2026 Crypto Crash "Contrarians": XMR, SUI, AVAX, LINK Decouple and Outperform the Market

Since 2026, the cryptocurrency market capitalization has evaporated by over $1 trillion, with Bitcoin experiencing a historic retracement and mainstream coins generally under pressure. However, during this “cruel crash,” a group of altcoins with real application scenarios and cash flow logic quietly broke away to form independent trends. Monero (XMR), BNB, Sui (SUI), Avalanche (AVAX), and Chainlink (LINK) have become “countertrend” players in the market.

Data shows that Bitcoin’s decline over the past 7 days has exceeded 98.9% of similar cycles in history, with prices fluctuating around $70,800; Ethereum has fallen back to $2,096, still significantly underperforming the overall market sentiment; Solana, after previously breaking below the $100 psychological level, remains in a recovery phase. The systemic pressure on mainstream coins has led funds to reassess the defensive value of “practical assets.”

Against this backdrop, Monero, due to its privacy payment and censorship resistance features, became one of the few large-cap tokens to record positive returns in February. Although BNB has retraced about 12% in the past month, its annualized performance remains close to 26%, outperforming BTC and ETH in terms of return stability. SUI and AVAX, leveraging high-throughput public chains and expanding developer ecosystems, frequently appear on the “Monthly Strong Altcoin” list. LINK also stands out, as its oracle network remains a core infrastructure for DeFi and cross-chain protocols, with data demand continuing to grow.

Analysts believe that as the market enters a deleveraging and risk-averse phase, tokens with their own revenue models and long-term use cases are more likely to decouple from Bitcoin. Privacy fees, network service fees, and data subscription demands are becoming important indicators for the next round of capital screening.