The most important investment manager for Digital Asset Manager Arca challenges the idea that 2025 represents a broad-based crypto bull market, arguing that only a handful of large capital boxes carry the industry.
In an X-thread sent on Tuesday, Jeff Dorman wrote that “more than 75% of tokens in our cover universe is negative year to date, and more than 50% of tokens are down to 40% or more YTD.”
He added that some of the few winners of the year have been “complete nonsense coins and memcoins that no serious investor would even look at,” with reference to Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash .
In contrast, the best known names have done relatively well. Bitcoin ether (Eth)Solana Binance Coin And XRP is all up between 20% and 40% this year, Dorman said.
He compared the dynamics of traditional funding, where large caps can collect, while smaller stocks fall: “This is the Tradfi equivalent of Djia and GameStop, which has a good year, while small caps are -40%.”
Dorman claimed that this spread is ultimately healthy. Broad rallies, he said, breeds complacency, while uneven performance is forcing investors to be more selective. “Nothing well comes from an all -rally because no one learns anything,” he wrote. When weaker projects falter, he added that investors “begin to ask questions like ‘how are you?’ ‘
Unlike previous bikes, he said, investors in 2025 can’t just rely on Momentum across Altcoins. Instead, they must prioritize projects with specific business models. “Own shares and symbols that actually make money and buy their own tokens back with the profits,” Dorman said. “The days of throwing darts to create a fortune is over (ie all -season is nothing). “
‘Faang’ by Krypto
According to Dorman, they fall tokens and businesses that have stayed in 2025 generally in a few categories.
Assets associated with stockplaces or digital asset -rusts such as BTC, ETH and SOL are a leader.
Crypto-related shares have also worked well, including Circle, Galaxy Digital, Coinbase and miners such as Iris Energy and Terawulf.
He also pointed to what he called “US government coins”, namely XRP and Chainlink’s Link -Token.
Finally, Dormann noted that revenue-generating tokens, which distributes value back to holders-among them Hyperliquids Hype, Pump.Fun’s Pump, Maple Finance’s MPL/Sky-Has signed as relative winners.
Earlier this year, Dorman had floated the idea of a crypto -equivalent with the “Faang” stocks. He suggested an abbreviation called “Bachelors”, naming tokens such as BNB, Aero, Cake, Hype, Ena, Leo, OKB, Ray and Sky (Mkr). In his September 16 -thread, he updated the list of “barheaps” that incorporated newer projects such as pump.
For Dorman, the lesson in 2025 is that Crypto’s growth history is more complicated than headline gains suggest. He argued that it is misleading to call the year a “bull market”, as it at best represents a narrow cycle led by a couple of majors and selected revenue -focused projects.
“The reason this has been a tough bull market is because it is hardly a good year for crypto, so much less a bull market,” he wrote.
