My Controversial Altcoin Opinion

I have been in the cryptocurrency market for quite a while now, first getting fully into it bitcoin around 2014/15, and then getting into other coins as well. All of my history with the market has helped to lead me to have a certain controversial opinion that many people will probably disagree with. And this opinion has really come on even stronger during the last few months.  What is this opinion that I'm talking about?

Most altcoins will never reach new all-time high in prices.  And a lot of them will eventually go to zero in terms of price, or just trend much lower than they did during the last bull run.  This will cause a lot of people to be disappointed, and lose a lot of money holding their altcoin bags in search of the high risk, high reward profit potential.

Now please don't get me wrong, I am a believer in altcoins and love to research each and every one, finding out their use cases, potential, and finding the next gems.  I should also define what is an altcoin in my own opinion.  I consider everything an altcoin besides bitcoin and ethereum, and stable coins.

What has led me to have this opinion?  Well let's keep this discussion to only coins in the top 100 in terms of market cap.  Of those 100 coins, there are 3 copies or rivals to bitcoin; bitcoin cash, bitcoin sv, and bitcoin gold.  Then there are even more rivals to ethereum; cardano, tron, polkadot, eos, cosmos, tezos, and the list goes on.  That is already 10% of the top 100.  I feel fully confident that bitcoin will maintain its position over its "rivals," and so too will ethereum, although ethereum's path is a little less certain because of their development delays.  

But that isn't even the main problem.  The biggest problem is that a large portion of the top 100, and all coins in general are in-fact zombie chains.  This means that no one is actually using them for transactions.  Yes people are speculating on them price-wise by buying and selling them on exchanges.  But if you actually look at the blocks of each chain, there are shockingly few transactions.  For example Cardano, many times there are only 1 or 2 transactions per block.  Now I do understand that smart contracts with Goguen haven't launched yet, so that could change in the future.  But the same problem happens with bitcoin cash, with extremely length confirmation times.  No one is actually using these blockchains. 

But on the flip side, people are using bitcoin and ethereum.  People are transacting in bitcoin as a form of savings, also sending back and forth to other accounts.  While people are building with ethereum.  

As bitcoin is getting closer and closer to reaching a new all-time high in price, the altcoins are still far below where they were the last time bitcoin was at this level.  This was even before the altcoin season launched, so I do feel it is a valid concern to have.  I feel almost certain that a shockingly large percentage of these coins will in-fact never make new all-time high price marks, with a large portion of the money being sucked into the biggest chains, and chains that are used.

But what will happen with DeFi?  I am a big believer in the potential that DeFi can bring to the world.  It honestly can be world changing.  But at the same time, I am certain of the fact that most DeFi coins that we have today won't be around or active even 5 or 10 years from now.  So what I am saying is that DeFi will be here for good, but perhaps our golden longterm DeFi coins are not yet here, or only a few of them are genuine and will last. 

There is a famous bitcoin maximalist phrase that goes; "Altcoins were made to steal your bitcoin."  While this perhaps is true or not true; all you need to do is look at the top 100 coin list history over the last 8 years and see what used to be on the list.  And most of those coins have vanished from history, and a surprisingly large amount of them have seen rug-pulls with the creators exiting.

This is why you need to be very careful when investing into cryptocurrency.  What is your plan?  I have said this same line many times throughout my articles, but it remains so important.  IF your main goal is to get quick gains, this thought-piece won't affect you very much.  But if you are a HODLer, and invest and hope to hold those coins for several years; this is where it can affect you greatly.

When investing please make sure that it has a valid use-case, something that is needed now, and will be needed in the future as well.

What did I do about it?

I have done a lot of critical thinking, researching of my profile during this whole year.   With the world situation, this has changed everything.  It has made me value bitcoin even more, and also ethereum as well.  So during the summer's peak in DeFi I began unloading almost all of my coins.  And I put almost all of it into bitcoin, and also ethereum; about a 80/20 split.  I am not looking forward to the tax hit that I will have to pay, but at that time bitcoin was under $10,000, and ethereum was less than $400.  I knew that these will be the kings of crypto for many years to come, and if all my price estimates do in-fact come true, I know I will have wished I put even more into these coins.

So what do you think? Am I wrong that many, many altcoins will never reach a new all-time high in terms of price!?  And how have you been setting up your portfolio for this bull run!?

As always, thank you for reading!