10%. In most of the laggards, the weakness appeared to stem less from any clear negative catalyst than from profit-taking after sharp gains last week.

Rebound Broadens, but Trend Reversal Still Needs Liquidity Confirmation

Despite the increase in gainers, it remains too soon to conclude that the broader altcoin market has entered a lasting trend reversal. Recent gains have been concentrated in tokens with specific catalysts, and there is still little clear evidence that liquidity has spread across the market as a whole.

Benjamin Cowen, founder of Into The Cryptoverse, said global net liquidity relevant to crypto markets remains below past peaks even as M2 money supply has climbed to a record high. Cowen said global net liquidity now stands at about $25 trillion, roughly $5 trillion below the approximately $30 trillion recorded in 2021 and 2022. That suggests liquidity conditions are still not strong enough for capital to spread broadly across the altcoin market.

Global net liquidity is calculated by combining the balance sheets of major central banks in the US, Europe, Japan, China and the UK, then subtracting funds parked in the Federal Reserve's reverse repo facility and the US Treasury General Account, or TGA. The measure is widely used to gauge the liquidity available to flow into financial markets.

The macro backdrop and policy uncertainty are also limiting the rebound's momentum. If a US-Iran conflict pushes oil prices and market rates higher again, the altcoin rebound could lose steam. The CLARITY Act, a US crypto market structure bill, is scheduled for a procedural vote in the Senate on Sept. 15 that will determine whether formal deliberations proceed. Paul Atkins, chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, recently signaled that discussion of the bill could advance within the next two weeks, but investors remain cautious about whether it will be enacted this year.

Bitfire Research, a crypto analytics firm, said markets could become more sensitive to macroeconomic data after Fed Chair Wash said in a recent Jackson Hole speech that policy remains focused on price stability and will respond to incoming data. Consumer price index data, personal consumption expenditures and employment reports could all reshape expectations for the rate path and add to volatility in digital assets.

Lackluster trading volume remains another burden. Alex Kuptsikevich, an analyst at FxPro, said the crypto market entered a bullish consolidation phase in mid-August after a strong rebound cooled short-term overheating. CryptoQuant data cited by FxPro show trading volume on major exchanges remains about 70% below October 2025 levels. With trading activity yet to recover sufficiently, it is too early to declare the start of a new bull cycle.

Stablecoin flow data also have yet to confirm full-scale liquidity inflows. On-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr. said the 30-day average of net exchange inflows for ERC-20 stablecoins turned positive on Sept. 1 for the first time in 113 days. The amount, however, fell by half within two days, dropping to $6.85 million on Sept. 3 from $13.85 million. Adler described that less as the start of sustained inflows than as a shift from an outflow phase toward neutral. Because stablecoins moving onto exchanges can become potential buying power for crypto assets, the durability of the altcoin rally will depend on whether net inflows begin to expand again.

Kang Min-seung, Bloomingbit reporter minriver@bloomingbit.io