The start of 2025 brought fresh challenges to the cryptocurrency market, marking a sharp contrast to the euphoric highs at the end of 2024. Market analytics platform Coingecko has released its Q1 2025 report, providing insights across nearly every sector of the crypto space.
Despite an overall wave of optimism following the U.S. elections, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies dropped by 18.6% in Q1, falling to $2.8 trillion. According to Coingecko, the market saw a brief surge after Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 18, with capitalization peaking at $3.8 trillion before correcting. Investor activity also cooled — average daily trading volume fell 27.3% from the previous quarter to $146 billion.
Amid the downturn, Bitcoin strengthened its market dominance, ending the quarter with a 59.1% market share — its highest level since early 2021 — while altcoins bore the brunt of the decline. In January, Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $106,182, but by the end of March, it had slipped 11.8% to $82,514.
1. Total Crypto Market Cap Fell 18.6% in Q1 2025
By the end of Q1 2025, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization had dropped to $2.8 trillion, while average daily trading volumes also declined sharply by 27.3% to $146.0 billion, down from $200.7 billion in Q4 2024.
2. Bitcoin Is Holding Strong
According to Coingecko’s report, Bitcoin increased its market dominance by 4.6 percentage points, finishing Q1 at 59.1% — a level not seen since Q1 2021.
Stablecoins also benefited from the market pullback as investors sought safer assets. Tether’s market share rose to 5.2%, while USDC reclaimed the 7th spot, displacing Dogecoin.
Meanwhile, Ethereum’s market share fell by 3.9 percentage points to 7.9%, marking its lowest level since late 2019
3. Bitcoin Lost Ground to Gold and U.S. Treasuries
On January 22, Bitcoin reached its all-time high of $106,182. However, gold surged 18% in Q1 2025, becoming the strongest-performing asset class. Like Bitcoin, other risk assets, including the NASDAQ and S&P 500, also declined, falling 10.3% and 4.4% respectively.
4. ETH Price Plunged
According to Coingecko, Ethereum ended Q1 at $1,805, a sharp drop from $3,336 in the previous quarter. It lost all the gains made in 2024, reverting to price levels last seen in 2023
5. Meme Coins and Pump.fun Tokens Lost Steam
The Trump family’s launch of two meme coins sparked a frenzy in the meme coin space, pushing the number of tokens listed on Pump.fun to a new daily record of 72,000.
This marked the birth of a new trend — “political meme coins” — with dozens of tokens quickly emerging, themed around politicians and countries. However, the trend was short-lived. It began to fade after the launch of LIBRA, a token promoted by Argentine President Javier Milei, which ultimately flopped. As interest cooled, the brief meme coin boom came to an end.
Activity on Pump.fun dropped sharply: daily token listings plunged by more than 56.3% from their January peak to just 31,000 by the end of Q1 2025. The share of newly created tokens also halved, from 1.4% in January to 0.7% by the end of the quarter.
6. Spot Trading Volume on Centralized Exchanges Reached $5.4 Trillion
Coingecko’s report shows that the top 10 centralized exchanges saw $5.4 trillion in spot trading volume in Q1 2025, down 16.3% from the previous quarter. Binance maintained its lead, finishing March with a 40.7% market share. However, its monthly volume slid from over $1 trillion in December to $588.7 billion in March.
Interestingly, HTX was the only top-10 exchange to grow in Q1, increasing its trading volume by +11.4%. Other major platforms saw drops ranging from 1.8% to 34.0%. Bybit experienced the steepest monthly decline, falling 52.4% after a major hack in February.
7. Solana Continues to Lead in DEX Trading
Continuing the trend that began in late 2024, Solana maintained its dominance in DEX trading, reaching a 52% market share in January 2025. Newcomers like Sonic and Bera also began making their presence felt.
Solana’s market share for the quarter hit 39.6%, up 35.3% from $217.0 billion in Q4 2024 to $293.7 billion in Q1 2025. In January alone, Solana accounted for 52% of on-chain transactions among the 12 largest blockchains, with a trading volume exceeding $184.8 billion — a record high for the network. As a result, Ethereum’s market share dipped below 20% for the first time.
However, as the meme coin craze cooled off, Ethereum managed to reclaim the top spot in March, capturing 30.1% of the market compared to Solana’s 23.4%.
8. $48.9 Billion Withdrawn from Multichain DeFi in Q1
Multichain DeFi TVL dropped by 27.5% in the first quarter of 2025, falling from $177.4 billion at the end of 2024 to $128.6 billion by the end of March 2025. This decline was largely driven by a sharp decrease in the value of altcoins.
Ethereum saw a significant drop in its TVL share, slipping from 63.5% at the start of 2025 to 56.6% by the end of Q1. Solana and Base also experienced declines of 23.5% and 15.3%, respectively, mainly due to falling SOL and ETH prices. Despite this, both networks managed to slightly increase their overall dominance in TVL rankings.
A bright spot came from Berachain, which launched on February 6 and quickly grew to $5.2 billion in DeFi TVL by the end of March. It now ranks sixth in terms of total value locked. Impressively, its Boyco vaults alone attracted around $2.3 billion on day one, instantly boosting network liquidity.
