Sep-11's green day isn't altcoin season — run the 200-day screen on ETH, XRP, ADA, BNB, and HYPE

Open the Sep-11 screener and every major is green: ETH up near 5.5%, ADA, BNB, and XRP up 2.5 to 3%, HYPE up about 2%, against a Bitcoin that's crawled back to roughly $77,800. Fourteen hours of green tape is exactly the screen that gets screenshot and shared as momentum. Before you forward it, check the two numbers the screenshot leaves out, because they decide whether this is an altcoin season starting or a bounce inside one that isn't.

The first is the Altcoin Season Index at 35 — comfortably below the zone where money actually rotates into alts. The second is Bitcoin's dominance at 58.7%, holding near its high. A tape where BTC carries over half the market and alts are still bleeding year-to-date (Ethereum down 11%, XRP down 25%, ADA down 37%) is not an alt rotation. It is a rising tide lifting the smaller boats unevenly, and that distinction is the entire trade.

The screen that splits the five

Because alts don't move first in this tape, their medium-term trend is what you can verify and what survives the screenshot. Run one screen tonight: each token's price against its 200-day moving average. That single line separates a name that is consolidating inside an uptrend from a name still fighting its way out of a drawdown.

Token	Price (Sep-11)	200-day MA	Position	60-day move
ETH	$2,575	$2,054	Above	+45%
BNB	$730	$624	Above	+29%
XRP	$1.37	$1.27	Above	+28%
ADA	$0.21	$0.22	Below	+34%

Ethereum sits roughly a quarter above its 200-day with RSI near 66 and has added 45% in two months — that's a dip-buyable uptrend with the exit written as "stays above the rising average." BNB reads the same, up 29% over 60 days above its line. XRP is the awkward one: it clears the 200-day on paper but its last five sessions and last month are down, and the price is untethered from the line that's flat. Buying XRP here is trading a rebound, not a trend.

Cardano is the true outlier. It is the only one of the five still below its 200-day ($0.21 against a line at $0.22), and it has been the worst asset of the group — down 47% over the trailing year and 64% over three. Its 60-day bounce is real, but a bounce below the line that defines the trend is a shorter, weaker animal with a looser exit. The person buying the dip is called a value buyer; the observable line that disqualifies that label tonight is the 200-day MA. ADA fails it. A green day does not convert a drawdown into a setup.

The wallet and the divergence

Now the wallet check, because it beats the narrative every time. On Hyperliquid, an entity you can name — Nasdaq-listed Hyperliquid Strategies, the project's own treasury — bought about $29.7 million of HYPE in a single day, and HYPE is up a couple of percent. That is a fact, not a signal. Two readings: a treasury accumulating into its own token is a structural bid that can keep a floor under a high-beta name; it is also management spending capital to defend a price, which tells you what they fear. HYPE is the only name here where the "always wins" folklore is doing the work, and the verified input — an entity buying its own token — has no independent third-party check behind it. Treat it as a hypothesis, short a liquidation distance.

The richer divergence is in the largest name. Ethereum's price jumped while net capital moved the other way: net spot flow into ETH turned negative for the session, roughly $38 million out on a day the price rose 5.5%. Inflows are not direction, and one day is noise until size and timing both repeat. But a pop paid for by sellers taking money off the table into strength is the exact pattern that turns a breakout thesis into a watch item. It doesn't invalidate the 200-day read; it sets the line for the exit tighter.

Where it expires

Write the exit before the entry, and write the expiry before you believe the playbook. This whole screen — buy the names above the 200-day, trade the names below it only as shorts — runs in the regime you're in today: high BTC dominance and an Altcoin Season Index sitting in the 30s. The moment the index crosses back toward rotation territory and BTC dominance breaks lower, the hierarchy flips and the laggards become the leaders. That, not this week's green candles, is the change that retires this checklist. Re-run the screen then — same two lines, new answers.