2026 Cryptocurrency Investment Guide
The first month of 2026 is coming to an end, and I finally remembered to summarize 2025 and look forward to 2026.
Last year welcomed the final wave of the bull market's tail, with mainstream cryptocurrencies reaching a new high.
After reviewing, I discovered something very interesting.
In the past few rounds of bull markets, the profitable investors can generally be divided into two main categories:
One category consists of those with a larger capital base, simply put, they are not short on money, and they specifically invest in mainstream coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Originally, as long as you didn't make rash moves, betting on Bitcoin generally led to substantial gains; however, those who made low-leverage bets on Ethereum were swept out at the beginning of last year and have yet to recover.
The second category consists of those with very small capital, the legendary 10U, 100U warriors, who became immensely rich by inadvertently betting on the high multiples of altcoins.
However, this situation has seen a drastic change in the market of 2025.
Since 2025, the altcoin season may never return. In this round of the bull market, aside from a few altcoins like SOL/XRP that outperformed, most altcoins, especially small-cap altcoins, have fallen harder than during bear markets (even the king of altcoins, Ethereum, once dropped significantly).
According to the statistics in the figure below, in this round of the bull market, the market value of altcoins reached a historical peak of 1.18T in 2024.
Since 2023, mid-cap coins (market value of 1 billion - 10 billion USD), especially small-cap coins (market value of less than 1 billion USD), outperformed large-cap coins (market value over 10 billion USD) during both early and late stages of 2024, but this trend reversed sharply in 2025.
Calculated on an equal-weight basis, from January 2023 to now, the overall return rate of large-cap cryptocurrencies is about 365%, while the return rates for mid-cap and small-cap coins are only about 70% and 55% respectively, with most of the previous gains being given back.
This phenomenon of return differentiation fully illustrates that the market's performance is increasingly leaning towards mature, liquid assets, making it difficult for small-cap tokens to replicate the continuity of growth seen in previous cycles.
In the trends of 2026, the U.S. stock market is siphoning liquidity from the cryptocurrency market; Bitcoin is draining altcoins, and the top 10 altcoins will continue to dominate over other altcoins.
The first month of 2026 is coming to an end, and I finally remembered to summarize 2025 and look forward to 2026.
Last year welcomed the final wave of the bull market's tail, with mainstream cryptocurrencies reaching a new high.
After reviewing, I discovered something very interesting.
In the past few rounds of bull markets, the profitable investors can generally be divided into two main categories:
One category consists of those with a larger capital base, simply put, they are not short on money, and they specifically invest in mainstream coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Originally, as long as you didn't make rash moves, betting on Bitcoin generally led to substantial gains; however, those who made low-leverage bets on Ethereum were swept out at the beginning of last year and have yet to recover.
The second category consists of those with very small capital, the legendary 10U, 100U warriors, who became immensely rich by inadvertently betting on the high multiples of altcoins.
However, this situation has seen a drastic change in the market of 2025.
Since 2025, the altcoin season may never return. In this round of the bull market, aside from a few altcoins like SOL/XRP that outperformed, most altcoins, especially small-cap altcoins, have fallen harder than during bear markets (even the king of altcoins, Ethereum, once dropped significantly).
According to the statistics in the figure below, in this round of the bull market, the market value of altcoins reached a historical peak of 1.18T in 2024.
Since 2023, mid-cap coins (market value of 1 billion - 10 billion USD), especially small-cap coins (market value of less than 1 billion USD), outperformed large-cap coins (market value over 10 billion USD) during both early and late stages of 2024, but this trend reversed sharply in 2025.
Calculated on an equal-weight basis, from January 2023 to now, the overall return rate of large-cap cryptocurrencies is about 365%, while the return rates for mid-cap and small-cap coins are only about 70% and 55% respectively, with most of the previous gains being given back.
This phenomenon of return differentiation fully illustrates that the market's performance is increasingly leaning towards mature, liquid assets, making it difficult for small-cap tokens to replicate the continuity of growth seen in previous cycles.
In the trends of 2026, the U.S. stock market is siphoning liquidity from the cryptocurrency market; Bitcoin is draining altcoins, and the top 10 altcoins will continue to dominate over other altcoins.
