For years and years, the promise of investing in altcoins has been quite simple: accept additional risk in exchange for returns that Bitcoin can no longer offer as a market leader. That’s at least the theoretical part. In reality, however, it remains extremely difficult to identify the handful of alts that can actually outperform BTC over a longer period.
New data from Glassnode illustrates the problem: only 9 of the 50 largest alts at the time of BTC’s peak last October have since generated returns better than Bitcoin.
9 out of 50
The winner is pretty obvious: Zcash (ZEC). The privacy token sits comfortably at the top, yielding nearly 14.5 times that of BTC over the period. HYPE, which comes in second, is far behind with gains of around 2.9x. XMR and NEAR produced increases of 2.6x and 2.1x, respectively, against BTC. UNI, TRX, LEO and TAO were also among the outperformers.
This means that 41 of the top 50 couldn’t beat just holding the largest cryptocurrency. It’s worth noting that even though they underperformed against BTC, that doesn’t mean they lost money in USD. Rather, the comparison illustrates the opportunity cost of moving capital away from Bitcoin in search of greater gains from riskier altcoins.
It also exposes one of the biggest difficulties with the familiar “altseason” narrative. Knowing that some (maybe just a few) might outperform is very different from determining which ones beforehand.
Only 9 of the top 50 altcoins have beaten Bitcoin:native since its all-time high.
ZEC is well ahead, 14 times higher than Bitcoin.
HYPE, XMR and NEAR follow at 2-3x. pic.twitter.com/HDAbtE4XRW
– glassnode (@glassnode) September 24, 2026
Is this starting to change?
Latest deeper market data from Glassnode suggests that altcoins have recently started to put up a much stronger fight. Over the past week, more than 72% of people tracked by the monitoring resource outperformed BTC, compared to a peak of just 39 during the rally in August. Glassnode also found little evidence that the latest move was fueled by excessive derivatives leverage, with the altcoin’s perpetual open interest barely increasing over the past month.
This change even pushed Glassnode’s Altcoin Cycle Signal into altcoin season territory. However, the broader scale is still different. Glass knot said Earlier this month, alts had grown significantly in dollar terms without taking significant market share from bitcoin. The 90-day change in altcoin share remained negative at -0.9%, despite the combined market cap jumping 21% from the previous month.
The post Only 9 of the Top 50 Altcoins Have Beat Bitcoin Since Its Peak: Picking Winners Is Brutal appeared first on CryptoPotato.
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