What is especially interesting is that all this happened at a time when the first self-proclaimed “crypto president” appeared in the United States, Donald Trump, who is also involved in the altcoin sector.
The Trump family has its own crypto project called World Liberty Financial, which also issued its own token (WLFI). The US President also launched the $TRUMP memecoin shortly before his inauguration.
In the end, this likely meant that the broader perception of cryptocurrency was even more about self-enrichment and worthless tokens. Thanks to WLFI and TRUMP, buyers suffered significant losses.
The brief hype around memcoins also highlighted that one of the last remaining uses of the crypto sector is pure speculation.
But at the same time, gambling has moved to other markets. The relevance of “forecast markets” such as Polymarket or Kalshi has increased significantly. And even well-known cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase or Gemini have expanded their offerings to include betting on sports events or political elections.
Additionally, many investors were no longer relying on altcoins for speculation, but rather on AI stocks.
The fact that several altcoin spot ETFs such as ETH, Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL), and Dogecoin (DOGE) were approved this cycle ultimately gave the coins a little extra legitimacy.
The fact that some crypto assets can now be purchased through established Wall Street infrastructure does not make them an interesting investment for big money.
The fact that the trend of so-called “Bitcoin treasury companies” has spread to other crypto assets such as ETH or SOL has not caused a true bull market for coins.
Tom Lee’s stock company Bitmine bought almost 5% of all ETH over the year. But even this did not help the second largest cryptocurrency.
In fact, this has actually brought the issue of centralization to the forefront as Ethereum is now a proof-of-stake network where more coins means more influence – as long as ETH is at stake, as is the case with Bitmine.
Meanwhile, countless DeFi hacks have wreaked havoc on the broader cryptocurrency sector. And so-called “privacy coins” such as Monero or Zcash, which enjoyed a brief surge, have proven to be dangerous gimmicks.
Since all data – unlike Bitcoin – is not publicly visible, inflation errors cannot be detected directly. A few months ago, with the help of artificial intelligence, it became obvious that since 2022 there was a bug in Zcash that allowed attackers to create an unlimited number of tokens. It is not possible to definitively determine whether the vulnerability was exploited.
In any case, the previous view of many altcoins that Bitcoin is faster, better and more private has largely been discarded. Nobody talks about Metaverse coins, NFTs and other things anymore.