Bankless · Monday, September 28, 2026
Ben Cowen explains that the current altcoin rally is driven by monetary policy that is not restrictive, rather than an increase in overall liquidity. He notes that while the Fed funds rate is below the neutral rate (approximated by the two-year Treasury yield), global net liquidity remains significantly lower than in 2021.
“Yeah, I think all coins are running because monetary policy is not restrictive right now. I think that's kind of what it comes down to. If you think about it, from 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, monetary policy was actually really restrictive because the Fed funds rate was above what I consider to be the neutral rate.”
“And so the reason why altcoins have sucked for so long is because there's just not nearly as much liquidity as there was back in 2021.”
“And so if you zoom in here, you can see back then that liquidity topped in March of 2018. And it was still well below those highs for several years after that, right? And throughout that entire period, altcoins underperformed Bitcoin.”