Bitcoin and Altcoins: A Disappointing 2025
Bitcoin and altcoins, which rose after Donald Trump’s presidential victory in November 2024, were disappointing in 2025. While the rise at the end of 2024 was expected to continue, cryptocurrencies experienced a decline.
With this decline, the total cryptocurrency market value fell by 18.6% to $2.8 trillion.
Amid this decline, Bitcoin strengthened its dominance, with altcoins bearing the brunt of the decline. At this point, BTC dominance ended the first quarter at 59.1%, a level not seen since the beginning of 2021.
While Bitcoin fell significantly from its ATH and ended the first quarter with a -11.8% drop at $82,514, the largest altcoin Ethereum experienced a complete disaster.
ETH price fell from $3,336 to $1,805 in Q1 2025, erasing all gains from 2024.
“Ethereum erases all gains from 2024 and returns to levels seen in 2023. It has lagged far behind majors like BTC, SOL, XRP and BNB, all of which have declined by much less.”
In contrast, Solana maintained its dominance in spot DEX trading as of the end of 2024, accounting for 39.6% of all trading in Q1 2025.
Solana continues to dominate DEX transactions with a 39.6% share, while in January Solana accounted for 52% of on-chain transactions among the top 12 blockchains driven by the TRUMP-led political memecoin craze.
It recorded over $184.8 billion in transaction volume, an all-time high for the chain. This caused Ethereum’s market share to drop below 20% for the first time.
However, as the meme coin trend receded, Ethereum managed to regain the top spot with a 30.1% market share in March compared to Solana’s 23.4%.
LIBRA Scandal!
Ahead of the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, the sudden launch of the official TRUMP meme coin and immediately following it, MELANIA, sparked a wave of meme coin craze, pushing the number of tokens distributed on pump.fun to its daily ATH of 72,000.
However, this trend came to a halt with the launch of LIBRA, introduced by Argentine president Javier Milei.
The memecoin industry declined due to LIBRA getting out of control, and Pump.fun’s distribution volume dropped sharply by 56.3%.
*This is not investment advice.