Remember the fall of 2019? Bitcoin had been chopping sideways for months, the Fed quietly flipped the script on monetary tightening, and then – almost overnight – altcoins went berserk.
I still remember watching Chainlink go from $1.80 to $4 in a single weekend. Cardano tripled in six weeks. And XRP? Well, let’s just say a lot of people wish they had paid more attention back then.
Fast forward to the last week of November 2025 and something eerily familiar is happening again – only this time the setup looks even cleaner.
The Macro Trigger Nobody Is Talking About (Yet)
The Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening program – the slow bleeding of liquidity that started in 2022 – is scheduled to wind down in literally a matter of days. At the same time, manufacturing PMI numbers are teasing the 50 line from below, exactly like they did in the second half of 2019.
When those two things happen together, risk assets tend to wake up. And in crypto, “risk assets” basically means everything that isn’t Bitcoin.
One prominent analyst recently pointed out that we’re seeing the same confluence of signals that preceded the last major altcoin season. The scary part? The charts of three specific projects look almost identical to where they were right before the 2019-2020 breakout.
Why 2019 Matters More Than 2021
Most people look at the Covid pump of 2020-2021 when they think “altseason.” But the really clean, macro-driven altcoin moves actually started in late 2019 – months before the world had ever heard the word “coronavirus.”
That move was fueled almost entirely by the Fed pivot and improving global liquidity. No DeFi summer hype. No NFT mania. Just pure monetary physics doing its thing.
And guess what? We’re getting the same pivot, only this time Bitcoin is already at $92,000 and the broader public actually knows what crypto is.
The Three Altcoins Flashing 2019 Vibes
Let’s cut the suspense – the three projects analysts are pounding the table on are XRP, Chainlink, and Cardano. Here’s why each one is raising eyebrows right now.
XRP – The Legal Cloud Finally Lifted
For years, XRP carried baggage that no other top-tier crypto had to deal with. The SEC lawsuit hung over the entire ecosystem like a dark cloud, keeping U.S. exchanges scared and institutional money on the sidelines.
That cloud is gone.
With the legal uncertainty finally resolved, XRP is trading at roughly the same level against Bitcoin that it was when the Fed ended QT in 2019. The on-chain risk metric that smart money watches? Sitting at a comfortable 39 – basically screaming “undervalued” to anyone who knows how to read it.
“XRP today has the cleanest fundamental setup it has ever had, at the exact same technical juncture that sparked its last major leg up.”
Add in Ripple’s growing stablecoin ambitions and the fact that cross-border payment volumes keep climbing, and you start to understand why some veterans are quietly accumulating again.
Chainlink – Still the Oracle King
I’ve been following Chainlink since the days when people laughed at the idea of paying for data feeds. Those same people aren’t laughing anymore.
Right now, LINK/BTC is hovering in the same range it consolidated in during September-October 2019 – right before it ran 400% in less than three months.
- DeFi TVL is at all-time highs again
- Cross-chain messaging is exploding
- Real-world asset tokenization is finally moving past the press-release stage
All of those trends run through Chainlink’s infrastructure. Every single one.
And yet the risk score remains stubbornly low. That combination – critical infrastructure trading at depressed levels just as global liquidity is about to turn friendly – is the kind of setup that makes career traders salivate.
Cardano – The Slow Horse That Keeps Winning Races
Cardano gets mocked for moving slowly. I get it. But slow and steady has a habit of showing up to the finish line while the fast-and-furious projects are busy exploding on the side of the road.
The ADA/BTC pair is tracing an almost identical path to late 2019. The ecosystem quietly shipped the Chang hard fork, governance is live, and treasury mechanics are starting to work exactly as designed.
More importantly, the on-chain metrics that matter – long-term holder accumulation, staking participation, development activity – are all flashing the same signals they did right before Cardano’s monster 2020-2021 run.
What the Risk Scores Are Really Telling Us
If you’ve never looked at on-chain risk metrics before, here’s the simple version: they measure how “expensive” or “cheap” an asset is relative to its own history, factoring in holder behavior, exchange flows, and realized volatility.
Low score = lots of room to run before euphoria kicks in.
All three of these projects are sitting in the same low-risk zone they occupied in 2019. Meanwhile, Bitcoin dominance is starting to roll over – another echo of that earlier cycle.
| Asset | Current Risk Score | 2019 Pre-Run Score | BTC Pair Similarity |
| XRP | 39 | 42 | Very High |
| Chainlink | Low zone | Low zone | Near identical |
| Cardano | Low zone | Low zone | Carbon copy |
The Manufacturing PMI Wildcard
Here’s the part that keeps me up at night (in a good way).
Every major altcoin season has coincided with manufacturing PMI moving from contraction (<50) to expansion (>50). We’re literally one or two decent readings away from that happening again.
When global factories start hiring and ordering parts again, risk appetite comes roaring back. And crypto – especially the layers that actually do things – tends to be the first place new liquidity flows.
Why This Time Feels Different (In a Good Way)
Look, I’ve been through enough cycles to know that nothing is guaranteed. But the stars are aligning in a way I honestly haven’t seen since 2019.
- Clean macro trigger (QT ending)
- Improving real-economy signals (PMI)
- Resolved regulatory overhang (XRP)
- Mission-critical infrastructure trading cheap (Chainlink)
- Quietly shipping fundamentals (Cardano)
- Bitcoin dominance rolling over
That’s not hopium. That’s just a checklist of things that have preceded every meaningful altcoin rotation in the last decade.
What I’m Personally Doing
Full disclosure – I’ve been adding to all three positions over the past few weeks. Not financial advice, obviously, but I sleep a lot better owning projects that are fundamentally sound and technically positioned than chasing whatever meme coin is trending on Twitter this week.
Sometimes the best trades are the boring ones that everybody already knows about… until suddenly they’re not boring anymore.
The Fed is about to turn the liquidity tap back on. Manufacturing is showing signs of life. And three battle-tested altcoins are trading exactly where they were the last time this happened.
If history is any guide, we might be looking at the calm before one hell of a storm.
Just something to think about while we wait for the next PMI print.
