Who is growing in a falling market: crypto industry trends in 2026

The crypto market has lost more than $500 billion since the start of the year, with most segments ending up in negative territory. Yet even against this backdrop, some sectors and individual tokens have moved against the market.

Bitcoin’s recovery has slightly improved investor sentiment but has not yet changed the overall picture. The largest cryptocurrency is trading at around $72,000, while Ethereum is hovering near $2,300. Both assets are approximately 20% cheaper than they were at the beginning of January.

Among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies, only about ten have gained more than 10%. Over the same period, the total market capitalization has fallen by more than $500 billion to $2.4 trillion.

In other words, the crypto industry remains in a bear market—a prolonged period in which sellers outweigh buyers, demand weakens, and declines affect a significant share of assets. However, capital is distributed unevenly within the falling market. Some sectors have lost up to 40%, others are holding near their January levels, while the decentralized exchange sector is showing strong growth.

To understand which segments of the crypto industry are coping best with the broader downturn, let us examine the performance of 11 of the most prominent sectors:

Of all the sectors listed above, only the DEX sector remained in positive territory. Its market capitalization has risen about 36% since the beginning of the year. The other ten categories declined, with losses approaching 40% in some cases.

Layer 2 solutions have had the worst year so far. At the beginning of 2026, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin declared that the era of L2 networks was coming to an end because, in his view, many of their original objectives were no longer relevant. This statement was particularly significant for the Layer 2 sector, much of which had developed around Ethereum.

The analysis used CoinMarketCap data. For each asset, we compared its market capitalization as of January 1, 2026, with its current value. The determined each segment's performance using the combined market capitalization of the 50 largest coins in the relevant category at the beginning of the year.

Tokens added to the rankings later were excluded from both the initial and current calculations. This prevented newly launched projects from artificially improving the performance of an entire sector.

Wrapped tokens, including stETH, WBTC, and WETH, were also excluded from the sample. These assets represent cryptocurrencies on other networks and generally track the price of the underlying coin at a 1:1 ratio. For example, one WBTC should correspond to one bitcoin, so including both assets in the overall statistics would be incorrect.

At the same time, a single token could belong to several categories. HYPE, for instance, was included both in the DEX sector because of its connection to the Hyperliquid exchange and in DeFi as part of the decentralized financial infrastructure.

A significant share of the overall decline can be attributed to the performance of the two largest cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and Ethereum account for more than 70% of the market’s total capitalization, so their declines inevitably affect the overall figures.

Since the beginning of the year, Bitcoin has fallen by 17.3%, while Ethereum has lost 22.8%. Even if dozens of smaller tokens post gains, they cannot offset declines in assets of this scale.

At the same time, several technology-focused segments are performing noticeably better than the broader market. The capitalization of AI projects has fallen by only 3%, while blockchain oracles have declined by 6.3%. This may indicate that investor interest is shifting away from high-profile concepts toward infrastructure with clear practical applications.

Tokens backed by physical gold have become another island of stability. Tether’s XAUT has gained more than 50%, while Paxos’ PAXG has risen by over 20%. Their appreciation is primarily linked to the rising price of the precious metal itself. During periods of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, gold is traditionally regarded as a safe-haven asset, while tokenization makes it accessible within the cryptocurrency infrastructure.

Decentralized exchanges emerged as the main winner among the major segments, with their combined market capitalization increasing by 36.4%.

However, an important detail lies behind this attractive figure. Most of the result came from HYPE, the token of the Hyperliquid exchange, which gained more than 180%. The project attracted significant attention due to sustained demand for decentralized perpetual futures trading.

A futures contract allows traders to speculate on changes in an asset’s price without purchasing the asset directly. If a trader expects the price to rise, they open a long position; if they anticipate a decline, they open a short position. Hyperliquid brought this popular trading format into a decentralized environment and offered users a product as convenient as centralized platforms.

Memecoins and illiquid assets often post the most impressive percentage gains. However, in such cases, a sharp price surge does not always indicate an influx of a broad audience. When trading volumes are low, even a few large transactions can move the price significantly.

One illustrative example is MemeCore (M), which ranks among the 50 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization but remains relatively little known and illiquid.

Its price can change by dozens of percentage points within a short period. On June 25, 2026, the price of M collapsed by approximately 74%, falling from an intraday high of around $2.92 to $0.51. On July 14, by contrast, the token gained more than 20% and climbed to approximately $1.46. Such volatility may look impressive in rankings, but it also points to high risk and the fragility of the gains achieved.

Three projects stand out in particular among the largest assets in the sample.

Venice Token led the pack, with its price rising almost 800% and its market capitalization reaching $685 million.

Venice is developing a protocol for private interaction with AI models. The project sits at the intersection of two highly relevant themes: artificial intelligence and user data protection. The concept of private AI helped it stand out among the many platforms that emerged amid growing interest in neural networks.

The memecoin 币安人生 took second place, gaining more than 310%. Its market capitalization exceeded $480 million.

The token’s name translates to Binance Life. It is also the title of a book by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao. Because of this association, the coin has become an unofficial symbol of the community around Zhao and the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

The project has no obvious fundamental value, but it does have something that often matters more for a memecoin: a recognizable image, a clear cultural reference, and an active audience.

HYPE ranks third, having gained 180%. The token’s market capitalization reached $18.14 billion, making Hyperliquid the largest project in the DEX and DeFi categories examined.

The exchange operates on its own blockchain and specializes in decentralized trading. Hyperliquid developed without raising external funding, yet it created an in-demand product, secured HYPE listings on major platforms, and became one of the most widely discussed projects of the year.

The crypto market is becoming increasingly selective. Simply belonging to a popular trend is no longer enough: investors are paying attention to functioning products, active audiences, and clear sources of demand. A high-profile idea can still attract capital, but retaining it without practical applications is harder.

At the same time, the growth of an individual crypto segment should not automatically be interpreted as a sign of its overall recovery. Sometimes a single major token pulls up the statistics of an entire category while most of the other assets continue to decline. This is exactly what happened in the DEX sector, where Hyperliquid accounted for a significant share of the gains.

Meanwhile, capital is moving in two opposite directions. Some investors are choosing infrastructure projects and assets backed by real-world value. Others continue searching for rapid, multiple-fold returns among memecoins and illiquid tokens.

Therefore, the main question of 2026 is not “How much has the asset risen?” but “Why has it risen?” Price growth driven by an in-demand product and sustainable demand is fundamentally different from a temporary surge caused by hype, insufficient liquidity, or the actions of a few large holders.