Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. After a brutal four-month stretch that wiped out over $800 billion in market cap, the altcoin market is finally showing signs of life. The broader altcoin market, including ETH, dropped nearly 50% from the local highs of $1.64 trillion, bottoming out around $842 billion.
But the last three weeks? A much different story. We've seen a 24% rally, with the altcoin market now hovering at $1.04 trillion.
What's even more interesting is that when you exclude ETH, altcoins actually held up better—only down 42% from local highs. That's a subtle but important takeaway: Ethereum has underperformed badly during this stretch. For the first time in a while, the rotation back into risk is favoring smaller caps over the old heavyweight.
Don't Miss: Here are the top five altcoin gainers this past week—ranked, broken down, and put into perspective: #5 — DogWifHat ($WIF) $WIF saw a big 56% gain this past week as risk appetite ramped up across the board, helped by Bitcoin's push back over $90,000. While the percentage move is eye-catching, context matters: WIF is still down a staggering 85% from it’s all-time highs. That kind of drawdown puts a serious ceiling on expectations.
In other words, a big bounce doesn't mean we're heading back to the top—it's more likely just a temporary move in a long-term downtrend. #4 — Virtuals Protocol ($VIRTUAL) $VIRTUAL posted a strong 62% gain this week, part of a broader bounce across the AI token space. The project is an interesting one—it's sitting at the intersection of AI, gaming, and blockchain.
Built on the IEEE Distributed Interactive Simulation Protocol, it's creating an ecosystem where co-owned, human-curated AIs can be monetized inside virtual environments. Despite the hype, it's still down 80% from the highs set in November, so we're not even close to full recovery territory. That said, this week's move shows it's still got some speculative interest behind it when the AI narrative catches fire.
Trending: New to crypto? Get up to $400 in rewards for successfully completing short educational courses and making your first qualifying trade on Coinbase. #3 — Bitcoin SV ($BSV) Bitcoin SV, or "Satoshi Vision," is a fork of Bitcoin Cash that claims to uphold the original mission of Bitcoin: fast, low-fee transactions with scalable, on-chain processing.
The BSV community pushes for massive block sizes, arguing that it positions the network to serve as an enterprise-grade blockchain for large-scale applications. Despite those ambitions, BSV has faced ongoing adoption challenges and credibility concerns—largely tied to its controversial leadership and lack of developer momentum.
