Nearly two-thirds of 2021’s top 100 altcoins have lost more than 90%, CoinMarketCap data shows

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 its valuation already assumes.

“That was one of the things investors often missed in 2021,” Jim Ferraioli, director of digital currencies research and strategy at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, said in an email to Fortune. “A strong team, useful technology and growing network can all be positive, but they don’t necessarily mean the token itself will capture the economic value being created.”

To be sure, not every 2021 altcoin collapsed. Seven of the 100 are worth more........

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