2025 Marks a Year to Forget for Altcoins

Camila Russo & Squiffs _
December 31, 2025

gm, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

Most altcoins had a torrid time this year, consistently underperforming Bitcoin

In other news:

Zcash was the top-performing large-cap token
Trump Media announced a new token

The Defiant’s 2025 in review:

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

Stellar: The Proving Ground for Real-World Privacy The latest Stellar upgrade, X-Ray, delivers zero-knowledge cryptography that lets developers build privacy into their apps—protecting what matters while keeping Stellar radically open, trusted, and ready for real-world finance.

We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$87,685	-0.54 %
Ethereum	$2,978.03	0.56 %
BNB	$863.77	0.44 %
XRP	$1.84	-1.71 %
Solana	$124.02	0.24 %

Not Even the Tokens of 2025’s Breakout Projects Rallied This Year

In what many hoped would be crypto’s biggest year ever, most altcoins had a torrid time, consistently underperforming Bitcoin (BTC) and traditional assets.

Since the beginning of the year, the S&P 500 is up 17%, while BTC is down 6%, and TradingView’s Crypto “Others” index, which represents the altcoin space, is down a brutal 43%.

While BTC struggled relative to traditional financial assets and even outperformed for a portion of the year, the altcoin space was completely destroyed.

BTC v SPY v OTHERS - TradingView

While the drawdown can be partially attributed to the fact that December 2024 and January 2025 marked cycle-high prices, potentially skewing data, the altcoin space has had trouble since the FTX collapse in November 2022.

Previous cycle winners such as decentralized finance (DeFi) names like LINK or AAVE, for example, are far from their previous all-time highs, even as they are still considered integral players in the sector. LINK is down 40% over the last year, and 76% from its all-time high, while AAVE is down 53% this year and 78% from its all time high.

Meanwhile, last cycle’s winners that failed to catch any real usage have been completely obliterated. Polkadot’s DOT token, for example, is down 73% over the last year, and 97% from its November 2021 all-time high, falling from $54 to just $1.77 in four years.

There have been a few pockets of outperformance for “Others” vs BTC this cycle, however, these periods were driven by new tokens with locked supply coming to market, as opposed to actual liquid capital being invested into altcoins.

Perhaps more disappointing is that new altcoins from widely well-regarded protocols, such as Ethena and Pumpfun, are performing just as poorly.

ENA, which launched in April 2024, is down 78% over the last year even as the protocol reached an all-time high in total value locked (TVL) of $15 billion in October 2025.

Pumpfun’s PUMP token, which ICO’d in July at a $4 billion valuation, enjoyed a brief stint of success catalyzed by its token buyback program, but has also struggled since and is also down 78% from its September all-time high.

While capital continues to pour onchain in the form of stablecoins and tokenized real world assets (RWAs), a majority of altcoin holders are down significant sums of money.

Squiffs, staff reporter at The Defiant

Forwarded this newsletter? Subscribe for daily insights and curated news from The Defiant team, Monday-Saturday. It’s free.

Subscribe to Defiant Daily

🎬WATCH

Unpacking Uniswap’s “fee switch” with Hayden Adams

The UNIfication proposal just passed with an overwhelming majority of voters in favor. On the most recent episode of The Defiant podcast, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams joins us to break down the proposal — a sweeping plan from Uniswap Labs + the Uniswap Foundation that would activate protocol fees, introduce a programmatic UNI burn, and realign how value accrues across the Uniswap ecosystem.

Top News in the Past 24 Hours

Zcash Emerges as Top-Performing Large-Cap Crypto of the Year Zcash has outperformed other large-cap cryptocurrencies this year, driven by renewed interest in privacy tech, protocol upgrades, and improving regulatory sentiment around privacy-preserving tools. Why it matters: Zcash’s rally suggests a broader re-rating of privacy coins after years in the penalty box and hints that markets are once again pricing demand for compliant privacy infrastructure, not just speculation.
Trump Media Announces New Token Launch in 2026 Trump Media said it plans to launch a new crypto token in 2026, extending its push into digital assets beyond Truth Social and signaling deeper ambitions in the crypto economy. Why it matters: The move signals that Trump-linked entities still have long-term crypto ambitions, even as the political spotlight shifts reinforcing that digital assets remain a strategic pillar for engaging supporters and monetizing attention.