Privacy assets, such as zcash or monero, were the exception.
Some emerging narratives showed specific rebounds in short terms.
What if 2025 was a bear market for the cryptocurrency market? There are still a few days left until the end of the year, but when analyzing the narratives, the majority appear in red, with deep falls that shook the ecosystem.
The sector DeFAI, which combines decentralized finance with artificial intelligence (AI), was hit the hardest. At the time of publishing this article, it has registered a drop of more than 97% so far in 2025, according to data from the Dexu explorer. It should be noted that the most representative assets in the sector, such as Fetch.ai, SingularityNET and Ocean Protocol, were strongly affected.
Modular protocols, designed to facilitate the construction of applications and services within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, recorded drops of 92%, confirming one of the worst performances of the year.
Decentralized science initiatives (DeSci), projects such as Bio Protocol, VitaDAO and ResearchCoin, which seek to open and finance scientific research in a collaborative and transparent way, fell by around 91%, reflecting a strong loss of market interest.
Projects linked to artificial intelligence (AI), that is, cryptocurrencies associated with tools and services based on automation systems and data models, They did not escape the correction either and accumulated declines of 87%after having been one of the most popular narratives of the previous cycle. In this niche, Render or Bittensor stand out.
Other sectors hard hit were GameFi, with drops close to 85%, and non-fungible tokens (NFT)unique digital assets used in collectibles, digital art and video games, which fell by around 80%, deepening the crisis of an already weakened segment.
Finally, even memecoins, historically associated with speculation and retail momentum, closed the year with significant losses, over 70%, showing that bearish pressure was widespread.
The winners
In contrast, the narrative that stood out from the red was that of privacy, which is closing the year with a rise of 23.9%, driven by cryptocurrencies based on private transactions, such as zcash (ZEC) and monero (XMR), which managed to sustain a higher performance than the rest of the market in 2025.
ZEC is one of the outstanding assets of 2025 and has registered a rise of 713%. At the time of publishing this note, it is trading above $434.
For its part, XMR accumulates an annual increase of 143%, as seen in the following graph:
It is also a fact of the year that privacy became the center of the debate, and Ethereum proves it with the push of the Foundation and Vitalik Buterin to prioritize privacy-oriented updates, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
Then there are exchange tokens. OKB, the token of the OKX exchange, stood out with a rise of 135%, and BNB, the token of the Binance exchange, with an advance of 29%, driven mainly by token burning programs, which reduce the supply in circulation.
Tokenized gold was a little further behind, with Tether Gold (XAUT) and Pax Gold (PAXG), which registered increases of 66%, benefiting from the good performance of gold as a safe haven asset.
In macroeconomic terms, this movement is not minor. It is that the advance of Gold is usually a sign of risk aversionwhen the market perceives more fragility than opportunity.
Especially because it was a year marked by global uncertainty, due to the geopolitical tensions caused by the “tariff war” promoted by Donald Trump.
The truth is that these data show that 2025 was a bearish year for most narratives. That does not mean that the floor is guaranteed, the scenario still leaves room for deeper falls if the macro context hardens or there is a lack of liquidity again. For now, 2026 does not begin with clear signs of recovery.