The market is currently only responding to BTC movements and until we have more exchanges that accept USD pairing this won't change. BTC will dictate the price of all tokens and coins. This means that they will have to suffer even if they are doing a great job and the whole project is working as intended.
For now, all I can see is price manipulations on BTC and this could continue happening for God knows how long. Just yesterday I saw it go up $500 and drop $500 within a 1-hour window. This is how a manipulated price chart looks like.
No natural momentum can cause such huge raise in such a small time frame. Also knowing that the market is completely unregulated whales can do whatever they please with BTC. People who hold large chunks of it can dump thousands of Bitcoins, crash the price and then rebuy with profit. This is why we need regulations and this is why we are bleeding so hard right now.
I had big hopes for this year but I changed my mind. Until some sort of regulations come in we could easily see BTC going down to a couple of thousands while pulling every other coin and token down with it. Investing in anything right now doesn't seem like a great idea and day trading is almost impossible because the prices are completely unpredictable.