Altcoin selling has reached a five-year high, providing a massive buying opportunity, but also raising a major concern about their future amid the tokenization boom.
In fact, compared to Bitcoin, the altcoin’s market cap has fallen to its lowest level since 2022.
This, according to analyst Michael van de Poppe. According to the analyst’s latest observations,
Yes, it’s been a bear market for over four years. It’s about to start rising again, but almost everyone will be left behind thinking we’re still four months from the low point.
Always, tokenized assets have provided new opportunities to invest in alternatives, instead of altcoins which could go to zero.
Which altcoins will survive?
For his part, Ki-Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, echoed de Poppe’s observation and said:
Altcoins are not dead. Narrative-only altcoins are. The era of earning money simply by issuing a token is over.
According to the executive, stories still matter, but are no longer enough to keep an altcoin as a long-term investment. He added,
Some altcoins are still worth holding on to for the long term, but only if they generate real business, real revenue, and fit broader global financial trends.
For him, DeFi projects with real revenues, aligned with global internet companies with tokenized asset offerings, and those following broader financial trends have a better chance.
He also mentioned Binance’s BNB and Telegram’s GRAM as examples of altcoins with upside potential that meet the above criteria.
Young Ju added that every crypto bull run is defined by a meta key, whether it is DeFi, memecoins, etc. AI agents will be next, and most blockchains and platforms will benefit from the boom. He concluded by stating:
I know many of my followers have been hurt by altcoins. Many are Bitcoin maxis, and I respect that. I agree that 99.9% of altcoins should be rejected. But “most are trash” is not the same as “all are trash.” Be selective, without prejudice.
For de Poppe, Chainlink (LINK), Ondo Finance (ONDO), Near (NEAR), Sui (SUI) and others are lucrative altcoin bets. He also cited tokenization and AI agent narratives as key enablers on his list.
To understand the level of altcoin exhaustion, it is worth noting that the level of overall selling pressure for the segment has also reached a 5-year extreme. In fact, CryptoQuant found that:
It’s not a dive. This represents 15 months of continuous net sales on Spot exchanges. Cumulative buy/sell volume differential (alts excluding BTC/ETH): deepest negative reading since data began in 2020.
This only reinforces De Poppe’s data. In other words, investors could abandon altcoins. Yet there are still outliers like Hyperliquid (HYPE) which have recently reached new heights.
Overall, the altcoin market will likely change but not die, amid continued adoption and new sub-sectors like tokenization.
Final summary
- CryptoQuant CEO believes that altcoins linked to financial trends, tokenization and AI trend will survive.
- Selling pressure in the Altcoin market has reached a five-year extreme, but others like HYPE continue to outperform the sector.
