The most upvoted answer to r/CryptoCurrency's question about which altcoins to stack for the next bull run named no altcoin at all. "One pump after a weekend of chaos and people are preparing for a bullrun already lol," it said, and collected 111 upvotes. The runner-up, at 83, was "gonna stick with bitcoin," and the third, at 44, was a joke about two memecoins.
Everyone else got down to business. We read all 101 top-level replies still visible in the thread, which went up on Monday, September 21, during a bounce that had lifted Bitcoin from about $81,200 at midnight UTC to $84,800. Of those replies, 76 named at least one altcoin, 72 different coins in all. Then we checked how the picks have traded since. Of the 12 coins named most often, only two have beaten bitcoin, and the crowd's two favorites are not among them.
The Altcoins Reddit Named Most
Each coin counts once per reply, whether the commenter is buying it, holding it from an earlier cycle or just backing it. Jokes, questions and one reply's three promotional tokens with off-site links are left out. Prices come from CoinGecko's hourly data, from 12:00 UTC on September 21, the hour the thread was posted, to 00:00 UTC on October 16.
| Coin | Replies naming it | Price change since the thread |
|---|---|---|
| Solana (SOL) | 13 | -9.7% |
| Ethereum (ETH) | 10 | -10.4% |
| Hedera (HBAR) | 7 | -5.4% |
| Algorand (ALGO) | 6 | +5.0% |
| Monero (XMR) | 6 | -4.1% |
| Stellar (XLM) | 5 | -13.2% |
| Cardano (ADA) | 5 | -4.9% |
| Hyperliquid (HYPE) | 5 | -14.4% |
| Kaspa (KAS) | 4 | -12.8% |
| NEAR | 4 | +25.8% |
| Avalanche (AVAX) | 4 | -11.2% |
| XRP | 4 | -10.2% |
| Bitcoin, for comparison | 3 (bitcoin only) | -3.1% |
Below the table the list thins out fast. Forty-four of the 72 coins were named in just one reply, from veterans like Bitcoin Cash, Dash and Tezos down to launchpad memecoins. Most people answered with one coin (45 of the 76 replies with a pick), while eight posted baskets of five or more. The tidiest basket held seven coins spread across five sectors: layer 1s, perps, revenue-generating DeFi, memes and AI. Another commenter is generally not buying anything created before 2025, which in this market passes for a risk policy.
The Quantum Pitch Behind Algorand
Algorand is the pick with the clearest shared reason. Three of its six backers called it quantum-proof or quantum-resistant, and the longest of those replies, at 28 upvotes, added near-free transfers, a network that has never gone down and a supply that is mostly released. The quantum case has form: ALGO rose about 50% in under a week during the March rally after Google's quantum paper named Algorand.
Quantum-proof overstates it. Algorand signs its state proofs with Falcon, a post-quantum signature scheme, and native Falcon accounts went live on mainnet in August 2026, yet Algorand's own post-quantum page says consensus participation still relies on the classical Ed25519 scheme, and it sets broad quantum resilience as a goal for the end of 2027. Ahead of most chains, then, and still short of proof. The market has not minded the distinction: ALGO is up 5.0% since the thread, one of only two top picks in the black.
The Upvotes Picked Bitcoin
By reply count, the thread is a shopping list. Weighted by upvotes, it reads more like an argument the shoppers are losing. The 14 replies that are buying no altcoins drew 35% of the upvotes on top-level replies:
- Doubting the run itself: 6 replies, 125 upvotes. "Stablecoins are next, there is no next alt run," one said, and another asked whether the original poster really meant to hand their bitcoin gains to altcoins.
- Bitcoin only: 3 replies, 86 upvotes, led by "gonna stick with bitcoin."
- Buying nothing new: 5 replies, 8 upvotes, from people sitting on what they already own, including bags that are "still down."
The 76 replies with picks shared 55% of the upvotes, and the jokes, questions and one deleted reply took the rest.
So far the doubters have the better of it. Bitcoin is down 3.1% since the thread went up, from $84,824 to $82,156, and an equal split across the 12 most-named altcoins is down 5.4%. The sub's two favorites did worse than that basket: Solana fell 9.7% and Ethereum 10.4%, roughly three times bitcoin's drop. Three and a half weeks prove nothing about a bull run that has no date yet, but it does test whether the consensus picks were early, and on this evidence they were.
The two winners came from lower in the table. NEAR, backed by four replies, including one that found it "concerning" that nobody had said NEAR yet, "because it is NEAR," is up 25.8%. Algorand, the quantum pick, is up 5.0%.
Popularity bought nothing here.
The LeveX Take
The thread runs on two clocks, and most replies only answer one. "Stacking for the next bull run" is a cycle bet measured in years, while the price since September 21 is a month of tape. The stackers may still be right about the cycle even as the doubters, who collected the votes, are right about the month. Reading the thread well means keeping those two verdicts apart.
For traders, the most useful output of a thread like this is its list of narratives. Strip out the tickers and the replies keep returning to a handful of stories: quantum resistance, protocol revenue (Hyperliquid and Pump.fun's PUMP), real-world assets (Ondo, Aave and Chainlink) and plain memecoins. Stories travel between coins: when quantum risk is in the news, the market goes looking for whichever chain has the answer, and the answer can change with the next paper.
Solana shows how to hold both clocks without letting one wreck the other, because it was the thread's favorite and it has had a rough month. Suppose the stack is meant for the cycle, but the last few weeks make you wary of the next few. On LeveX's SOLUSDT perpetual, Multi-Trade lets the cycle position and the wary one sit side by side on the same contract: a low-leverage long with a stop far enough away to survive a bad quarter, and a smaller short with its own margin and a tight stop that exists only to cushion the next leg down. If the run arrives, the short stops out early and the long is still there. Leverage magnifies losses on each leg, and a perpetual held for months pays or collects funding all the while, so size both legs for being wrong about both clocks.
The Altcoin Season the Thread Is Waiting For
Alt season has a working definition, and the market is still short of it. The widely cited Altcoin Season Index calls it when 75% of the top 50 coins beat bitcoin over 90 days, and it stood at 55 on October 16. Reddit's own top 12 managed 2 of 12 in three and a half weeks. Until that changes, the thread is best read as a map of where conviction is cheap and where it is specific: Solana and Ethereum on one side, Algorand's quantum work and NEAR on the other, with the specific ones ahead so far.
Over on r/Bitcoin, the argument is about the bigger picture, and we counted its answers on whether the bitcoin bear market is over. To act on a pick of your own, LeveX offers hundreds of trading pairs, from SOL on spot to bitcoin perpetual futures, and Crypto in a Minute explains the basics in short reads.