The numbers don't lie. If you started 2025 with $100,000, your financial reality today depends entirely on one choice: Hard Assets vs. Speculative Tokens. While the "Gold-Silver Supercycle" delivered life-changing gains, the "Altcoin Winter" turned many portfolios into digital dust.

The Winners: The Precious Metal Renaissance

• Silver (+243%): The absolute champion of 2025/26. Driven by industrial scarcity and its "high-beta" relationship with gold, silver turned $100k into a staggering $342,000.
• Gold (+80%): After breaking the $5,000/oz barrier, gold proved why it remains the ultimate insurance policy. Your $100k grew to $180,000, outperforming every major stock and crypto index.

The Survivors: Blue-Chip Crypto

• BTC (-14%) & ETH (-11%): Despite a pro-crypto stance in the U.S., the "majors" ended the year lower as institutional capital rotated into gold ETFs. However, compared to altcoins, they showed remarkable resilience.

The Graveyard: Altcoins and Political Memes The most brutal lesson of 2025 was the collapse of the "mid-cap" and "meme" sectors.

1. Massive Drawdowns: Tokens like TON, AVAX, and DOGE lost roughly 70% of their value, turning $100k into less than the price of a mid-range car.
2. Political Volatility: Despite the headlines, $TRUMP and $MELANIA tokens were among the worst performers. The Melania token’s -98.8% drop is a textbook example of "exit liquidity" in the meme-coin space.
3. High-Cap Failures: Even technologically "strong" projects like APT (-83%) couldn't escape the grinding bear market that saw the median token decline by nearly 80% in 2025.

🔵 Gold → $180,000 (+80%)

🔵 Silver → $342,000 (+243%)

🔵 BTC → $85,900 (−14%)

🔵 ETH → $89,000 (−11%)

🔵 DOGE → $32,000 (−68%)

🔵 LINK → $52,000 (−48%)

🔵 AVAX → $32,000 (−68%)

🔵 TON → $29,000 (−71%)

🔵 UNI → $35,000 (−65%)

🔵 PEPE → $28,000 (−72%)

🔵 ONDO → $26,000 (−74%)

🔵 APT → $17,000 (−83%)

🔵 TRUMP → $18,000 (−82%)

🔵 SEI → $27,000 (−73%)

🔵 MELANIA → $1,200 (−98.8%)

For Traders 2026: The 2025 performance data suggests we are in a "Quality-First" era. The speculative bubble of 2024 has fully burst, leaving only the most liquid and culturally relevant assets standing. For the TradersWeek audience: this list is a reminder that diversification is only useful if you include assets that aren't correlated to the same "risk-on" sentiment.

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