Why Most Altcoins Lose to Bitcoin, Cycle After Cycle
Between the 2021 and 2025 peaks, 3.5% of altcoins gained on Bitcoin and the median lost 95% against it. The base rate behind every moonshot.
By StakeBible
In this article
"Altcoins tend to fall against Bitcoin" is something people say. We wanted to know how often it is true, so we measured it on every coin in our database that has a price history.
What we measured
For every coin, we took its price in bitcoin at each of the last Bitcoin cycle peaks, then compared one peak to the next. If the coin's price in bitcoin went up between two peaks, it gained ground on Bitcoin. If it went down, it lost ground.
| From peak to peak | Coins measured | Gained on Bitcoin | Median coin, in bitcoin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 to 2021 | 32 | 28.1% | kept 38% of its value |
| 2021 to 2025 | 368 | 3.5% | kept 4.7% of its value |
Between the 2021 and 2025 peaks, about 13 coins out of 368 beat Bitcoin. The median coin lost 95% of its value measured in bitcoin. That is not a crash in dollars, which can be smaller or larger; it is a loss against the asset you could have held instead.
Why the real number is worse
Our database only contains coins that still trade. It is built from today's markets, so a coin delisted before we started collecting leaves no trace in it. Every coin in the table above survived.
A measurement that only sees survivors can only overstate survival. With the dead included, the 3.5% would be lower, and we cannot say by how much: none of our sources gives the old listings back.
Winners do not repeat
A natural next thought is to back the coins that beat Bitcoin last time. The data does not support it. We split the 32 coins that span both cycles into thirds by how they did from 2017 to 2021, then looked at their next cycle. The results came out of order: the middle third did worst of the three. Beating Bitcoin in one cycle did not predict beating it in the next.
What this means for our forecasts
Our altcoin model starts from this base rate. It carries each coin's current ratio to Bitcoin forward with the drift the whole altcoin universe has shown as a group. Nothing is fitted to a single coin, because every coin-specific parameter we tested did worse than the shared drift. That is why many altcoin forecasts on StakeBible point down against Bitcoin: the model repeats what the market has done, not what a project promises.
You can follow those forecasts coin by coin in the All Coins table. Ethereum and a small group of other large coins, BNB and XRP among them, are modelled differently: measured over their own price histories, their ratio to Bitcoin did not follow the shared drift. Each of them has a layer of its own instead, still built on top of the Bitcoin forecast. The page on how the models work sets out every layer, starting with Bitcoin's.
Coins that beat Bitcoin do exist. They are just not visible in advance in the price history. That is the job our grounded research tries to do on the High Potential page, and why it treats every candidate as a small bet, not a plan.
How to use this
- Size any altcoin position as if the median outcome will happen to it.
- Measure altcoins against Bitcoin, not only against the dollar. A coin that doubles while Bitcoin triples has lost ground.
- Treat "high potential" as a scenario with a base rate attached. Our article on how we pick those coins explains the gates.
The drift measured here is built into every altcoin line of our long-term crypto predictions.
Keep reading
- Opportunity Research What Makes a Crypto High Potential? The Four Gates We Use Most coins outside the top 100 never get in. How our research picks the few that plausibly could, and why the multiple is a scenario, not a forecast […] Most coins outside the top 100 never get in. How our research picks the few that plausibly could […]
- Opportunity Research Succinct (PROVE): Can It Break Into the Top 100? Why our research finds a top-100 place plausible for Succinct, what could go wrong, and how the scenario price is built […] Why our research finds a top-100 place plausible for Succinct, what could go wrong, and how the […]
- Opportunity Research SSV Network (SSV): Can It Break Into the Top 100? Why our research finds a top-100 place plausible for SSV Network, what could go wrong, and how the scenario price is built […] Why our research finds a top-100 place plausible for SSV Network, what could go wrong, and how the […]
