According to the latest report published on the CoinGecko portal, the cryptocurrency market experienced a significant downturn in Q1 2025, marked by a decrease in trading volumes, market capitalization, and prices. Experts point out that this decline contrasts with the active growth seen at the end of 2024.
This is reported by Finway
Decrease in Capitalization and Trading
The report states that the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies shrank by $633.5 billion (18.6%) to $2.8 trillion. The figure peaked on January 18, 2025, when it reached $3.8 trillion, but thereafter began a consistent downward trend.
On average, daily trading volume decreased by 27.3% compared to Q4 2024. Concurrently, Bitcoin’s dominance increased, reaching 59.1% by the end of the quarter.
Crypto Assets and Memecoins
The report also highlights that stablecoins have become one of the few assets to benefit from the overall decline. The market share of USDT rose to 5.2%, while USDC increased to 2.18%. At the same time, Ethereum’s dominance fell to 7.9%, the lowest level since 2019. Among major crypto assets, only XRP and BNB maintained their positions.
Bitcoin ended the quarter down 11.8%, lagging behind U.S. Treasury bonds and gold, which showed an increase of 18%. Ethereum, in turn, experienced a decline of 45.3%, returning to price levels seen at the end of 2023.
Experts noted that “the significant reduction in the popularity of memecoins has become evident, as the number of new tokens on the pump.fun platform decreased by 56.3%.”
Furthermore, the spot trading volume on the ten largest centralized exchanges fell by 16.3% in Q1 2025, with market leader Binance holding a 40.7% share. The HTX exchange was the only one to strengthen its position, with a gain of 11.4%, while Bybit experienced the most significant decline, with its share shrinking by 52.4%.
In the DeFi sector, Solana retains the largest share of total trading volume; however, by March, Ethereum surpassed it in terms of activity. The total value locked in DeFi decreased by 27.5%, with significant drops for Ethereum, Solana, and Base.