Your Bag Is Down Again, But Bitwise Says Crypto’s Foundations Are Getting Stronger

If your portfolio has felt rough lately, you’re not imagining it. Asset manager Bitwise says its index of the ten biggest cryptocurrencies dropped 15.4% in the second quarter of 2026, the third losing quarter in a row and the longest losing streak since 2022. But the same report makes a striking argument: while prices have been sliding, the actual plumbing of crypto, things like stablecoins, tokenized assets and prediction markets, has been getting sturdier, not weaker.

Why almost everything you hold probably lost value

According to Bitwise, eight of the ten coins in its Large Cap Crypto Index finished the quarter in the red. Cardano (ADA) was the worst performer, sliding nearly 40% in the quarter and now down more than 56% for the year. Ethereum lost 24.66%, XRP fell 20.79%, and Solana dropped a comparatively milder 10.87% in the quarter, though it’s still down 40.61% year to date.

Bitcoin itself just went through its worst June in four years, falling below $60,000 and sitting about 49% below its October 2025 all-time high of over $126,000, according to the report. That means the downturn has now stretched to roughly nine months. Two coins bucked the trend: Hyperliquid (HYPE) jumped 79% in the quarter and is up nearly 158% year to date, while Stellar Lumens (XLM) rose over 10% in the quarter but is still down 6.71% for the year.

A separate report from CryptoQuant, cited in the Bitwise review, found that around 40% of altcoins are trading near their all-time lows, a figure that climbed toward 45% when Bitcoin broke below $60,000. So for a lot of altcoin holders, this really has been one of the harder stretches of the cycle.

So why does Bitwise sound optimistic?

Here’s the part that matters for anyone wondering whether to hold on: Bitwise says usage of crypto is actually outpacing what the price charts suggest. Prediction market volumes hit a record $43.2 billion in the quarter, almost 18 times higher than a year earlier. Tokenized real-world assets, things like tokenized bonds or funds, have grown more than 50% this year to nearly $33 billion.

Crypto-related stocks have also held up better than the coins themselves, with Bitwise’s Crypto Innovators 30 Index gaining 30.6%. Meanwhile, stablecoins, the dollar-pegged tokens many people use to move money without touching a bank, settled 2.3 times more value than Visa, and collectively hold more U.S. Treasuries than countries like Norway, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, per the report.

Revenue among crypto apps is also becoming more concentrated at the top, with Hyperliquid, PancakeSwap and Aave each generating roughly $900 million over the past year, according to Bitwise. On-chain activity, trading volume and total value locked in DeFi did slip during the quarter, so it’s not a picture of pure strength across the board, but the standout metrics are the ones that measure real-world adoption rather than short-term trading.

What this means if you’re holding through the dip

Bitwise’s most useful comparison is against the last major bottom, in 2022. Ethereum transaction counts are now about 13 times higher than they were then, DeFi’s total value locked sits more than 60% above that period, and the amount of money parked in stablecoins has doubled. In other words, the report argues the industry is running at almost twice the scale it was during the last bear market, even though prices have fallen back to levels associated with that earlier downturn.

None of this guarantees prices will recover on any particular timeline, and a rise in usage doesn’t automatically translate into a rise in token value. But for everyday holders wondering whether the current slump reflects something broken underneath crypto, Bitwise’s data suggests the opposite: more people and more institutions are actually using the technology than at any point in this cycle. The disconnect, for now, is between what the market is doing and what the price charts are showing.

Read more: Bitcoin’s Recent Buyers Are Down 15% — Here’s Why Fewer Are Rushing to Sell