This page shows what holding a coin involved, not just where its price finished. For 18 coins that are large today, it puts the return beside the deepest fall, the time spent below an earlier high and the moments a simple 20% rule would have acted.
Among 18 coins that are large today, Zcash returned +451.7% over the year, and that is the number that gets quoted. Collecting it meant sitting through a -71.7% fall from its own high, spending 92% of the year below that high, and holding through 3 separate moments when an ordinary 20% rule would have taken the position off you. Across all 18 coins the typical deepest fall was -62.4%.
To the right of the line, what each coin returned. To the left, the deepest fall from its own high that a holder had to watch to get it. Both are drawn to the same scale.
The dots on the right are the separate moments the price sat a fifth below a running high. Each one is a point where an ordinary risk process would have removed you, and holding meant deciding not to act.
The first number is the one usually published. The four after it are the ones usually left out, and they describe the same year.
| Coin | What it returned | Deepest fall you sat through | Time below its own high | Longest stretch underwater | Moments a rule would have removed you | Return per point of fall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zcash ZEC3 moments a rule would have removed youmuch harder to hold than its return suggests | +451.7% | -71.7% | 92% | 277 days | 3 | 6.30 |
| Hyperliquid HYPE | +122.4% | -56.0% | 93% | 201 days | 2 | 2.18 |
| Monero XMRbelow its own high 95% of the year | +99.0% | -58.6% | 95% | 280 days | 2 | 1.69 |
| WhiteBIT Coin WBT | +98.2% | -31.5% | 95% | 260 days | 1 | 3.12 |
| Uniswap UNI3 moments a rule would have removed youbelow its own high 99% of the yearmuch harder to hold than its return suggests | +23.4% | -74.6% | 99% | 315 days | 3 | 0.31 |
| TRON TRX | +2.6% | -16.5% | 93% | 160 days | 0 | 0.16 |
| Bitcoin BTCbelow its own high 99% of the year | -21.9% | -48.8% | 99% | 360 days | 1 | -0.45 |
| Chainlink LINKbelow its own high 99% of the year | -27.4% | -61.2% | 99% | 360 days | 1 | -0.45 |
| BNB BNBbelow its own high 99% of the year | -30.4% | -52.0% | 99% | 359 days | 1 | -0.58 |
| Litecoin LTCbelow its own high 98% of the year | -33.0% | -62.9% | 98% | 346 days | 1 | -0.53 |
| Ethereum ETHbelow its own high 99% of the year | -35.0% | -62.3% | 99% | 360 days | 1 | -0.56 |
| Solana SOLbelow its own high 99% of the year | -40.6% | -68.9% | 99% | 360 days | 1 | -0.59 |
| XRP XRPbelow its own high 99% of the year | -42.2% | -62.5% | 99% | 360 days | 1 | -0.68 |
| Shiba Inu SHIBbelow its own high 99% of the year | -47.7% | -61.0% | 99% | 360 days | 1 | -0.78 |
| Avalanche AVAXbelow its own high 99% of the year | -49.2% | -71.7% | 99% | 360 days | 1 | -0.69 |
| Hedera HBARbelow its own high 98% of the year | -49.5% | -67.9% | 98% | 355 days | 1 | -0.73 |
| Dogecoin DOGEbelow its own high 99% of the year | -56.9% | -66.5% | 99% | 360 days | 1 | -0.86 |
| Cardano ADAbelow its own high 99% of the year | -63.9% | -78.9% | 99% | 360 days | 1 | -0.81 |
Not because acting would have been better. Because it counts how often holding required a decision.
It follows coins that are large today. That is not the same as freezing the market at the start and keeping every failure in the result.
17 of 18 produced at least one such moment. The deepest fall was Cardano at -78.9%.
Every answer below is drawn from the readings on this page and nothing else. The last one is refused.
Zcash returned +451.7% over the window, which is the figure that gets quoted. Collecting it meant sitting through a fall of -71.7% from its own high, spending 92% of the year below that high, including one unbroken stretch of 277 days, and holding through 3 separate moments when it had fallen a fifth from a peak. Every one of those is a moment an ordinary risk process would have taken the position off you.
It is common across this board of coins that are large today. The typical deepest fall was -62.4% and the typical coin spent 99% of the year below its own previous high. 17 of 18 produced at least one moment a 20% rule would have acted on, and there were 23 such moments in total. Being underwater is not the exception in this market. It is the normal condition of holding anything in it.
Share of the year each coin spent below its own previous high.
Not reliably on this board. Cardano had the deepest fall on the board at -78.9% and returned -63.9%. TRON had the shallowest at -16.5% and returned +2.6%. The picture at the top of this page shows the pattern: the longest bars on one side of the line usually have long bars on the other.
The deepest fall each coin put its holders through.
Ranking by return and ranking by calm give different lists. Zcash is 1 by return and 16 by how little it fell, Uniswap is 5 by return and 17 by how little it fell, Hyperliquid is 2 by return and 5 by how little it fell. A coin that returned well through a shallow fall and one that returned the same through a deep one are not the same holding, and only one number of the two usually gets published.
Coins that fall furthest down the board when it is ranked by calm instead of return.
How much you were paid for each point of the deepest decline you had to absorb. Zcash paid 6.30 per point. Most of this board paid a negative number, meaning holders absorbed a large fall and finished lower than they started. It is offered once, as a ratio, and it is not a ranking of which asset was better to own: two coins with the same ratio can have felt completely different to hold.
No, and the page is careful not to make one. Counting the moments a 20% rule would have acted is a way of measuring how hard something was to hold, not a claim that acting would have been better. A holder stopped out of Zcash at any of its 3 moments would have missed most of +451.7%. What happens after a stop depends entirely on when you return, and nothing here measures that, so nothing here should be read as advice either way.
No chart. Modelling what a stopped-out holder did next would be inventing an answer rather than measuring one.
8 coins could not be read (LEO Token — rate limited, NEAR Protocol — rate limited, Stellar — rate limited, Rain — rate limited, Bitcoin Cash — rate limited, Canton — rate limited, Sui — rate limited, Gram (prev. Toncoin) — rate limited). Coins pegged to a dollar are set aside: an asset designed not to move has no price of admission. Everything is read at one price a day at the same hour, so a fall measured for one coin is measured the same way for all of them, and a sharper intraday low than any of these is entirely possible. The window is 2025-10-23 to 2026-10-22, one year, which contains one market and not the average of all of them. Most importantly, the list starts with coins that are large today. A coin that was large at the beginning but later collapsed, disappeared or was delisted is missing. This board can therefore make the holding experience look easier than the full past market really was.
No chart. An account of what was excluded, not a measurement.
Not answered here, and it could not be. This page measures what holding each of them involved over a window that has already closed. It says nothing about the next one, and the returns above are only available to someone who held throughout, which is a different person from the one reading about them afterwards. The useful part is not the ranking. It is that the number usually quoted describes about half of what happened.
Refused. The data cannot support the question.
Research by Ananda Banerjee for Charlie Quant Lab · Updated