Unmissable Crypto Trends Exposed in New Report as Bear Market Looms

When the crypto markets are in a state of freefall, investors are often told to “zoom out” — and look how far the industry has come. A new report by a partner at Variant has done exactly that.

Alana Levin has produced an in-depth dive into crypto trends dominating the sector, examining how the digital asset space has evolved over the past decade and where momentum is beginning to shift now.

She starts off strong with a factoid about the 10 biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization — showing that plenty of different coins have risen and fallen out of the rankings since 2015.

However, Levin notes that it’s incredibly difficult for digital assets to surge into the top five, as there has only been one entirely new entrant in recent years. The likes of Bitcoin, Ether and XRP are constants, indicating that they have a strong track record of maintaining their value.

One thing that is constant is their overall share of the crypto market. The top 10 represented 87.3% of this industry’s total value a decade ago — gradually inching up to 87.8% in 2020 and 88.1% in 2025.

As you might expect, Bitcoin’s dominance remains stubbornly high, but it has eroded. Its market capitalization has risen 14-fold over the past four years, and Levin’s research carries a pretty staggering illustration of how far the world’s biggest cryptocurrency has come.

Why? Because as of this year, BTC’s total valuation is 9.7 times higher than what the whole crypto market was worth just five years ago — and 344 times its worth in 2015. A compelling argument for zooming out, that’s for sure.

Of course, against a backdrop of Bitcoin losing six-figure territory for the first time in many months, there are some short-term challenges. Levin notes that BTC usually ends calendar years higher than where it started — and between 2020 and 2024, this trend was only broken once.

However, with this asset currently down 1.66% so far in 2025, we could be in for another disappointment. Contrast this with the S&P 500’s 14% jump since January — and gold’s incredible 56% ascent over the same period.

Bitcoin’s diminishing dominance is also reflected in the fact that all other altcoins have experienced far greater levels of appreciation since 2020, rising 23-fold as a matter of fact. Case in point — look at Ethereum: its market cap of $404 billion is more than twice what the whole sector was worth five years ago.

And against all of the doom and gloom you might be seeing on X and in Telegram chats, this is the point that Bitcoiners continually try to make: this digital asset’s market cap is a drop in the bucket compared with commodities and equities. For believers, this chart powerfully reflects how early we are — but despite its 15-year history, stubborn skeptics remain who argue that BTC won’t last.

This too extends to the number of publicly traded companies that hold Bitcoin as a reserve asset. As of 2025, this numbers in the dozens, even though there are many thousands of businesses listed on the stock market. We’ve seen shareholders from the likes of Microsoft and Amazon ultimately vote against investing in BTC with spare cash, and there’s no sign this will change soon. How the likes of Strategy fare in the next bear market will also be a huge test — as an implosion when prices fall could serve as a powerful deterrent should things turn bullish again.

One bright spot of adoption — and a pretty powerful chart — concerns the adoption of exchange-traded funds tracking Bitcoin’s spot price. Despite only launching in January 2024, their assets under management have surged, catching up to similar products representing gold in the process. It took just one month for BTC ETFs to achieve $10 billion in inflows, compared with 18 for gold. Not bad going.

Looking across the ecosystem more widely, Levin argues that public interest in stablecoins is on the rise, regulation is becoming clearer, assets pegged on a 1:1 basis with non-USD currencies represent a “huge opportunity,” and a growing number of financial institutions are beginning to offer crypto services.

The overall message? Prices are down yes, but there’s still a lot to be optimistic about — chiming in with what a panel of experts recently told Cryptonews.

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