Q1 2025: Bitcoin Boosts Dominance as Market Cap and Investor Activity Plunge

The crypto market suffered a major drop in the first quarter of 2025 from the record-breaking highs of late 2024. While altcoins saw a significant hit, Bitcoin strengthened its dominance, according to the latest crypto industry report by crypto data aggregator CoinGecko.

The report found that in Q1, the total crypto market capitalization lost $633.5 billion, or 18.6%, to $2.8 trillion. The local top was $3.8 trillion on 18 January, two days before US President Donald Trump’s inauguration. From then on, it trended downwards.

Notably, “the decline was accompanied by a drop in investor activity,” the CoinGecko researchers noted. The average daily trading volume decreased by 27.3% quarter-on-quarter to $146 billion. In comparison, the trading volume in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $200.7 billion.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s dominance continued to rise. It went up by 4.6 percentage points, ending Q1 with a 59.1% dominance amidst the general downturn. This level was last seen in Q1 2021.

Furthermore, stablecoins “benefited from the market downturn,” as well. This is because investors turned to this asset type seeking stability.

However, Ethereum dropped by 3.9 percentage points, with its dominance at 7.9%. This is the lowest it has been since late 2019, the report noted.

Only XRP and BNB among the ‘major’ coins preserved their market share.

In January 2025, BTC reached its new all-time high of $106,182. However, by the end of Q1, it fell 11.8% to $82,514.

At the same time, ETH ended the quarter with a whopping 45.3% decrease to $1,805. “It has erased its gains from 2024, returning to levels last seen in 2023,” the report said. The coin “severely underperformed majors such as BTC, SOL, XRP, and BNB, all of which declined to a much lesser degree.”

Furthermore, trading volume fell from a daily average of $30 billion in Q4 2024 to $24.4 billion in Q1 2025. The report noted that the days in which volume spiked saw the price of ETH plummet.

Meanwhile, multichain DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL) dropped 27.5% from $177.4 billion at the end of 2024 to $128.6 billion at the end of March 2025. “This was largely due to the significant depreciation in value of altcoins,” CoinGecko said.

Among the chains, Ethereum lost “a significant portion” of its TVL: 35.4% from $112.6 billion to $72.7 billion.

Furthermore, Solana and Base recorded notable decreases of 23.5% and 15.3%, respectively.

The report found that in the first quarter of this year, the top 10 centralized exchanges (CEXs) recorded $5.4 trillion in spot trading volume. This is a 16.3% decrease quarter-on-quarter.

Binance was still the dominant spot CEX, with a 40.7% share at the end of the quarter. While its market share increased over the quarter, its trading volume fell to $588.7 billion in March. In comparison, it surpassed the $1 trillion mark in December.

However, in the top 10, HTX was the only exchange to grow in Q1 (11.4%), while the rest dropped between 1.8% and 34%. The latter was Upbit’s decrease, falling to $371 billion.

Month-on-month, unsurprisingly, Bybit fell the most: 52.4% from $178.2 billion to $84.7 billion.

Meanwhile, when it comes to decentralized exchange (DEX) trading, Solana dominated the space. It saw a 35.3% rise from $217 billion in Q4 to $293.7 billion in Q1, with a market share of 39.6% in the first quarter.

Notably, in January, Solana accounted for 52% of on-chain trades amongst the top 12 blockchains. This was “driven by the ‘political memecoin’ frenzy” led by the TRUMP coin.

Solana recorded an all-time high of over $184.8 billion in trading volume, reducing Ethereum’s market share to below 20% for the first time.

That said, Ethereum reclaimed the top spot in March, the report said, with a 30.1% market share compared to Solana’s 23.4%.

Finally, Optimism and Polygon fell out of the top 10 in March as newcomers Sonic and Berachain moved in. “However, over the entire quarter, both chains stayed ahead,” the report concluded.

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