Bitcoin lost 23% of its value in the first three months of 2026, falling from $87,700 on January 1 to roughly $67,500 by late March. That makes Q1 2026 the worst opening quarter for BTC since the 2018 crash, when it dropped 49.7% as the ICO bubble fully deflated. Ethereum fared even worse at -32%, and the total crypto market cap shed approximately $900 billion, dropping from $3.4 trillion to $2.5 trillion. But the quarter was not uniformly red. A handful of tokens posted double- and triple-digit gains while the rest of the market bled, and the divergence tells you more about where capital is flowing than the headline losses do.

Here is the full Q1 scorecard, which tokens beat Bitcoin and why, and what the data suggests about Q2…