Crypto Market Cap Mystery: Why Are Token Prices Up While Global Cap Stays Low in 2025?

Crypto's playing mind games again. Prices are climbing, but the total market cap's stuck in neutral—what gives?

The Great Decoupling

Tokens moon while market cap flatlines. Either the math’s broken (unlikely) or whales are playing 4D chess with altcoins (very likely).

Liquidity Shell Game

New capital isn’t flooding in—money’s just sloshing between assets. Retail FOMO chases pumps while institutions quietly rebalance. Classic ‘buy the rumor, sell the news’ on a macro scale.

Regulatory Hangover

Post-crackup markets move differently. With half the 2021 speculative trash delisted, today’s gains are realer—but concentrated in fewer coins. Thanks, Gary Gensler.

Wake us when the next degenerate casino opens. Until then, enjoy your ‘efficient markets’—where price discovery happens via Twitter polls and billionaire meme wars.

• The total crypto market volume has decreased by 2.1% in the last 24 hours, despite top coins trading at high prices.
• With Bitcoin’s huge dominance in the total crypto market cap, a small increase in price can almost not compensate for the total market cap volume.

In the last 24 hours, the global crypto market cap has decreased despite the recovery major assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen. Just like you, the reason for the decline has caused many traders and analysts to wonder what exactly is going on in the market. According to data shared by CoinGecko, the total market cap went down by 1.9% within the last 24 hours despite top tokens trending up.

Why is the Crypto Market Trending Low?

The data shared by CoinGecko breaks down what exactly makes up the total market cap. According to the details, within the last 24 hours, the total trading volume for all the tokens is at $92.7 billion, and Bitcoin makes up about 62.7% of this figure, while ethereum makes up 9.27%.

Based on this fact, we can see that Bitcoin makes up a huge part of what goes on in the crypto market. Bitcoin, as of the time of writing, has seen a high of a 0.9% increase in the last 24 hours. Although this is an increase, it is essential to understand that due to the percentage Bitcoin occupies, this low increase almost doesn’t affect the total market cap.

Sometimes it’s also important to understand that a rise in a token’s price does not automatically translate to a rise in capital or inflows. The market cap tries to measure the total value across the tokens.
Altcoins, on the other hand, are trying to help sustain the market.

With tokens like Ethereum, XRP, Solana (SOL), Stellar (XLM), and Hyperliquid (HYPE) trending high within the last 24 hours. CoinGecko also shared some altcoin top gainers in the market in the last 24 hours, including MANYU and Altcoin.