After the rise in the first quarter of 2024, most altcoins seem to have peaked. Many projects have significantly lost value from their highest levels seen in March 2024, with declines ranging from 70% to 90%. According to the latest data, the total market value of cryptocurrencies, excluding Bitcoin and Ethereum, has reverted to December 2023 levels. This decline effectively nullified all gains made since the beginning of the year.
Notable Comments from Famous Figures
Crypto investor Andrew Kang believes that almost all altcoins have peaked in the current bull cycle. However, he maintains a positive outlook on memecoin projects, which may defy the broader market’s downward trend:
“I believe that more than 98% of altcoins have peaked throughout the cycle, except for a handful of crypto assets that could create new peaks in the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. Memecoin projects likely constitute the majority of assets with a chance to make new peaks.”
In contrast to the declining performance of most altcoins, memecoins exhibit a peculiar resilience. Memecoin analyst Murad Mahmudov predicts that the sector will dominate the next altcoin season:
“People are slowly waking up to the black pill that all altcoins are always a bit of technical confusion involving memecoins.”
Mahmudov’s analysis indicates a shift in investor sentiment. While institutional investors largely focus on Bitcoin and, to a lesser extent, Ethereum, individual investors are turning to memecoin projects:
“This is why tech altcoins are underperforming. Nobody wants them.”
What’s Happening in the Memecoin Space?
Data from the crypto analysis platform DYOR highlights the superior performance of memecoin projects during market volatility over the past 90 days. With a relative strength of -0.37, memecoin projects demonstrated notable resilience compared to sectors like Web3 gaming and Layer-2 and Layer-3 technologies, which recorded much lower strengths of -1.32 and -1.30, respectively.
Hitesh Malviya, the founder of DYOR, offered a critical perspective on the altcoin ecosystem, particularly those backed by venture capitalists. He argued that despite the initial promises of many VC-backed projects, they often fail to survive in the long term:
“90% of these so-called projects backed by top-tier venture capitalists are actually white-collar scams that promise shiny things, raise funds, run the project for three or four years, and eventually die.”
