$10 Crypto Test Shows Why This Bull Market Feels Broken

The highs masked a broken market where selective capital flourished while most tokens remained stuck in a deep freeze.

Bitcoin (BTC) hit a new all-time high above $126,000 in October, but at the time of writing it was trading around $88,000.

This major pullback highlights a deeper truth: the headline highlights have masked a deeply broken market, where most cryptocurrencies have been left in a prolonged freeze.

A big difference in performance

Analytics platform SoSoValue’s recent evaluation of the period 2024-2025 quantified this split with a clear experiment. What would happen to the $10 invested in the major crypto sectors at the start of the cycle in early 2024?

The results are sobering. As SoSoValue said:

“Two years later, the answer is stark: That same $10 starting point turned into $28 in some pockets, while leaving just $1.20 in others.”

The company defined the period as a “belated, cruel coming-of-age ceremony” for crypto, where selective capital, not broad optimism, drove the outcomes.

According to the research, the main catalyst was the January 2024 approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs. Although it was hailed as a milestone, it created a “compliance loop” that isolated institutional money.

“ETFs have broken this chain,” SoSoValue explains. Capital now flows into regulated products and stays there, rarely trickling down to the broader ecosystem.

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This created a strict “boundary of attributable assets.” The platform’s data shows that US Bitcoin ETFs hold approximately $115 billion, dwarfing Ethereum’s $18 billion. The company reported that other approved tokens received minimal institutional interest, disrupting the historical trend of Bitcoin’s power benefiting everyone.

Winners, losers and a transformed market

The experiment revealed a market divided into clear camps, with sectors directly linked to pliant capital or dominant market positions flourishing.

Centralized finance (CeFi), powered by Binance’s BNB, gained more than 180%, while assets like XRP, with regulatory hurdles resolved, also excelled.

In stark contrast, industries that relied on venture capital narratives and retail speculation faced demise. Layer-2 networks fell 87%, GameFi fell 85%, and NFTs fell 68% from the $10 baseline.

SoSoValue pointed to the collapse of the “VC cabal – tech narrative – high valuation funding” model, where constant unlocking of tokens by early backers failed to meet any new demand.

Even meme coins, a traditional retail haven, offered few safe havens. Although the sector’s index almost broke even in two years, it hid a steep 80% decline in 2025 alone, which was transformed by celebrities and political pumps into a ‘highly efficient harvester’.

Bitcoin’s journey from its October high to current levels reflects this new reality. According to SoSoValue, the record spike was the result of concentrated institutional inflows through ETFs, a force that failed to spread.

The subsequent cooldown reflects both natural market cycles and the absence of a vibrant, capital-driven altcoin ecosystem to maintain momentum. However, according to the analytics firm, the wealth of the bull market was not shared; they were led into a narrow hallway, leaving the rest of the market wondering what comes next in an era slowly being defined by severity over rumor.