An estimated 38% of altcoins at the moment are hovering close to all-time lows, which is worse than the post-FTX market crash, in accordance with CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost.
The present market is “unfavorable” for risk-on belongings, and the crypto market is the primary to soak up this risk-off posturing, he mentioned, 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. Traders 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 final month, 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 mentioned. 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 accordance with information from CoinMarketCap.
For comparability, every 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 through the present market cycle, he mentioned, and will current a shopping for alternative for traders, 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 accordance with crypto market sentiment evaluation platform Santiment.
Google worldwide search quantity for altcoins additionally dropped to a yearly low of 4 out of 100, in accordance with information from Google Tendencies.
“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, mentioned in a message shared with Cointelegraph.
It’s 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 automobiles.
There are greater than 36.8 million crypto tokens listed on CoinMarketCap on the time of this writing.
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