Arca CIO Reveals: Why Crypto’s 2025 Surge Isn’t a Real Bull Market & Which Tokens Are Crushing It
Crypto's pumping—but don't call it a bull run just yet.
Arca's chief investment officer breaks down why current gains lack the fundamental momentum of true market cycles. While Bitcoin flirts with previous highs, institutional adoption remains fragmented and regulatory clarity stays elusive.
Outperformers play by different rules.
Select tokens surge ahead through superior utility, ecosystem growth, or pure speculation. Ethereum killers and DeFi blue chips lead the pack while memecoins ride social sentiment waves. Their secret? Actual usage—not just hype.
Traditional finance still doesn't get it.
Wall Street veterans keep waiting for crypto to behave like stocks—meanwhile, decentralized networks rewrite value creation entirely. Maybe that's why hedge funds keep underperforming against a basket of top altcoins.
2025 looks bright—but stay sharp. This isn't your grandfather's bull market.
'FAANG' of crypto
According to Dorman, the tokens and companies that have held up in 2025 generally fall into a few categories.
Assets connected to exchange-traded funds or digital asset trusts, such as BTC, ETH and SOL, are leading the way.
Crypto-related equities have also performed well, including Circle, Galaxy Digital, Coinbase and miners like Iris Energy and TeraWulf.
He also pointed to what he called “U.S. government coins,” namely XRP and Chainlink's LINK token.
Finally, Dormann noted that revenue-generating tokens that distribute value back to holders — among them Hyperliquid's HYPE, Pump.fun's PUMP, Maple Finance’s MPL/SKY — have stood out as relative winners.
Earlier this year, Dorman had floated the idea of a crypto equivalent to the “FAANG” stocks. He suggested an acronym called the “BACHELORS”, naming tokens such as BNB, AERO, CAKE, HYPE, ENA, LEO, OKB, RAY and SKY (MKR). In his Sept. 16 thread, he updated that list to the “BARHEAPs,” incorporating newer projects like PUMP.
For Dorman, the lesson of 2025 is that crypto’s growth story is more complicated than headline gains might suggest. He argued that calling the year a “bull market” is misleading, since at best it represents a narrow cycle led by a few majors and select revenue-focused projects.
“The reason this has been a hard bull market is because it’s barely even a good year for crypto, let alone a bull market,” he wrote.
