Ethereum Just Broke the Pattern - Are Altcoins Next?
Every Monday in the Crypto School, the routine is the same: look at the forest before the trees. Before picking coins, check where the broader market is heading. This week, one chart finally did something it hasn't done in months — Ethereum closed above its previous weekly high and broke the bear market structure that has defined this cycle.
What "Breaking the Pattern" Actually Means
A bear market has a simple visual signature: lower highs and lower lows. Each bounce fails below the last one, and each dip goes deeper. A bull market is the mirror image — higher highs and higher lows.
On the weekly Ethereum chart, price had been printing that lower-high, lower-low sequence for a long stretch. Last week's candle changed that. It closed above the previous swing high, which is the first time the bear pattern has been broken on this timeframe.
That is not a guarantee of a bull market. It's one signal among many. But it's a meaningful one, because Ethereum is the second-largest asset by market cap and it has historically led altcoins. If you want to study the structure itself rather than just the outcome, this walkthrough on how to spot a crypto bear market breakout covers the same higher-high logic in more detail.
The Macro and Market-Wide Backdrop
The session starts with the Dow Jones, which remains above 50,000 and still correlated with crypto. Oil sits near $88 — above the roughly $70 long-term average, and well above the $56 lows seen before the Iran situation. Cheaper energy is good for the whole world, so sub-$70 oil would be a welcome tailwind.
On the crypto side, TOTAL — the combined market cap chart — has been in the same lower-high, lower-low structure. Last week produced a large green weekly candle, MACD has crossed and is trending well, and RSI has pushed higher. But TOTAL has not yet closed above its last significant high. Volume on that spike also wasn't as strong as you'd want to see. Tracking the total crypto market cap chart on TradingView is the cleanest way to confirm whether that breakout follows through.
Bitcoin Dominance Is the Gate Altcoins Have to Pass Through
Bitcoin dominance is sitting around 60%, which means Bitcoin is roughly 60% of the total market. That's why the Bitcoin chart mirrors TOTAL so closely — it is most of TOTAL.
Dominance has traded sideways in the 58–62% band since roughly September 2025. When dominance finally drops, it means capital is rotating into everything else. The traditional early tell for that rotation is the ETH/BTC chart, and right now it has closed above its last high — meaning Ethereum is outperforming Bitcoin on the ETH/BTC ratio.
One important caveat from the session: this ratio may matter slightly less than it did in past cycles. Historically, people swapped ETH to obtain altcoins. Today, most swaps happen through stablecoins, so how much weight this indicator carries going forward remains to be seen.
OTHERS and the Volume Question
For altcoins specifically, the chart to watch is OTHERS, which strips out the top 10 coins. Its 2021 high sat near $500 billion. It recently held a rough support area for a couple of weeks and then jumped from about 160 to 196 — a 25% move in one week.
The weak spot is volume. Volume typically precedes price, and on the weekly it isn't convincing yet, though the daily chart looks healthier. A 50% retracement after a fast run is normal, so a pullback toward the 170 area wouldn't be surprising.
If you're building these same charts yourself, setting up custom crypto charts and alerts on TradingView is what makes weekly reviews like this repeatable — you get alerted when a swing high breaks instead of watching candles all day.
The approach hasn't changed: dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin and Ethereum, with altcoin DCA depending on your own risk tolerance. Nobody picks bottoms or tops.
If you want to sit in on these live sessions, ask questions during the chart reviews, and work through the full course library, you can join the Crypto School community at skool.com/crypto-profit and get a one-on-one intro call when you come on board.
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