About 38% of altcoins are trading close to their all-time lows, a worse reading than after the FTX collapse, CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost reported. He described the market as “unfavorable” for risk-on assets and said crypto is often the first market to show broader risk-off sentiment.
Darkfost noted this metric was 35% in April 2025 and 37.8% immediately after the FTX crash, underscoring how weak demand for smaller tokens has become. “This chart perfectly illustrates the current situation for altcoins. Investors remain cautious and continue to lose interest in altcoins,” he added.
Specific examples include Cardano (ADA), reportedly roughly $0.10 above its all-time low of $0.17; Polkadot (DOT), which hit an all-time low of $1.13 last month but is now about 33% higher; and Polygon (MATIC), trading approximately $0.02 above its all-time low of $0.08.
Darkfost says liquidity is moving out of altcoins and into equities and commodities. Daily crypto trading volume spiked to more than $417 billion on Oct. 10 — the day of the historic market crash — according to CoinMarketCap. By contrast, daily volumes in February and March 2026 ranged from roughly $49.4 billion to $268 billion. He characterized the altcoin decline as the largest regression of the current cycle and suggested it could present selective buying opportunities for investors.
Social interest in altcoins has also dropped. Santiment reports altcoin mentions on social platforms are at two-year lows, and Google Trends shows worldwide search interest for “altcoins” at a one-year low of 4 out of 100.
“Altcoins are suffering from a ‘liquidity drain,’ where even minor shifts in sentiment trigger outsized sell-offs,” Jimmy Xue, co-founder of liquidity platform Axis, told Cointelegraph. He added that many altcoins lack the institutional backing and the “digital gold” narrative that supports Bitcoin.
Analysts point to several drivers of altcoin weakness: an oversupply of tokens competing for limited investor capital and the arrival of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which have redirected some liquidity toward more traditional investment vehicles. CoinMarketCap listed more than 36.8 million crypto tokens at the time of reporting.
Related coverage has tracked about $209 billion exiting altcoins over the past 13 months and examined whether traders have rotated into Bitcoin.
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