Tuesday brought a sharp sell-off across the cryptocurrency market, with altcoins bearing the brunt of the decline. Zcash (ZEC) led the losses with an 11% drop, World Liberty Financial’s WLFI fell about 8%, and Ondo Finance (ONDO) slipped roughly 7% as traders sold into a worsening risk environment.
Blockchain analytics firm Santiment noted that the spike in bearish sentiment among retail and on-chain observers often appears just before rebounds, suggesting the current pessimism could precede a recovery.
Details of the Sell-Off
Santiment highlighted the downturn on social platforms, pointing to notable declines in Ondo, Zcash, WLFI, DeXe and several other tokens. The sell-off hit Ondo at a sensitive time: it followed the unexpected death of founder and CEO Nathan Allman, aged 32. Ondo announced that long-serving President Ian De Bode will step in as CEO. Despite Tuesday’s dip, the token trades near $0.41 and is up roughly 9% over the past seven days.
Zcash experienced the steepest single-day fall among the named assets, down about 11% at its worst. At the time of reporting the 24-hour decline had eased to approximately 7.5%, with ZEC changing hands near $570. That pullback appears less dramatic when placed in context: Zcash has rallied roughly 60% over the last month and nearly 970% over the past year.
WLFI’s roughly 8% drop on Tuesday compounded a challenging stretch for the token. The project hit a new all-time low in late April after a separate 16% one-day crash and has faced controversy around a proposed token lock-up, a lawsuit involving Tron founder Justin Sun, plus scrutiny over alleged ties to the Trump family.
Not All Tokens Declined
Despite headline losses, several tokens showed strong weekly performance. NEAR gained more than 55% over seven days and was trading around $2.50, although it retraced nearly 8% on Tuesday alone. Hyperliquid’s HYPE token also posted gains, rising about 25% according to Santiment’s data.
The standout performer for the week was RAIN, which reached an all-time high near $0.012 on Tuesday after climbing nearly 55% over seven days and rising more than 44% in the previous 24 hours.
Santiment’s separate analytics indicated that bearish crowd expectations have been building for roughly ten days. Historically, such concentrated caution among market participants has often coincided with ensuing price recoveries, reflecting the tendency of markets to move contrary to prevailing sentiment.
Traders, however, will be watching closely to see whether a recovery materializes this time. Bitcoin remains capped below $77,000 and continues to struggle with resistance near its descending 200-day moving average around $80,000, a technical barrier that could influence broader market direction.