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

Investors now see BTC as the benchmark trade, rotating their capital to alts for just a few weeks before returning to the leading coin.

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 true. In fact, it appears there won’t be any altseason at all as most altcoins have performed poorly in this bull cycle.

According to a tweet from crypto investor and trader Daan, only 29% of the top 50 altcoins have performed better than BTC this year. Traders 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 drastically.

Are Altcoins Doomed?

In past cycles, altcoins have performed better when BTC faltered in its dominance, as liquidity rotated from the asset to other projects. This 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 cycle.

With the exception of a few tokens, the altcoin sector has largely followed bitcoin’s dynamic – rising and falling alongside the king cryptocurrency. In some cases, they have even performed worse than BTC during corrections, plummeting twice as hard as the asset.

Investors now see BTC as the benchmark trade, rotating their capital to alts for just a few weeks before returning to the leading coin. Over 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 months. More 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 run. Daan 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 year. One of them is Ki Young Ju, founder of the market research firm, CryptoQuant. Ju revealed during the market rally in December that the altseason for this cycle will not play out as expected. He insisted that most altcoins will no longer be driven by BTC, but will need to build independent ecosystems to grow.