For anyone in crypto in 2021, the main risk felt like not owning any. The biggest altcoins looked like serious long-term bets: That November, Solana and Cardano were each worth roughly $70 billion, with functioning networks, full-time development teams, and ambitious roadmaps.
If prices fell, you held—the same buy-and-hold logic traditional investors had long applied to quality assets.
Nearly five years later, almost two-thirds of the 100 largest altcoins from that moment have lost more than 90% of their value, according to CoinMarketCap research I received, based on prices as of Oct. 21. Almost half are down more than 95%, and 70 hit their lowest price since the 2021 peak at some point this year. Over the same period, Bitcoin is up about 30%.
Good projects did not reliably make good investments. Five years of data now let investors ask sharper questions than they could in 2021: whether a network is useful, whether its growth creates demand for its token and how much future growth its valuation already assumes.
“That was one of the things investors often missed in 2021,” Jim Ferraioli, director of digital currencies research and strategy at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, said in an email to Fortune. “A strong team, useful technology and growing network can all be positive, but they don’t necessarily mean the token itself will capture the economic value being created.”
To be sure, not every 2021 altcoin collapsed. Seven of the 100 are worth more today than at the November 2021 peak, including Zcash, up about 646% after a late-2025 rally in privacy coins, and TRON, up 212%. Familiar names XRP and BNB are up 16% and 22%, respectively.
BNB also shows how supply can work in holders’ favor. Its market cap is about 4% lower than in 2021, but its price is higher because token burns cut supply by 21%.
Why the old leaders stayed down
Among the 81 tokens that lost at least 70%, circulating supply increased by a median of about 50%, while median market cap fell by roughly 95%. Even without additional tokens entering circulation, 77 of the 81 would still have lost at least 70%.
“The popular explanation is token unlocks, but the data says demand,” Alice Liu, head of research at CoinMarketCap, said in an email to Fortune. “The median losing coin issued about 50% more tokens since 2021 while the market cut what it would pay for the whole project by 95%.”
When money returned to altcoins, it didn’t necessarily return to the same ones. Crypto excluding bitcoin briefly reached a new market-cap high in October 2025, but 39 of today’s 100 largest altcoins weren’t even listed on CoinMarketCap in November 2021.
“The altcoin market did not die, it changed hands,” Liu said.
Ferraioli also points to the sheer number of competing tokens. “The average cryptocurrency has little fundamental value, and new ones are created every day,” he said. A 90% decline from a previous high doesn’t tell you whether the current price is cheap if the old valuation was hard to justify.
Why a 95% discount isn’t a bargain
Supply makes the comparison even harder. Solana’s market value, for instance, is only about 10% below its November 2021 level, but with supply nearly doubling, SOL’s price is down 54%. NEAR’s market cap rose about 20%; its price still fell 51% as circulating supply more than doubled.
In both cases, the project’s market cap held up far better than its token price, and investors should watch that gap.
Another question is where a network’s economic value ends up. A blockchain can process more transactions and collect more fees while token holders receive none of that income—the fees may go to validators, application developers or a treasury.
Staking rewards can work against holders more quietly. If they’re paid in newly created tokens, an investor’s balance grows while their share of the total supply shrinks.
“Substantial network activity does not automatically translate into value for the protocol,” Eric Lu, lead economist at the Avalanche Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the Avalanche blockchain ecosystem, said in written comments to Fortune.
For investors, what matters is whether network growth can translate into token value: through fees that are burned or shared with holders, supply that is capped or shrinking, or demand that requires users to buy and hold the token.
How to tell a comeback from a value trap
Ferraioli, a former equity portfolio manager, said the framework he uses for crypto is similar to the one he used for stocks. “As a growth equity investor, I looked for companies that were leaders in their markets, had recurring revenue, benefited from network effects and could achieve economies of scale.”
For a token to accrue value, he looks for utility, scarcity and network effects. Then he asks what the token’s use case is, whether it leads that market and whether that use case is growing or shrinking relative to the broader crypto ecosystem.
“You still need a clear mechanism connecting growth of the network to demand for the token,” Ferraioli said.
Stock-style fundamental analysis still has value in crypto, but it does not go far enough on its own. Investors have to understand how value flows to the token, how quickly supply is changing and what expectations are already embedded in the price.
Five years from now, some of today’s leading altcoins may have stronger products, more users and larger markets. The better investment will be the one where that growth creates durable demand for the token, supply stays under control and the price does not already assume years of future success.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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