A prominent market analyst is raising alarms that the current uptick among altcoins is a deliberate setup, a final act of distribution before a potential macroeconomic storm.

With critical inflation data and a Federal Reserve meeting on the horizon, he is labeling the rally as a sophisticated trap for overeager retail investors.

Exit Pump Risk as Macro Events Loom

In a detailed post on X, analyst Doctor Profit issued a stark warning to his nearly 432,000 followers, drawing a parallel to an accurate bearish call he’d made a month ago.

“I explicitly warned that market makers would push altcoins higher in the following days and weeks to create a perfect illusion for retail,” claimed the analyst.

He explained that the strategy uses attractive price increases as a distraction during a distribution phase at market tops. Furthermore, he argued that the current push is not the beginning of a sustained ‘altseason’ but a “short-lived exit pump” where retail investors are unwittingly providing the liquidity for larger players to sell.

“What we’re seeing now is exactly that: a manufactured altcoin rally designed to trap late buyers while the real money quietly exits.”

According to him, retail traders are blindly buying into alts out of the fear of missing out, while ignoring macro risks such as the PPI due on Wednesday, CPI on Thursday, and the FOMC meeting that’s only eight days out.

His warning comes at a time when public opinion is still split. Recently, analytics platform CryptoQuant noted that coins like Fetch.ai (FET), Amp (AMP), and Synthetix (SNX) were leaving Binance, meaning some investors believe they might be able to make money in the short term off those tokens.

On the other hand, analysts like Ash Crypto have said that if Bitcoin’s dominance starts to fade, it could start a “Mega Altseason” between October and March next year, with a lot of money moving into altcoins.

However, data from the past tells a different story. Earlier in the month, IntoTheCryptoverse founder Benjamin Cowen said that BTC’s dominance is likely to rise regardless of the way the cryptocurrency’s price goes. He cautioned that altcoins will have a hard time keeping up with Bitcoin if it goes up, down, or stays around key moving averages.

Bitcoin Holds Steady

Even with the noise around altcoins, Bitcoin continues to anchor the market. At the time of this writing, the OG crypto had gained 1.5 in the last 24 hours and 2.5 over the week, bringing its price to $113,167.

Despite the modest uptick, the asset is still down 4.2 in the last 30 days, and nearly 9 below its peak of $124,457. Over the last day, trading volume was more than $42 billion, showing that there is still plenty of liquidity even as speculation about altcoins heats up.