Article reposted from: Frank
Author: Frank, PANews
After the severe adjustments in the early market, the cryptocurrency market in April seems to have a breath of fresh air. Although mainstream assets like Bitcoin are still seeking direction within a range, the altcoin sector has shown certain signs of recovery, and market sentiment has eased compared to before. In this month (from April 1 to April 28, 2025), how did various tokens perform? Which tracks and ecosystems are more resilient? PANews analyzed the data of mainstream USDT spot trading pairs on Binance, attempting to reveal the real picture of the recent market.
Data explanation: This study is based on the USDT spot trading pairs on Binance, combined with basic information such as token classification and market cap provided by CoinGecko, including 397 valid tokens for analysis. The time frame is from April 1 to April 28, 2025. The increases and decreases are calculated based on the starting price (opening price on April 1) and the ending price (closing price on April 28).
Over 70% of tokens rose, but the overall upward trend is mild.
From the overall data perspective, the market indeed showed a certain pattern of collective increase in April. Among the 397 tokens we analyzed:
The average increase is 13.11%, with a median of 7.73%. This indicates that while the upward trend is the main theme, the overall increase is not strong, and most tokens have limited growth.
The proportion of rising tokens reached 74.1%, with nearly three-quarters of tokens rebounding in April. The proportion of declining tokens is 25.7%.
However, from the overall increase situation, in this wave of rebound, the tokens that rose significantly are still in the minority, with most tokens rebounding within a range of below 50%. The proportion of tokens with an increase exceeding 100% is only 3.0%, totaling 12, of which 6 were listed on Binance only in April, so their increase is calculated based on the opening price, making the increase appear higher than actual. The proportion of tokens with increases between 50% to 100% is 3.3%. The highest proportion of tokens is those with increases between 0% to 50%, reaching 67.8%.
This set of data reflects that although market sentiment has improved, it is still far from the comprehensive 'altcoin season' frenzy. The rise of most tokens is relatively restrained, and the structural opportunities in the market seem to outweigh the collective rising trend.
Observing the increase leaderboard, several characteristics can be found:
Small market cap tokens dominate: Many tokens in the top 20 belong to the small market cap (below 100 million) or medium market cap (100 million-1 billion) category, indicating that funds are seeking higher elasticity.
Signs of DeFi recovery: Projects like ALPACA, TURBO, and FIS have appeared at the top of the list.
AI and Meme fever remain high: VIRTUAL(AI), BABYUSDT(Meme), PENGUUSDT(Meme), etc., performed prominently, continuing the previous market heat.
Infrastructure and DEX: The infrastructure and DEX sectors also have multiple tokens listed.
Specific ecosystems: The Solana and BNBChain ecosystems contributed many tokens with significant increases this month.
Yearly differences: New tokens see greater increases, while older projects perform the worst.
In addition, this round of rebound has shown a trend that the market still prefers 'buying new over old'. The data shows that newly launched tokens in 2025 have the best average performance, with an average increase of 33.66%, significantly higher than tokens from other years. This indicates that the market's preference for new assets still exists. Tokens launched in 2023 and 2022 performed second best. Interestingly, although the number of tokens launched in 2024 is the highest at 63, the average increase is only 11.25%, performing mediocrely this month, with an average increase slightly higher than older tokens from 2019 and 2020. Older projects, particularly tokens from 2017, have the lowest average increase, and tokens from the previous bull market in 2021 rank second to last in terms of increase, possibly due to the larger bubble of bull market tokens or other reasons.
From this data distribution, tokens launched during the bear market from 2022-2023 seem to have more momentum, while bull market tokens appear to lack long-term vitality.
Infrastructure and AI performed well
From the perspective of track classification, wallets, infrastructure (average increase of 27.38%), and AI (average increase of 21%) became the three tracks with the highest average increases this month. However, the wallet track has only 4 token samples, and mainly due to WCT being a newly launched project raising the overall level, the actual increase in the wallet track may only be about 5%. Following closely are Meme and DEX, which has a certain correlation with the distribution of tokens at the top of the increase leaderboard.
DeFi, as one of the largest sectors, has shown an average performance that is acceptable. Although there are many tokens in the Smart Contract Platform category (public chain platform), the overall increase is relatively lagging. The RWA track, which has recently attracted attention, performed mediocrely this month. The worst performers are the Metaverse and Oracle sectors, but the effective sample size for these two tracks is relatively small in this statistic.
Sui, Base, and Solana ecosystems have larger average increases.
Among different blockchain ecosystems, the Sui ecosystem had the largest increase. Although the number of Sui ecosystem tokens launched on Binance is small, based on the overall market data, Sui has indeed performed the best in this round of rebound. Next are the Base ecosystem, Avalanche ecosystem, and Solana ecosystem, which showed relatively stronger average increase data in April. However, due to the limited data for Base and Avalanche, the actual overall data indicates that the Base ecosystem has indeed experienced a significant rebound, while Avalanche's real performance may be much lower than this data. The Arbitrum ecosystem follows closely behind. The Ethereum and BNBChain ecosystems, although having the most tokens, performed at or slightly below the market average. The Polygon, Cosmos, and Polkadot ecosystems performed relatively poorly this month. However, this part of the data is limited to tokens launched on Binance, which still has a significant gap from the overall data of each ecosystem.
Medium and large market cap tokens perform better on average.
In this analysis, PANews also added a dimension by examining the performance of tokens of different market cap sizes during this round of increase. Interestingly, contrary to the usual belief that small market caps have greater elasticity, the data for April shows that medium market cap (100 million-1 billion) and large market cap (greater than 1 billion) tokens have an average increase slightly higher than small market cap (below 100 million) tokens. This may suggest that during this rebound, funds are more inclined to flow into assets with a certain foundation and consensus rather than purely pursuing high-risk, high-elasticity small coins. In terms of quantity, the most significant proportion on Binance remains small market cap tokens below 100 million, totaling 242, accounting for 60%. Medium market cap tokens come next, totaling 116. Tokens with a market cap exceeding 1 billion number only 28. From this perspective, the overall token market is still quite fragmented.
Overall, in this round of rebound in April, at least in terms of overall increase and the number of tokens with high increases, it seems that there has not been the major reversal that people hoped for. Another interesting phenomenon is that new tokens seem to gain more market favor, while tokens launched in the previous bull market are less favored. Additionally, medium and large market cap tokens show a larger overall increase, but small market cap tokens seem to generate higher multiples of increases more easily (among the top 20 tokens by increase, 12 have a market cap below 100 million). For investors, the current market may be more suitable for selecting specific tokens and tracks rather than expecting a comprehensive 'altcoin season' rally.
(This content is based on historical data analysis and does not constitute any investment advice. The cryptocurrency market is highly volatile, and investment should be approached with caution.)
