Altcoin Returns: Just 9 Out of 50 Top Altcoins Have Beaten Bitcoin Since October Peak

The promise of investing in altcoins has been to accept additional risk for potential returns that Bitcoin can no longer deliver. However, identifying which alts can outperform BTC over a longer timeframe is remarkably difficult.

Fresh data from Glassnode shows only 9 of the 50 largest altcoins at the time of BTC's peak last October have since generated returns better than bitcoin's.

The winner is Zcash (ZEC), which stands comfortably at the top with almost 14.5 times BTC's return over the period. HYPE comes in second, but its gains are significantly lower at around 2.9x.

41 of the original top 50 were unable to beat simply holding the largest cryptocurrency, and even though they underperformed against BTC, it doesn't mean that they lost money in USD terms.