I believe the past year, the focus on BTC in the mainstream financial and news outlets and the ‘tulip bulb’ mania of Oct-Dec 2017 served a very useful purpose.

1. People began to understand that the term ‘cryptocurrency’ was very nuanced - i.e. that ETH and STEEM for example derived their respective values very differently than e.g. BTC, LTC, DSH,BCH -
2. Although technical trading drove the volatility and market swings, many people began looking at these ‘ALT-Coins’ differently and some began investing based on project fundamentals rather than 50-day MA, Fibonacci lines, etc - investors vs traders -
3. Those perspectives are now discussed on more social media outlets and mainstream business media outlets raising levels of awareness and interest.

There are many other reasons to be positive but the Age of Blockchain has definitely arrived. The genie is out of the bottle and there will be no turning back. The escalating market capitalization is just beginning - the future is bright indeed.