It turns out that the “dinos” of crypto, like LTC, XRP and BCH, are outperforming hyped sector assets so far this year.
Everyone was all in on AI tokens and scaling tech for 2025, yet new data show a pack of crypto “dinos” are actually holding up better than most of the market, year to date.
According to data from Delphi Digital, which tracks sector-specific asset performance, the so-called dinos — older crypto assets like Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), XRP (XRP), IOTA (IOTA), and Cardano (ADA) — together held up surprisingly well since early January.
On average, this group lost just over 16% from early 2025 to June 24. Some assets are even in the green, with BCH up over 4% year-to-date and XRP up nearly 6%.
The market entered another euphoric phase in early 2025, fueled by signals from the Trump administration that it would take a more crypto-friendly approach. That optimism helped push Bitcoin past the $105,000 mark for the first time and lifted the broader market.
However, since then, things have taken a U-turn, with uncertainty around tariffs, foreign policy from the U.S., and other factors dampening market spirits and causing volatility.
Previously hyped sectors like AI tokens, gaming infrastructure, and modular blockchains saw much steeper declines than the old-school large-caps. The modular category — which includes StarkNet, Optimism, and Manta — dropped by around more than 70% on average year to date.
Gaming infrastructure tokens — including BEAM, RON, and others — fell by a similar amount. Even AI and DePIN projects, once seen as defining the next crypto cycle, are down over 57%, according to the data.
It wasn’t just those categories that struggled though. The Ethereum DeFi basket — which includes such tokens as Aave (AAVE), Chainlink (LINK), and Uniswap (UNI), among others — were down over 17%, while Solana DeFi fell by over 38%.
Even memecoins, known for their wild swings, performed better than some of the more “serious” projects, averaging a 38% drop, which is still bad, but not modular-level bad — though the memecoins included in the basket are notably a select few well-known assets.
Meanwhile, the big-name “benchmarks” basket, made up of just three cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL) — showed the best results, even though this group was also down by an average 14.25% since 2024, still better than most other sectors.
