Who Fares Better, Trading Altcoins vs. Trading Majors

We looked at the past 7 years of data and studied the on-chain performance of DEX traders on Ethereum.

Those who traded the top 10 market cap ranking coins are classified as Major Traders while those who traded the top 11-200 rankings are classified as Altcoin Traders.

On trading win rates, we found that it's basically a coin flip, Major traders had the higher median win rate in 3 of the 7 years (2020, 2025, 2026), Altcoin traders won the other 4 (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), including a razor-thin edge in 2022 (38.61% vs 38.39%). Neither cohort consistently dominates on this metric.

Where we saw divergence was in the median PnL, Altcoin traders' median profit and loss moved in the exact same direction as Major traders' every single year (0.975 correlation), but amplified, in 6 of the 7 years with one exception in 2025. In general, Altcoin PnL was roughly 3-6.6x the size of Major PnL, in both directions. When Major traders made money, Altcoin traders made several times more. When Major traders lost money, Altcoin traders lost several times more too.

Below is the raw data and if you're interested, the full study is at: https://www.coingecko.com/learn/majors-vs-altcoins-ethereum-dex-trader-profitability-2020-2026

Median Wallet PnL by Year: Majors vs. Altcoins