According to CoinGlass figures cited by Ted Pillows, Ethereum logged losses in nine of twelve months in 2025, its most persistent slump since 2018. As of early January 2026, ETH trades near $3,020, up 1.6% on the day and down 11.2% year over year, with technicians eyeing $3,000 and the 200-day average.

In December 2025, tokenized real-world assets on Solana rose nearly 10% to a record $873.3 million, alongside an 18.4% jump in holders to 126,236. Institutional momentum has been fueled by six Solana ETFs approved in October 2025, Western Union’s choice of Solana for a stablecoin remittance platform serving 150 million customers, and expanding RWA products such as US Treasuries and tokenized equities. Despite SOL trading near $125 at the start of 2026, well below its early-2025 peak, the network has generated $110 million in 30-day onchain app revenue and is seen by firms like Bitwise and Galaxy Research as a key beneficiary of stablecoin and tokenization growth.

At the start of 2026, Bitcoin is trading above $89,000 and Ethereum is over $3,000, following modest gains of 1.68% and 2.15%. Against this backdrop, Bitcoin Hyper, a Bitcoin Layer 2 integrating the Solana Virtual Machine, has raised $30 million in its presale and is being highlighted by some analysts as a high-upside opportunity, with price targets suggesting up to 100x returns.

On January 2, 2026, MON climbed to a one-week high after a short squeeze, gaining over 17% and peaking at $0.028. According to DeFiLlama, Monad's TVL reached a record $251M with $397M in stablecoins, while Upshift says its liquidity rose over 82% to $476M.

PEPE rallied 26.9% over the past 24 hours alongside a 300% jump in daily volume, while Bitcoin edged back toward the $90k resistance. Friday's session close is flagged as pivotal for swing traders, with a daily close above $0.000005 viewed as a bullish structure shift and $0.0000062 cited as the next resistance level.

On January 2, XRP turned daily gains of about 1.7% after losing over 20% during the previous month and dropping behind BNB in market cap. A macro buy signal from the TD Sequential indicator has appeared, hinting at a possible rebound while XRP still trades under the key $1.90 resistance. Despite a mid‑2025 surge to a new all‑time high and the launch of several US spot XRP ETFs, the token ultimately closed 2025 in negative territory.

Pi Network's Core Team posted a 2025 recap highlighting February's Open Network and PI token launch, but offered vague aims for 2026, sparking backlash. As several altcoins gained, PI hovered near $0.20 and struggled to participate in the rally.

Stablecoin usage on Ethereum has climbed near 590,000 daily active ERC-20 addresses, approaching or marginally surpassing past record highs. This elevated and persistent activity, which far exceeds levels seen during the 2020–2021 bull cycle and the 2022 deleveraging phase, indicates that stablecoins are now embedded in Ethereum’s core infrastructure and helping maintain flexible, mobile liquidity on-chain.