In the altcoin market, cumulative net selling over the past year has ballooned to $266 billion, pushing spot demand to its weakest level in six years.
On June 17, blockchain media outlet Cointelegraph pointed to a key feature of the trend: spot money is not coming back even though trading has not declined. The one-year cumulative gap between buying and selling of altcoins excluding bitcoin and ether stood at minus $266 billion as of June 16.
While the spot market was weak, derivatives trading remained brisk. On June 16, altcoins accounted for 51 percent of Binance futures trading volume, ahead of bitcoin at 28.85 percent and ether at 20.20 percent. Altcoins kept the top share for most of 2025, and only briefly in February did bitcoin surpass them.
This divergence is read as a sign that short-term internal capital rotation in altcoins has grown, rather than fresh spot inflows. Market participants are still buying and selling altcoins, but spot buying has not been strong enough to absorb total selling. Crypto analyst IT Tech viewed the new low in the one-year cumulative buy-sell gap as showing that selling pressure has outpaced buying demand for a prolonged period.
Liquidity itself has not disappeared. Market analyst MorenoDV said stablecoin balances on exchanges have shown no major change since December 2024. The exchange supply ratio of Ethereum (ERC-20) stablecoins moved in a 0.40 to 0.46 range, meaning about 40 to 46 percent of stablecoins in circulation stayed on exchanges for more than a year.
Over the same period, bitcoin swung between $60,000 and $120,000, showing a price fluctuation of more than 50 percent. Even so, the amount of stablecoins waiting on exchanges did not fall sharply. Binance held 25 to 30 percent of total stablecoin supply and accounted for more than half based on exchange-held amounts. MorenoDV assessed the trend as showing that capital deployment is becoming more selective rather than reflecting a liquidity shortage.
Some money is in fact moving into products outside cryptocurrencies. Trading in traditional-asset-style products offered by exchanges has increased rapidly. In March 2026, when gold and silver prices hit record highs, metals futures trading volume surged to nearly $500 billion. Trading in pre-IPO perpetual products also jumped, from $2 million in March to $715 million in May and $2 billion in June.
Binance’s pre-IPO perpetual trading volume reached $10.3 billion in June, about 20 times the total for May. Its market share in this segment was about 83 percent. The widening of trading into metals, crude oil, equities and pre-IPO contracts is interpreted as a signal that exchange users are allocating the same liquidity across a broader set of asset classes.
Amid this trend, the altcoin market has entered a phase where trading activity and weak spot demand appear at the same time. With stablecoin balances holding up, funds have not fully exited the market. For now, it is more clearly evident that the money is not returning directly to altcoin spot trading and is instead dispersing into other derivatives and alternative investment products.