Altcoin trading dominance on Binance has surged to 78%, a sure precursor to an altcoin bull market in the year 2025. CryptoQuant data points to consistently rising altcoins, which might reflect the emergence of retail participants.
Binance’s trading volumes suggest a shift in focus from Bitcoin and Ethereum to altcoins. The dominance of altcoins has been trending upward since May 2024 on the platform, with altcoin volume making up 50.8% back in May 2024.
In August, it reached 66.77%, and in November, 73.87%. For the first time in January 2025, the index has set a new high of 77.83%. The trend underscores strong appetites among retail investors for alternative cryptocurrencies.
Despite this, the market capitalization of altcoins still remains below the all-time high reached in November 2021. Capital inflows stand flat as funds are simply rotating within projects but not increasing in the sector.
While the market capitalization of Bitcoin has already more than doubled since 2021, the same is not true for altcoins, says Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant. He further commented that in such an environment, only those altcoins that have a good use case and narrative would thrive.
Current altcoin market valuation and trends
Total3, the metric that gauges the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin and Ethereum, places the current value of the altcoin sector at $943 billion. It briefly reached $1.1 trillion in a rally at the end of 2024 before pulling back to its present level.
Ki Young Ju believes this market cycle will be very different from previous trends. He said that traditionally, the altseason was driven by investors rotating Bitcoin gains into altcoins. According to him, stablecoin liquidity and the growth of stablecoin trading pairs will define altseason dynamics. It is due to this fact that altcoin trading is rapidly gaining traction and dominant positions in the Binance arena.
Indeed, retail interest supports the market; at the same time, general market momentum would have to rely on newly arising sources of liquidity. Since there’s growing retail involvement, the year 2025 could indeed turn out to be a real inflection point for altcoins. Yet, only usage and/or developing market drivers will define what is to become sustainable in 2025 and beyond.
