Six months after Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $126,000, the crypto market looks like it’s in a very different place. CoinGecko’s first quarter 2026 industry report, published Thursday, puts numbers to what traders have been feeling since late last year, and the picture isn’t pretty.
Spot trading volumes across the top 10 centralized exchanges fell 39 percent in the first quarter, dropping to $2.7 trillion from $4.5 trillion in Q4 2025. Total crypto market capitalization declined by more than 20 percent over the same period. CoinGecko called it a “sustained crypto winter,” a phrase that, in this context, isn’t just dramatic language but a specific claim about the market structure.
The drop didn’t happen all at once. Momentum had already been softening coming out of late 2025, but a combination of forces accelerated the slide through the first three months of this year.
CoinGecko said “bearish momentum from late 2025 collided with global geopolitical instability,” specifically pointing to market uncertainty following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran in February and the broader economic anxiety that came with them.
Oil prices climbed sharply as the conflict deepened and the Strait of Hormuz became a geopolitical flashpoint, and the ripple effects hit risk assets hard. Crypto, despite years of trying to position itself as a hedge, moved in lockstep with everything else that was selling off.
There was also a policy dimension. CoinGecko flagged Kevin Warsh’s nomination as US Federal Reserve chair as an additional headwind, describing it as signaling “a potential hawkish shift in US monetary policy.”
Warsh is generally seen as more inflation-focused and less inclined toward rate cuts than his predecessor, not what crypto markets, which had been pricing in looser financial conditions, wanted to hear.
March was the worst of it
March brought the ugliest numbers of the quarter. Total exchange trading volume for the month came in at $800 billion, the lowest monthly figure since November 2023. Average daily trading volumes across the crypto market dropped to $117.8 billion, a 27 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2025.
That $800 billion monthly figure is worth putting in context. At the height of the bull run last year, single months were recording multiples of that. The fact that March 2026 landed at levels not seen since late 2023, before the US Bitcoin ETF approvals, before the halving cycle euphoria, says something real about how far sentiment has shifted.
Every single one of the top 10 spot centralized exchanges saw declining volumes in the quarter. HTX, the exchange formerly known as Huobi, recorded the biggest single drop, with volumes falling 55 percent to $133.6 billion. That’s a significant contraction for one of the market’s legacy exchanges, and it wasn’t an isolated case because the decline was broad-based across the board.
Bitcoin underperformed everything
The most uncomfortable part of CoinGecko’s data, at least for Bitcoin advocates, is what it reveals about the asset’s recent performance relative to traditional markets.
Bitcoin fell 22 percent over the first quarter, but so did US equity markets, just by considerably less. The Nasdaq dropped 7.1 percent and the S&P 500 fell 4.8 percent over the same period, their worst quarterly performances since 2022. CoinGecko noted that Bitcoin “continued to underperform all assets,” a characterization that cuts against the narrative of Bitcoin as a non-correlated store of value.
That underperformance has been building for a while. Bitcoin spent nearly six months consistently lagging US equities, a stretch analysts described as having no historical precedent. The Q1 numbers from CoinGecko confirm that dynamic is still very much in play.
The argument that Bitcoin is “digital gold” or a hedge against macro uncertainty hasn’t held up well in this cycle. Gold itself has surged as geopolitical risk mounted. Bitcoin has not followed. That divergence is becoming harder to dismiss as a temporary anomaly.
What would change the picture
The report suggested that a de-escalation of geopolitical tensions, particularly around Iran, could serve as a near-term positive catalyst. The firm noted that the market remains highly sensitive to macro developments and that any easing of the hawkish policy outlook could also support a rebound.
Onchain activity in certain sectors remains relatively resilient, stablecoin supply is still near record levels suggesting capital is parked and not fully exited, and institutional infrastructure such as ETFs, corporate treasuries, regulated custody is materially more developed than it was during the 2022 downturn.
What’s missing is a catalyst strong enough to overcome the combination of geopolitical anxiety, macro tightening fears, and a market that has now spent six months distributing from its highs.
Until one of those forces shifts, whether that’s a ceasefire in the Middle East, a Fed pivot, or something unexpected entirely, the data CoinGecko published on Thursday suggests the winter has more weeks in it yet.