poloniex and bittrex are both silent for a long time

The majority crypto user has move to an exchange who has a good volume. As an example, the most exchange that is used by most crypto user is binance exchange. In this exchange you can meet a lot of altcoin and have a good volume. So as the chance to gain a lot of profit is widely open rather than you choose an exchange which is not popular. Although both exchange that you mentioned is popular in a few years ago because I was the user of both exchange. As for altcoin season I guess it is on the way to come, you can see the BAT token price that is increasing drastically.