altcoins excitement (profits) is back, baby!
BTC added just 1.6% on the week while DeFi, AI and L2s posted double digits. The market is rotating down the risk curve — the tell of an expanding appetite, not a flight to safety.
Nearly the entire top 100 beat Bitcoin (BTC) on both the day and the week.
Leadership sits in higher-beta, catalyst-rich sectors — DeFi and AI out front, L2s carried by a monster ARB move. Low-beta names (exchange tokens, several legacy L1s) and BTC itself are the laggards.
See live price performance by category here.
Median 1W move by narrative. Medians used deliberately to wash out single-name skew (UNI, ARB, NEAR, ZEC each pull their bucket higher). Every sector cleared the BTC line.
What's outperforming BTC?
DeFi — the leader: +14.1% median
Broadest move of any narrative, not one name: UNI +47%, PENDLE +35%, RAY +18%, CAKE +17%, JUP +15%, AAVE +14%, AERO +14%, ENA +13%. Lending, DEXs and yield infra all bid together.
See DeFi category coins here.
AI / DePIN +9.5% median
Second engine: FET +13%, WLD +10%, RENDER +10%, INJ +9%, VVV +8%, Midnight +15%. Compute and data-infra names leading.
L2 / Scaling +7.5% median
Skewed by one monster — ARB +50% (best large-cap on the week) — but STX +7% and POL +8% confirm the theme.
See L2 coins here.
Privacy +5.8% median
Quietly one of the best sub-narratives. ZEC is the standout of the whole top 30 at +34%, with XMR and DASH green behind it.
See Privacy coins here
Select L1s +5.3% median
Where there's a catalyst: NEAR +47%, SUI +9%, AVAX +8%, APT +6%. Majors ETH, SOL, BNB all beat BTC but sit mid-pack.
See L1 coins here.
What's lagging BTC
Exchange tokens are the laggard bloc — low beta, exactly as you'd expect when alts run: LEO −3%, NEXO −1%, OKB/BGB/KCS barely positive.
Relative weakness in a few large caps: XRP −1.3%, TRX −0.7%, ATOM −6.9%. XRP and TRX treading water while the rest of the L1 complex rips is the cleanest relative-weakness signal on the board.
Idiosyncratic unwinds (not sector rot): Falcon Finance −26%, Splendor −23%, STABLE −15%, Pi −12%. Single-name stories — don't read them as narrative signals.
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