The global crypto market capitalization stood at $2.77 trillion, down 1.7% over the past 24 hours, even as Bitcoin itself edged up 1.27% to $81,993.74. That divergence underscores a rotation into altcoins: Bitcoin's dominance held at 59.27% of total market value, but the day's gains were concentrated in mid-cap tokens rather than the market leader. Total 24-hour trading volume came in just above $1 trillion.
NEAR Protocol was the session's standout among established coins, rising 12.67% to $5.27 and landing among CoinGecko's most-traded names and top gainers simultaneously. It wasn't alone — Injective jumped 23.9% to $9.14, Bittensor gained 9.2% to $284.84, and Zcash climbed nearly 11% to $1,224.56, pushing it onto both the trending list and the top-gainers board. Pyth Network, Celestia, Starknet and Venice Token all posted gains between 9% and 15%, pointing to broad-based strength across infrastructure and AI-adjacent tokens rather than a single-coin story.
The trending charts also captured two extreme movers far outside the market-cap top 500: Ignition surged 90.2% to $0.018, and a token called Streamoors spiked 1,480% to $0.026 — moves of that size on low-ranked coins (ranked 892 and 738, respectively) typically reflect thin liquidity rather than broad investor conviction, but they drove search interest regardless.
On the losing side, declines were comparatively modest. Bitway fell hardest among tracked losers, down 13.87% to $1.90, followed by Canton, off 3.43% to $0.105, and OKB, down 2.98% to $116.26. BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund token, as expected for a dollar-pegged instrument, held flat at $1.00. Figure Heloc slipped a slight 0.8% to $1.03. None of the day's losses approached the scale of the gains posted by NEAR, Injective or Zcash, reinforcing that Thursday's market character was defined far more by altcoin strength than by any sharp sell-off.
Taken together, the data shows a market where Bitcoin's modest uptick masked a more energetic rotation beneath the surface — one in which NEAR's double-digit run, alongside gains in Injective, Zcash and Bittensor, pulled trader attention even as the aggregate market cap ticked lower.