New data reveals capital clustering in majors, faster-fading altcoin rallies, and growing use of options
LONDON, Jan. 13, 2026 -- Wintermute, the world's leading algorithmic trading firm and OTC desk in digital assets, today released its Digital Asset OTC Markets 2025 Report, revealing a fundamental shift in crypto market structure as capital became increasingly concentrated and unevenly distributed throughout the year. Based on proprietary OTC trading data, the analysis shows how liquidity, risk, and execution evolved, reinforcing the upper tier of crypto as a more established asset class while the rest of the market traded more tactically.
"2025 was a year of significant change in market micro-structure," said Jake Ostrovskis, Head of OTC at Wintermute. "Capital continued to enter crypto, but it was increasingly directed into large-cap tokens, while options activity surged more than twofold as execution and risk management became more systematic in nature."
Key findings from the report include:
- Trading activity concentrated into a small set of large tokens: The combined share of BTC and ETH declined slightly from 54 percent in 2023 to 49 percent of total notional in 2025, but this was driven by growth in other large-cap assets rather than broader altcoin participation. Blue-chip tokens outside BTC and ETH (top 10 assets by market capitalization, wrapped assets, and stablecoins) gained 8 percentage points of volume share over the past two years, reflecting the expansion of ETFs and DATs into large-cap assets.
- Altcoin rallies ended twice as fast: Although new themes such as memecoin launchpads, perpetual DEXs, and x402 continued to emerge, they failed to sustain momentum. The average altcoin rally lasted approximately 19 days in 2025, down from 61 days in 2024, reflecting reduced follow-through and insufficient liquidity to carry narratives beyond their initial phase.
- Options surged as trading became more deliberate: Wintermute's OTC options activity increased through 2025, more than doubling year-over-year and continuing to build into year-end, when notional volumes were almost 4 times and trade counts over 2 times higher than at the start of the year. For the first time, options flow was dominated by systematic yield and risk-management strategies, rather than one-off directional bets. This shift toward rolling, portfolio-level strategies points to a more sophisticated and disciplined derivatives market.
- How capital entered crypto mattered as much as how much came in: The rise of ETFs and digital asset treasury companies fundamentally reshaped how liquidity entered the market. These vehicles provided steady inflows into BTC, ETH, and a narrow set of large-cap tokens but did not naturally rotate into the broader token universe. As a result, capital became increasingly "trapped" in institutional channels, reinforcing depth at the top of the market while limiting spillover into altcoins.
Wintermute concludes that these trends point to a crypto market that is no longer driven by broad, self-reinforcing cycles of speculation. Liquidity is increasingly selective, with more structured execution and concentrated risk. While the four-year cycle had already begun to weaken in prior years, 2025 appears to have cemented a new reality, one in which the upper tier of crypto behaves more like an established asset class.
Looking to 2026, Wintermute identifies three potential catalysts for broader market participation: expansion of ETF and DAT mandates beyond majors, strong performance in Bitcoin and/or ETH creating wealth effects, or a return of retail mindshare to crypto.
About Wintermute Group
Wintermute is a global algorithmic trading firm, leading OTC desk, and liquidity provider in digital assets. With over $15 billion in average daily trading volume, it provides liquidity across 60+ centralized and decentralized exchanges and is a key partner to token projects seeking deep, scalable liquidity. Wintermute's proprietary trading infrastructure allows it to operate across the entire digital asset ecosystem, making it the preferred counterparty for a broad range of players, including some of the world's largest traditional financial institutions. This reach now extends further into traditional finance, with active trading on exchanges such as CME and Eurex. Building is central to Wintermute's DNA, with the company incubating new protocols, some of which have grown into independent businesses.
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