Although Bitcoin maximalists can sometimes be over the top, in this bear market, their ideology may hold some credence, as some ICOs have tumbled by over 90% from all-time highs.
Oh How The Tables Have Turned
As some may remember, BTC entered 2017 worth approximately $1,000 a piece, towering over the crypto market by holding an 87% lions share of the collective capitalization of all crypto assets. At this time, Bitcoin maximalism was near its peak, as the asset had continually proven itself to be a reliable investment and project, even in the roughest of waves.
Yet as the year progressed, altcoins, specifically hyped up ICO projects, began a breathtaking crusade, as an influx of industry newcomers began to allocate their fiat solely to “promising” ICO projects. Ethereum, for example, saw an over 70-fold increase throughout 2017, while altcoins like NEO seemingly came out of nowhere to post a 500-fold increase. While these two cases are clearly extremes, as per statistics compiled by CoinMarketCap, the total value of altcoins rose from $2.28 billion to $350 billion in 365 days time.
Consequentially, Bitcoin’s dominance fell from 87% to 37% in the same time span, leaving some Bitcoin maximalists at the edge of their seats. Taking the astronomical performance of altcoins into account, many expected for Bitcoin to recede into obscurity as the year elapsed, but as seen now, this was evidently a premature prediction. Throughout this bear market. we’ve seen Bitcoin return to glory, rising from a year-to-date dominance low at 33% to a 55% high just recently.
The “return of the king” has not gone unnoticed, as investors have begun to rebalance their portfolios to focus on BTC, rather than the flashy, high-tps projects that were touted as world-changing products just a few months ago.
“Crypto-Darwinist” Reveals That Altcoins Have Underperformed Bitcoin
Eric Wall, a self-proclaimed “Crypto-Darwinist,” recently took to Twitter to convey his sentiment regarding the performance of altcoins since the commencement of the most recent bear season.
1/ Plenty of coins & ICOs are now down -90%. Hopefully the people who’ll never be receptive the following commentary have left crypto twitter by now, but they’ll surely be back for the next bull run. Making this thread to use as a reminder for when the idiocy returns ? pic.twitter.com/VlsVHNmkaI
— Eric Wall (@ercwl) August 26, 2018
NEO, which saw a 500-fold increase in 2017 as aforementioned, now sits 91% down from its all-time high. In an image highlighting similar losses, Wall brought attention to ten other popular altcoins, which also saw a 90% collapse from the exorbitant prices posted in January of this year. The other projects mentioned by the Crypto-Darwinist are no means pushovers, with IOTA, which has been lauded as “the next generation of distributed ledger technology,” down 90.5% from its ATH.
Although some may presume Bitcoin has shared the same fate, this is far from the case, as Bitcoin has “only” fallen by 70% since the start of the year.
Staying true to his title, the crypto-Darwinist then issued a tweet storm, outlining the reasoning behind the widespread altcoin collapse, alluding to the fact that “natural selection” will eventually kill off many of these projects. While Wall’s “rant” is quite extensive, a common theme is easily apparent across his 29 tweets on the subject. This common theme being the fact that a majority of projects issued ICOs to cash in on a trend, rather than to create a bona fide project with a real-life use case. Moreover, the ICO critic also added that the hype surrounding ICOs, in terms of investment potential, can also be attributed to the demise of such projects.
For now, the short-term outlook for altcoins, specifically some ICO projects, may be looking dismal. But some expect for this situation to change within the next few months, as some optimists are more than ready to hail in the next round of irrational exuberance, which has become the crypto market’s calling card.
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