Q1 2025 Crypto Assets Market Review: Bitcoin's Dominance Rises Amidst Significant Pullback

At the beginning of 2025, the Crypto Assets market experienced a significant adjustment. In stark contrast to the bull market peak at the end of 2024, the total market value declined by 18.6% in the first quarter, closing at $2.8 trillion. Notably, the market briefly reached a high of $3.8 trillion on January 18. Accompanying the market decline, investor activity also decreased, with the average daily trading volume plummeting by 27.3% to $146 billion.

Amidst the overall market downturn, Bitcoin has strengthened its dominance. By the end of the first quarter, Bitcoin accounted for 59.1% of the total market capitalization, reaching a new high since early 2021. This is primarily because altcoins have borne the brunt of the downward pressure. Although Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $106,182 in January, it had fallen back to $82,514 by the end of the quarter, a decrease of 11.8%.

Eight Key Points of the Crypto Assets Market in the First Quarter of 2025

1. The total market capitalization of Crypto Assets fell by 18.6%, having previously reached a high of $3.8 trillion year-to-date.
2. Bitcoin's dominance has risen to 59.1%
3. Bitcoin fell by 11.8% in the first quarter, underperforming gold and U.S. Treasury bonds.
4. The price of Ethereum plummeted from $3,336 to $1,805, erasing all gains for 2024.
5. The meme coin craze has receded, with the daily new token quantity on the Pump.fun platform plummeting by 56.3%.
6. The spot trading volume of centralized exchanges decreased by 16.3% month-on-month to $5.4 trillion.
7. Solana maintains a leading position in decentralized exchange trading, accounting for 39.6% of total seasonal trading.
8. The total locked value of cross-chain DeFi ( TVL ) has evaporated by 4.89 billion dollars, a decrease of 27.5%.

Market Performance Analysis

Bitcoin dominance rise

The market share of Bitcoin rose by 4.6 percentage points in the first quarter, reaching 59.1%. This is the highest level since the beginning of 2021, mainly due to its relative resilience during market downturns. Meanwhile, stablecoins also benefited from safe-haven demand, with Tether (USDT)'s market share slightly increasing to 5.2%.

In contrast, Ethereum has performed poorly, with its market share declining by 3.9 percentage points to 7.9%, a new low since the end of 2019. The market share of other altcoins has generally decreased by 3.5 percentage points, accounting for 15.7%. It is worth mentioning that XRP and BNB have performed relatively stable among mainstream tokens, basically maintaining their market share.

Asset Performance Comparison

In the first quarter of 2025, although Bitcoin fell by 11.8%, it still outperformed some traditional financial markets. Gold, with an 18% rise, became the best-performing asset of the quarter. Risk assets such as Nasdaq and S&P 500 also experienced a pullback, falling by 10.3% and 4.4%, respectively.

It is worth noting that the US Dollar Index (DXY) fell by 4.6%, which may be related to the uncertainty of US tariff policies. The Japanese Yen and Euro appreciated against the US Dollar by 5.2% and 4.5%, respectively, with part of the appreciation of the Yen attributed to the unwinding of arbitrage trades after the Bank of Japan raised interest rates in January.

Ethereum significantly fell.

Ethereum performed particularly poorly in the first quarter, plummeting from $3,336 to $1,805, with a quarterly decline of up to 45.3%. This drop wiped out all gains for 2024, bringing the price back to 2023 levels. Ethereum's performance was significantly weaker than major Crypto Assets such as Bitcoin, Solana, XRP, and BNB.

In terms of trading volume, the daily average transaction amount of Ethereum decreased from 30 billion USD in the last quarter to 24.4 billion USD. It is worth noting that a surge in trading volume is often accompanied by a significant drop in price.

The Meme coin craze has subsided

At the beginning of the year, taking Trump's inauguration as an opportunity, TRUMP and MELANIA and other politically related Meme coins set off a wave of enthusiasm, with the number of new tokens on the Pump.fun platform reaching a historical high of 72,000 per day. However, with the "runaway" incident of the LIBRA token promoted by Argentine President Milei, the Meme coin market has cooled sharply.

At the end of the quarter, the number of new tokens on the Pump.fun platform decreased by 56.3% from its peak period, dropping to 31,000. The proportion of tokens that successfully "graduated" also fell from 1.4% in January to 0.7% at the end of the quarter.

Exchange Performance

In terms of centralized exchanges ( CEX ), the top 10 exchanges had a spot trading volume of $5.4 trillion in the first quarter, a 16.3% decrease compared to the previous quarter. Binance still maintains market dominance, with a market share of 40.7% in March, but its monthly trading volume dropped from a peak of $1 trillion in December to $588.7 billion in March.

HTX is the only mainstream exchange to achieve quarterly growth, with a trading volume increase of 11.4%. Other exchanges generally experienced a decline ranging from 1.8% to 34%, with Upbit seeing the largest drop at 34%. It is worth mentioning that Bybit saw a sharp month-on-month decrease of 52.4% in trading volume after suffering a major hacking attack in February.

In the decentralized exchange ( DEX ) sector, Solana has maintained its strength since the end of 2024, with a market share of 39.6% in the first quarter. Its trading volume increased from $217 billion in the previous quarter to $293.7 billion, a growth of 35.3%. In January, driven by the "political Meme coin" craze, Solana once occupied 52% of on-chain transactions, setting a historical high.

However, as the popularity of Meme coins fades, Ethereum regained the top spot in DEX trading in March, with a market share of 30.1%, while Solana dropped to 23.4%. Notably, emerging public chains Sonic and Berachain entered the top 10 in DEX trading in March.

Changes in the DeFi ecosystem

In the first quarter of 2025, the total locked value of cross-chain DeFi (TVL) decreased by 27.5%, from $177.4 billion at the end of 2024 to $128.6 billion, mainly affected by the significant devaluation of altcoin values.

Ethereum is the public chain with the most severe TVL losses, with its dominance dropping from 63.5% at the beginning of the year to 56.6% by the end of the quarter. TVL decreased from 112.6 billion dollars to 72.7 billion dollars, a decline of 35.4%. Solana and Base also experienced significant declines in TVL, falling by 23.5% and 15.3%, respectively, mainly due to the price drops of SOL and ETH.

The emerging public chain Berachain quickly rose after its launch on February 6, reaching a TVL of $5.2 billion by the end of the quarter, making it the sixth largest DeFi ecosystem. Its Boyco pre-deposit treasury attracted approximately $2.3 billion in funds, providing strong support for first-day liquidity.