Arca CIO on Why Crypto’s 2025 Rally Isn’t a True Bull Market and Why Some Tokens Have Outperformed

The chief investment officer of digital asset manager Arca is challenging the idea that 2025 represents a broad-based crypto bull market, arguing that only a handful of large-cap tokens are carrying the industry. In an X thread posted Tuesday, Jeff Dorman wrote that “more than 75% of tokens in our coverage universe are negative year-to-date, and more than 50% of tokens are down 40% or more YTD.” He added that some of the year’s few gainers have been “complete nonsense coins and memecoins that no serious investor would even look at,” citing litecoin (LTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH). By contrast, the best-known names have done relatively well. Bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), solana (SOL), binance coin (BNB) and XRP are all up between 20% and 40% this year, Dorman said. He compared the dynamic to traditional finance, where large caps can rally while smaller stocks slump: “This is the TradFi equivalent of the DJIA and GameStop having a good year, while small caps are -40%.” Dorman argued that this dispersion is ultimately healthy. Broad rallies, he said, breed complacency, while uneven…