The market performance of altcoins during 2025 followed Bitcoin because investors chose to invest in digital assets that operated under established frameworks and demonstrated practical applications.
The TradingView data shows Bitcoin experienced a 7% year-to-date decline because of an early-October market downturn, which also caused altcoin market capitalization to drop by 46% from its highest point in 2025.
The analysis showed me several unique tokens that stood out to me.
XRP experienced growth because of new regulatory standards, and institutional investors began to invest in the currency. Zcash prices increased because users started to demand privacy features again in the market.
The real-world tokenization projects of Algorand led to an increase in its value.
Altcoins trail Bitcoin
Bitcoin has declined in value throughout the year, while altcoin market capitalization has decreased by more than 46% since its peak in 2025.
The market value of XRP and Zcash, and Algorand increased because investors showed rising interest in tokenization and privacy protection, and regulatory backing.
DeepSeek AI predicts SOL and XRP, and SUI will experience limited growth during 2026.
The 2025 market selection took place because Bitcoin maintained its liquidity throughout the entire year.
The crypto market sector received institutional investment and regulatory control during 2025, yet it did not lead to a wide altcoin market expansion.
TradingView data shows Bitcoin’s pullback of approximately 7% year-to-date alongside a deeper than 46% drawdown for the altcoin market from its peak.
The system produced better results than projects that included particular storytelling components.
The market value of XRP increased because of reduced legal restrictions, which Zcash received from privacy advocacy support, and Algorand tokenization news caused its price to rise.
The highest position of XRP resulted from its efforts to follow regulations and its achievement of getting ETF approval.
XRP surged over 35% in July and hit a yearly high of $3.60 on July 23, an eight-fold gain from the previous year’s low of $0.43 on Aug. 5, 2024, according to TradingView.
The dispute between Ripple and the US Securities and Exchange Commission reached its peak on August 8 when both parties submitted a joint request to the court for dismissal of all outstanding appeals and cross-appeals, which they would handle independently for their respective expenses and legal fees.
The market currently supports assets that Mavryk Dynamics, through Alex Davis, identifies as assets that regulators can detect and institutions can study, and compliance teams can authenticate.
The debut of the Canary Capital XRP ETF on Nov. 13 added to that signal. Isaac Joshua from Gems Launchpad explains that XRP performed better than other coins because of its clean regulatory environment and rising institutional investment, and evidence of practical applications in the real world.
The first 11 days of XRP ETF market operation brought in $756 million of net positive investment.
The market returned to focus on privacy concerns, which led to Zcash price appreciation.
The search volume for Zcash on Coinbase reached its peak in mid-November when it surpassed Bitcoin and XRP to become the most popular asset.
TradingView data shows Zcash rose over 12-fold from a yearly low of $48 to a high of $744 on Nov. 7, a month after a record $19 billion market crash at the beginning of October.
CoinStats CEO Narek Gevorgyan stated that privacy-focused assets outperformed other assets because users needed financial privacy during the time when KYC/AML regulations tightened, and transaction monitoring systems began their active operation.
Shielded-transaction usage rose as the amount of ZEC held in shielded addresses climbed to about 4.5 million from 1.7 million in 2025 as of Nov. 25, with 1 million tokens transferred in three weeks.
The Zcash block reward reduction to 1.5625 ZEC from 3.125 ZEC on November 23, 2024, led to reduced daily token creation, which dropped to 1,800 tokens from its previous level of 3,600 tokens.
Zcash did not surpass its all-time high of $5,941 from Oct. 29, 2016.
The Algorand platform attracted more users because of tokenization news, yet its token value stayed at a low point.
ALGO rose about 48% in three weeks from $0.33 at the end of December 2024 to above $0.49 on Jan. 17, per TradingView.
On Jan. 21, Algorand partnered with Enel Group to let Italian residents buy fractional shares of solar and wind installations via tokenized Energy Utility Tokens.
Bitget Wallet’s Lacie Zhang stated that these integrations create a positive outlook for the chain’s future but Bitcoin’s market control, together with worldwide economic conditions, pushed down cryptocurrency values.
Staked ALGO grew 28% quarter-over-quarter to surpass 1.95 billion tokens in the second quarter of 2025, according to Messari.
The Algorand platform released AlgoKit 3.0 during March 2025, and it will introduce AlgoKit 4.0 in early 2026 to provide developers with composable smart contract libraries and Rust and Swift, and Kotlin programming support.
The DeepSeek AI system makes a cautious forecast about what will occur in the initial part of 2026.
The market sentiment has decreased for all major tokens because Solana and XRP, and Sui have each lost 35% 11% and 64.5% of their value since the beginning of the year.
The DeepSeek application, which China identifies as its leading generative AI system, presented bearish market predictions for the first part of 2026.
The model presented Solana through a chart which showed its price making successive lower highs and lower lows.
The price support level exists at $91.5, while a market breakdown would lead to a price range between $70 and $80 before reaching the resistance level at $135.
Its base case is a move toward the $75–$110 range as “the path of least resistance is down. ”
The DeepSeek model predicts XRP will experience a major price increase because of its legal triumph, which will start at $3.5.
It flagged resistance at the 200-day EMA near $2.37 and at $2.90, with $1 as the main psychological support.
The model predicts that prices will stay within the range of $1.10 to $2.40 during the first quarter of 2026, while it rules out any price increase above $3 at that time.
The DeepSeek platform showed Sui with $932 million worth of total value locked, but it also showed upcoming token unlock events, which could lead to market instability.
The research established $1.33 as a crucial support level because prices would achieve their most recent 14-month low when they drop below this point.
The stock price needs to rise above $1.70 to reach $2.10 during the first quarter of 2026.
The base case of this situation demonstrates that prices will either decrease to $0.80 or experience a minimal price rise to $1.50 before the market experiences a “dead cat bounce.”
What to watch in 2026
The market in 2025 preferred projects that provided specific rules and unique functionality and connections to physical systems.
The present market conditions indicate that investors now focus on core investment elements instead of the previous altcoin market boom, which some investors still expect to occur.
The main issue for 2026 involves whether organizations will use their need for privacy solutions and tokenization testing to establish permanent market dominance.
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