An estimated 38% of altcoins are actually hovering close to all-time lows, which is worse than the post-FTX market crash, in keeping with CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost.
The present market is “unfavorable” for risk-on belongings, and the crypto markets are the primary to soak up this risk-off posturing, he stated, including:
“For comparability, this metric reached 35% in April 2025 and 37.8% simply after the FTX crash. This chart completely illustrates the present scenario for altcoins. Buyers stay cautious and proceed to lose curiosity in altcoins.”
Examples of altcoins, cryptocurrency that usually serves as an alternative choice to Bitcoin (BTC), embrace Cardano’s ADA (ADA), which is hovering at about $0.10 above its all-time low of $0.17. Polkadot (DOT) reached an all-time low of $1.13 in February, however is now up 33% from there, and Polygon (POL) is buying and selling at about $0.02 off its all-time low of $0.08.
Liquidity is being siphoned from altcoins and into equities and commodities, Darkfost stated. Every day buying and selling quantity reached a excessive of over $417 billion on Oct. 10, the day of the historic crypto market crash, in keeping with knowledge from CoinMarketCap.
For comparability, day by day buying and selling volumes ranged from $49.4 billion to $268 billion in February and March 2026.
The altcoin drawdown represents the “largest regression” recorded in the course of the present market cycle, he stated, and will current a shopping for alternative for buyers, he concluded.
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Altcoin social exercise drowned out by Bitcoin
The evaluation comes as mentions of altcoins on social media platforms dropped to two-year lows, in keeping with crypto market sentiment evaluation platform Santiment.
Google worldwide search quantity for altcoins additionally dropped to the yearly low of 4 out of 100, in keeping with knowledge from Google Traits.
“Altcoins are affected by a ‘liquidity drain,’ the place even minor shifts in sentiment set off outsized sell-offs,” Jimmy Xue, co-founder of liquidity platform Axis, stated in a message shared with Cointelegraph.
It is because altcoins lack the identical institutional assist and the “digital gold” narrative loved by Bitcoin, he added.
Analysts have cited a number of causes for the decline in altcoins, together with too many tokens competing for restricted investor capital, and the launch of BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs), altering market dynamics by trapping liquidity in conventional monetary autos.
There are greater than 36.8 million totally different crypto tokens listed on CoinMarketCap on the time of this writing.
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