There were 20 kings of crypto back in January 2017. Dash. Augur. NEM. Stratis. They sat in the top 20 by market capitalization. They commanded billions in collective value. They attracted developers and retail investors who believed they were buying the future of money.
As of May 2026, however, none remain in the top 20 by market capitalization. Only a handful of 2017 survivors like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP still hold top positions today, underscoring crypto’s high attrition rate. Several projects have ceased development with their communities dissolving when the price did.
The question this raises is not why the death of high-hype projects actually raises is not how many projects have died. It is how many of the survivors are necessary.
Those dead cryptocurrencies have been replaced by millions more, if you include the memecoins churned out by launchpads like Pump.fun. Of the less transient projects, CoinGecko currently tracks more than 15,000 cryptocurrencies, while Messari’s more rigorous methodology narrows the field to around 250 crypto projects worth monitoring.
Among those 250, how many are truly doing something useful and different that actually justifies their existence?
Nic Puckrin, co-founder of Coin Bureau, sees no reason to expect the graveyard to stop filling. “More often than not,” he says, “once an altcoin falls 90%, it won’t recover.”
Most altcoins are currently 90% or more below their all-time highs, so the market may already have delivered its verdict.
The case for Bitcoin
Of course if you ask hardcore Bitcoiners how many cryptocurrencies are worthwhile, they’ll tell you there is only room for one.
The Bitcoin maximalist position is often caricatured as tribalism dressed up as economics. Proponents argue that money is a winner-takes-most competition, with the winner determined by how many people accept it, how liquid it is, and how trusted it is.
Gold didn’t share its monetary premium with silver proportionally. The internet didn’t produce five equally dominant protocols at the TCP/IP layer. Why would digital money be different?
Beau Turner, CEO and co-founder of Abundant Mines, argues the market has already delivered its answer given Bitcoin commands more than 60% of the entire $2.6 trillion crypto market alone.
“If that isn’t a definitive signal that the market has chosen Bitcoin as the ultimate form of money,” he says, “I don’t know what is.”
Turner argues that the “crypto industry” does everyone a disservice. It constantly chases new projects when something that has “already proven true and complete” exists.
JJ Thompson, Head of BD at Pogun, takes a less absolute but similarly directional view. In his view Bitcoin has pulled far enough ahead that direct comparisons with other assets are less meaningful.
“Bitcoin’s role has always been clearer and less ambiguous than many other assets,” he says. “Long-term holders tend to have a well-defined thesis and are less easily shaken.”
Andreas Brekken, founder of SideShift.ai, occupies an interesting middle ground. He agrees that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency needed as money, but thinks other chains have brought genuine technical innovation that Bitcoin couldn’t deliver.
His conclusion, though, does not support the need for many different cryptocurrencies. “Their native tokens,” he says of chains like Ethereum and Solana, “will trend towards zero against Bitcoin because network fees are in a race to the bottom.”
Other chains need their own tokens anyway
There are, however, some problems with Brekken’s arguments.
Networks need native tokens to pay validators, incentivise node operators, and fund development. Without a native asset, there is no economic mechanism to secure the chain.
You cannot run a proof-of-stake network on someone else’s currency without replicating it or subordinating your security model to another chain’s ecosystem.
Many projects have launched tokens they don’t need. But that is a different problem from claiming no project ever needs one.
Carlos Esteves, Head of Ecosystem at Umia, says that cryptocurrencies and tokens fall into different categories. “We only need approximately three cryptocurrencies,” he says, “but we need hundreds of tokens built on those networks.”
For Esteves, a cryptocurrency’s core function is to serve as the asset that secures a permissionless network. That is the economic bedrock.
Tokens built on top of those networks function as capital formation tools, utility instruments, governance mechanisms, fee-sharing vehicles. They are not competing to “be” money. They are not competing to be infrastructure.
The distinction matters, as it…
cointelegraph-magazine.com