For years and years, the promise of investing in altcoins has been fairly simple: settle for further danger in alternate for returns that Bitcoin can now not ship because the market chief. That’s the theoretical half, at the very least. In actuality, although, figuring out the handful of alts that may truly outperform BTC over an extended timeframe stays remarkably tough.
Recent information from Glassnode illustrates the problem: solely 9 of the 50 largest alts on the time of BTC’s peak final October have since generated returns higher than bitcoin’s.
9 Out of fifty
The winner is kind of apparent: Zcash (ZEC). The privateness token stands comfortably on the prime, delivering nearly 14.5 instances BTC’s return over the interval. HYPE, which is second in line, stands far behind with positive aspects of round 2.9x. XMR and NEAR have produced will increase of two.6x and a pair of.1x, respectively, in comparison with BTC. UNI, TRX, LEO, and TAO had been additionally among the many outperformers.
That signifies that 41 of the unique prime 50 had been unable to beat merely holding the biggest cryptocurrency. It’s price noting that though they underperformed towards BTC, it doesn’t imply that they misplaced cash in USD phrases. The comparability as a substitute illustrates the chance price of shifting capital away from bitcoin in quest of bigger positive aspects from the extra risk-on altcoins.
It additionally exposes one of many biggest difficulties with the acquainted “altseason” narrative. Understanding that some (perhaps only a few) alts may outperform could be very totally different from pinpointing which of them beforehand.
Solely 9 of the highest 50 altcoins have crushed bitcoin:native since its all-time excessive.
ZEC leads by a large margin, up 14x towards Bitcoin.
HYPE, XMR and NEAR observe at 2–3x. pic.twitter.com/HDAbtE4XRW
— glassnode (@glassnode) September 24, 2026
Is This Beginning to Change?
Glassnode’s newest deeper market information means that altcoins have not too long ago begun placing up a a lot stronger combat. Over the previous week, greater than 72% of these tracked by the monitoring useful resource outperformed BTC, in contrast with a peak of simply 39 in the course of the breakout rally in August. Glassnode additionally discovered little proof that the newest transfer was being powered by extreme derivatives leverage, with altcoin perpetual open curiosity barely growing over the previous month.
This variation has even pushed Glassnode’s Altcoin Cycle Sign into altcoin-season territory. Nonetheless, the broader scale remains to be totally different. Glassnode mentioned earlier this month that alts had risen considerably in greenback phrases with out taking significant market share from bitcoin. The 90-day change in altcoin share remained adverse at -0.9%, regardless of their mixed market cap leaping 21% over the previous month.
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