Are Altcoins Rekt Forever? Only 29% of Top Projects Have Outperformed BTC This Year

Since the end of 2024, market experts have predicted the coming of a massive altcoin season. 2025 is almost at its end, but their predictions are yet to come ￰0￱ fact, it appears there won’t be any altseason at all as most altcoins have performed poorly in this bull ￰1￱ to a tweet from crypto investor and trader Daan, only 29% of the top 50 altcoins have performed better than BTC this ￰2￱ are holding out hope, but since the bull cycle is in its later stages (according to the four-year cycle pattern), the chances of an altseason have decreased ￰3￱ Altcoins Doomed? In past cycles, altcoins have performed better when BTC faltered in its dominance, as liquidity rotated from the asset to other ￰4￱ led to the theory that Bitcoin’s dominance needs to weaken and the asset be in consolidation before altcoins can move.

However, the opposite has mostly been the case in this ￰5￱ the exception of a few tokens, the altcoin sector has largely followed bitcoin’s dynamic – rising and falling alongside the king ￰6￱ some cases, they have even performed worse than BTC during corrections, plummeting twice as hard as the ￰7￱ now see BTC as the benchmark trade, rotating their capital to alts for just a few weeks before returning to the leading ￰8￱ the last six months, the percentage of the top 50 altcoins that have outperformed BTC has been capped at 39%. Altcoins now experience short rallies that do not exceed two to three ￰9￱ recently, these price spikes have lasted for just two to three weeks at best.

A Different Bull Run In contrast to this cycle’s data, altcoins had a massive rally during the last bull ￰10￱ noted that the COVID era in 2020-2021 was the last time the altcoin sector outperformed BTC for a sustainable period. Now, analysts have tagged most alts as “bounce-to-sell.” The tokens that have seen sustained rallies are mostly projects with good structure and community backing. Interestingly, some analysts predicted this pattern early this ￰11￱ of them is Ki Young Ju, founder of the market research firm, ￰12￱ revealed during the market rally in December that the altseason for this cycle will not play out as ￰13￱ insisted that most altcoins will no longer be driven by BTC, but will need to build independent ecosystems to grow.