8 Of The Best Performing Cryptos In 2025 So Far: Which Coins Are Leading The Charge?

Crypto had a great start of the year, a couple of awful months, but is on the rise again. What's ... More ahead for the top projects?
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As we reach mid-2025, crypto markets are showing signs of recovery after a bruising first quarter that started with the Trump bump and ended with a tariff-induced fall. While broad indices are just coming into positive territory year‑to‑date (YTD), several large‑cap networks have bounced sharply since April thanks to long-anticipated upgrades, institutional pilots, renewed developer activity and optimism about a tariff-free — or at least a more tariff-certain — future.
Although there are plenty of micro-cap cryptos that have had tremendous runs in the past few months, this article spotlights eight headline projects, summarizing fresh price data, market‑cap figures and the key catalysts driving sentiment right now. While many of these are still underwater as compared to the start of the year, others are recovering quickly. Among the large-cap networks that still command meaningful liquidity, none are in positive territory for 2025 after the January-to-February sell-off. This means the “best-performing” names are simply those that have “fallen least” since the start of the year.
The State Of Cryptocurrency In 2025 (So Far)
After a black‑swan sell-off in January and February, total crypto‑asset capitalization fell 40% before stabilizing on May 14th at roughly $3.5 trillion. Liquidity is still somewhat thin, but weekly inflows into smart‑contract tokens have turned positive for the first time since December of 2024, led by surging volumes on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s new Solana futures and the launch of five ether spot ETFs in Europe. Layer‑2 scaling, real-world‑asset (RWA) tokenization and cross-chain interoperability continue to dominate venture funding and developer road maps.
The Best‑Performing Large‑Cap Cryptos In 2025 YTD
1. Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum Overview
Current price: ~$2,650
Market cap: $305.0 B
Circulating supply: 120.7 M ETH
YTD performance: ‑20.61 %
Ethereum just put itself through a massive “software tune-up” that widened its busy data highway, cutting transaction fees by about a third and letting more validators join the network. For everyday users, that means cheaper swaps, faster NFT mints and a clear signal that the original smart-contract chain is still investing in user experience.