Bitcoin surges to a record high in 2025, while altcoins face steep losses and extinction fears amid a $300 billion market wipeout, reshaping the future of the crypto industry.
Bitcoin’s dominance over the cryptocurrency market has surged to levels not seen in over four years, leaving a trail of struggling altcoins and erasing more than $300 billion in market value across the sector.
In what initially appeared to be a golden year for the crypto world, Bitcoin has reached record highs, fuelled by an industry-friendly U.S. president and the prospect of landmark legislation passing through Congress. But beyond the bullish headlines, the landscape for alternative digital assets, known as altcoins, has turned increasingly bleak.
The original cryptocurrency now accounts for 64% of the total market value of crypto assets — its highest share since January 2021 — according to data from CoinMarketCap. This sharp rise in Bitcoin’s dominance is raising serious concerns over the future of other digital tokens that once promised to rival or complement its success.
“I think they’re going to die, frankly,” said Nick Philpott, co-founder of the trading platform Zodia Markets, when asked about the fate of altcoins. “They’ll just wither away. Technically, a lot of this stuff will just sit there and gather dust in perpetuity.”
The so-called altcoins — a term for all cryptocurrencies outside of Bitcoin and stablecoins — are facing deep declines. A MarketVector index tracking the bottom half of the largest 100 digital assets, which had more than doubled following Donald Trump’s election victory on November 5, has since reversed course, plunging by around 50% so far this year.
The disparity in performance has been stark. While Bitcoin continues to attract significant capital flows, particularly from exchange-traded funds (ETFs), much of the rest of the market remains in retreat. Even Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, is struggling to regain lost ground, still trading nearly 50% below its all-time high despite modest gains driven by spot ETF investments.
“Historically, Bitcoin moved and then that’s passed down into altcoins,” explained Jake Ostrovskis, an over-the-counter trader at Wintermute. “We’ve not really seen that yet this cycle.”
The current shakeout echoes previous crypto downturns, notably the 2022 crash that saw the collapse of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange. That period marked the demise of hundreds of projects, leaving thousands of coins dormant on blockchains — a phenomenon known in the industry as “ghost chains.”
However, this time, the contraction is unfolding within a more tightly regulated environment. As regulatory frameworks evolve and scrutiny increases, many altcoins are struggling to survive, raising the prospect that large swathes of the sector could become obsolete.
With Bitcoin consolidating its position at the centre of the crypto universe and altcoins fading into obscurity, the industry faces a pivotal moment that could determine its future direction.