Nearly two-thirds of 2021’s top 100 altcoins have lost more than 90%, CoinMarketCap data shows
Source: Fortune ·
Research CoinMarketCap shared with Fortune shows the median losing altcoin issued about 50% more tokens while the market cut its value by 95%.
From the source
For anyone in crypto in 2021, the main risk felt like not owning any. The biggest altcoins looked like serious long-term bets: That November, Solana and Cardano were each worth roughly $70 billion, with functioning networks, full-time development teams, and ambitious roadmaps. If prices fell, you held—the same buy-and-hold logic traditional investors had long applied to quality assets. Nearly five years later, almost two-thirds of the 100 largest altcoins from that moment have lost more than 90% of their value, according to CoinMarketCap research I received, based on prices as of Oct. 21. Almost half are down more than 95%, and 70 hit their lowest price since the 2021 peak at some point this year. Over the same period, Bitcoin is up about 30%. Good projects did not reliably make good investments. Five years of data now let investors ask sharper questions than they could in 2021: whether a network is useful, whether its growth creates demand for its token and how much future growth…