Altcoins, once seen as Bitcoin rivals, suffer $382b loss

On the face of it, 2025 looks like a banner year for crypto: Bitcoin hitting a record, an industry-boosting US President whose family is venturing headlong into the sector, and key legislation widely expected to be passed by the US Congress.

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But look beyond the bullish headlines and the rally in Bitcoin, and a vastly different landscape comes into view. Most of the so-called altcoins — the catch-all term for all digital assets outside of Bitcoin and stablecoins — once touted as competitors to the original crypto asset are nursing steep declines, with more than US$300 billion (S$382 billion) of market value wiped out so far in 2025.

The sea of red points to a wider malaise that is forcing parts of the industry to confront existential questions. Crypto was imagined by early enthusiasts as a universe where a host of coins competed for investor money, offering a diverse set of use cases. But as Bitcoin reigns supreme, that is giving way to predictions that large swathes of the sector will become a digital wasteland.

"I think they're just going to die, frankly," Mr Nick Philpott, co-founder of trading platform Zodia Markets, said of altcoins. "They'll just wither away. Technically, a lot of this stuff will just sit there and gather dust in perpetuity."

Bitcoin's share of the total market value of cryptoassets has climbed by nine percentage points in 2025 to 64 per cent, the highest since January 2021, according to CoinMarketCap. Back then, cryptocurrencies were a largely unregulated space, crypto lending was roaring with few safeguards and non-fungible tokens were just starting to take off.