Table of Contents
Alright, fam, let’s talk about the wild start to 2025. If you thought 2024’s bull run was gonna keep going, reality just gave us all a swift kick to the ledger. Q1 was chaos, pain, and a few shining moments if you squint hard enough. Here’s the breakdown of what the hell went down:
Market Cap Got Wrecked (-18.6%)
The party ended quick. Total crypto market cap took a faceplant, diving from a January high of $3.8 trillion (literally right before Trump’s re-inauguration) to $2.8 trillion. That’s a cool $633.5B down the drain. Trading volumes fell too, dropping -27.3% to a sleepy $146B/day. Yeah, vibes were not immaculate.
If you blinked, you probably missed the top. Market sentiment did a full 180 and suddenly everyone went from posting laser eyes to crying into their cold wallets. The hype train derailed fast, leaving only bagholders behind.
Bitcoin: The Last Chad Standing
While alts were crying in the club, BTC stood tall. It climbed to 59.1% market dominance, the most it’s flexed since 2021. It even kissed a new all-time high at $106,182 before sliding down to $82,514—a -11.8% drop, but hey, that’s basically a scratch compared to what’s coming…
Bitcoin basically told the rest of the market, “good luck losers” and rode off into the digital sunset—well, kinda. Even though it dropped, it still looked like the only asset not having a full-blown existential crisis.
Ethereum Got Absolutely Clapped
ETH got smoked. Like, -45.3% smoked. It fell from $3,336 to $1,805, erasing every gain from 2024 like they never happened. It underperformed BTC, SOL, BNB… even XRP. Trading volume dipped too, down to $24.4B/day. Rough.
ETH maxis were coping hard this quarter. L2 hype wasn’t enough to save the mothership, and every failed breakout turned into a breakdown. Let’s hope Vitalik’s got something spicy up his sleeve for Q2.
Meme Coin Mania -> Mega Rug
January was peak degeneracy. Trump dropped $TRUMP, Melania followed, and Pump.fun was seeing 72K tokens a day. Then came LIBRA—a memecoin pushed by Argentina’s president that rugpulled within hours, nuking its $4.6B cap down to $221M. Since then, Pump.fun’s activity dropped -56.3%. The vibe shift was real.
It was like watching a frat party get raided mid-keg stand. Political memecoins were fun for about 10 minutes, until everyone realized most of them were exit scams with fancy logos. RIP to all the folks who thought $MILEI was gonna “change crypto forever.”
CEXes Lost Steam (Except HTX)
Centralized exchanges processed $5.4T in spot volume in Q1—down -16.3% QoQ. Binance kept the crown with 40.7% share, but even their March volume tanked. Bybit got rekt the hardest, losing over -52% MoM after a February hack. HTX was the only one with growing volume. GGs only.
The honeymoon phase is over for CEXs. Regulatory pressure, lack of hype, and security issues meant less degens clicking “market buy” like maniacs. It’s hard to YOLO when your exchange just got hacked.
Solana’s DEX Season (Until It Wasn’t)
Solana dominated DEX trading early on with 52% of on-chain volume in Jan. $TRUMP and memecoins were mooning on SOL. But by March, Ethereum came back swinging, retaking the top spot with 30.1% share. Meanwhile, newcomers Sonic and Berachain kicked Optimism and Polygon out of the top 10. Zero chill.
Solana bros were living their best lives until the hype wore off and gas fees didn’t seem that bad on ETH anymore. Still, SOL proved it can run with the big dogs when the market’s frothy.
DeFi Got Torched (-$48.9B TVL)
Multichain DeFi TVL shrank -27.5%, from $177B to $128B. Ethereum’s TVL dominance fell from 63.5% to 56.6%, and its actual TVL dropped -35.4%. Solana and Base took hits too. But surprise MVP? Berachain. Launched in Feb, it hit $5.2B in TVL fast, thanks to Boyco vaults pulling in $2.3B on day one.
Basically, if you weren’t building something new or weird, you were bleeding capital. Berachain pulled a DeFi Cinderella story while the rest of the space looked like the aftermath of a rug pull festival.
2025 Q1 Crypto Sh*tshow: TL;DR for Degens:
- Crypto cap down 18.6%, bye-bye $600B
- Bitcoin still king: 59.1% dominance
- ETH got destroyed, -45.3%
- Memecoin season ended in rugs and regret
- CEXs slumped, Bybit took a hack to the knees
- Solana briefly ruled DEXs, then ETH came back
- DeFi nuked, but Berachain entered beast mode
Q1 was a rough ride, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned in crypto—it’s never really over. Hype dies, coins crash, bags get rekt… then somehow, somewhere, the next bull run starts brewing.
Need a drink after reading this? Same. See you in Q2.
