Market Cap Changes
Since we hit the highest market cap for cryptocurrencies on January 7th 2018, 32 have remained within the top 50. Here are the coins that have dropped from the top 50 and the ones that have replaced them along with a few thoughts. I've attempted to categorize the different coins, however many coins are essentially some version of a smart contract so my categories are very general, and since I had to do quick research on many of these some may be better classified another way after a deep dive.
January 7th, 2018
March 14th, 2019
The Losers - Current Rank
Siacoin - 55 (Storage)
Verge - 56 (Privacy)
BitConnect - Ded (Ponzi Scheme)
Populous - 66 (Invoice Discounting)
Dentacoin - 230 (Dental Health)
Status - 64 (Web App)
Ardor - 72 (Smart Contract)
KuCoin Shares - 74 (Exchange)
Stratis - 59 (Smart Contract)
Komodo - 53 (Smart Contract)
Dragonchain - 151 (Smart Contract)
HyperCash - 79 (Payment - also has another coin HX that has some smart contract integration)
Kin - 143 (Applications)
Electroneum - 73 (Payment)
Golem - 66 (Computer Resource Sharing)
Ethos - 189 (Multi-Currency Wallet)
Veritaseum - 110 (Smart Contract)
Ark - 67 (Smart Contract)
Of the losers, only 1 can truly be described as dead. If you're reading this, you're probably already familiar with BitConnect so I won't go into it further than to say... it was a ponzi scheme and didn't end well. The next biggest losers in market share would be Dentacoin, Ethos, and DragonChain. Dentacoin is related to dental health, ethos is a multi-currency wallet, and DragonChain is a smart contract platform meant to be able to integrate with several more popular cryptocurrencies.
The Gainers - Prior Rank
Bitcoin SV - New (Payment - BCH fork)
Maker - 1075 (Smart Contract)
Ontology - New (Smart Contract)
Tezos - 1095 (Smart Contract)
Crypto.com Chain - New (Payment)
USD Coin - New (Stable Coin)
Basic Attention Token - 52 (Reward Token)
TrueUSD - New (Stable Coin)
Decred - 54 (Smart Contract)
ABBC Coin - New (Payment)
Chainlink - 87 (Smart Contract)
Zilliqa - New (Smart Contract)
0x - 64 (Exchange)
Holo - New (Smart Contract)
THETA - New (Video Hosting)
Bitcoin Diamond - 1086 (Payment - BTC fork)
Enjin Coin - 107 (Gaming)
BitTorrent - New (File Sharing)
So, what's been added to the top 50? Well, 13 of the 18 were either new projects or ranked far outside the top 50 with the remaining 5 already existing within pretty close range of the top 50. Out of the 13 new projects that were able to make their way to the list, 5 are smart contracts, 4 are simple payment (or store of value) based blockchains, 2 are stable coins, with the remaining being a video hosting solution and a file sharing solution.
Summary
It seems that the majority of the established projects have not moved too far (relative to each other), mostly staying within the top 100. It seems in the current market, the way to break into the top 50 is with either Established concepts such as smart contracts and payment systems that introduce desired features or have been marketed/distributed intelligently or to have a concept that has not been addressed adequately with previous coins (such as the file sharing or video platform projects now in the top 50). This last year also extended the stable-coin space that was previously dominated by Tether, providing 2 top 50 alternative options to the market.
If the next bull market is a stable and healthy one with incremental growth instead of wild exponential pumps followed by a dump and another bear market, I believe that we will ultimately see which projects create the most value. Volatile markets can be deceptive as it seems everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie and subsequently dump it. Now with the market somewhat stable, people are left holding on to what they previously invested in hoping that some of those projects blow up again. With healthy growth, people have time to strategically invest small sums of money into the projects with the most real world value which help those projects accumulate steadily while the less valuable projects stagnate.
The real question is, which coins will fare well in the next bull market? Which projects are going to have the greatest impact going forward? It seems painfully clear that smart contracts are important, but with so many smart contract projects out there, which ones will be the top performers? Now is a great time to ponder these questions and put in extra research in some of these projects!