Seeking Alpha published an interesting article by Lynn Sebastian Purcell who is indeed contributing to our sensemaking of the currently chaotic or rapidly developing ecosystem of cryptocurrencies or Bitcoin + "Alt-Coin universe".
The topic is provocative: you should "forget cryptocurrencies" and invest in platforms. In brief, it is not refuting the undeniable significance of cryptocurrencies or blockchain, but recognizing different segments and evaluating their fundamentals and potential as investment opportunities of 2018.
Unless we have this far already witnessed the peak of the cryptocurrency hype, you could still earn sufficient compensation for the risks involved in holding bitcoin. However, the point is that platform tokens such as Ethereum that serve as platforms for additional second layer applications have wider and unseen use in contrast with traditional cryptocurrencies with limited comparable functionalities.
One could say that this position has a pessimistic and limited view on the development potential and adaptability of bitcoin community. It has been clear for a while that bitcoin as it is today cannot serve as an efficient digital payment method. Another school of thought sees ongoing development projects of bitcoin making it able to perform a comeback within a year or two - in both market valuation and usability as a digital currency. Technical success of cryptocurrencies and platform tokens may be in a complex and unanticipated way dependent on more than just technical abilities and past paths. This may confuse any predictions drawn from current technical features.
Different experts make the future of cryptocurrencies and single projects seem very controversial in good and bad. Analytical and visionary individuals picture drastically different scenarios between painful collapses to the ground and skyrockets reaching unimaginable heights. This far the "altcoin universe" has enabled projects too similar to each other coexist and rise in value without breakthroughs that traditional analysts would regard fundamental and "real".
Polarized scenarios seemingly imply tendencies of a winner take it all -economy. According to the idea, major part of the whole ecosystem growth would flow to a smaller degree of projects or platforms. This seems plausible scenario for certain segments of crypto assets, and quite likely we are approaching some kind of a resolution day by day.
As the "old world" tends to rely on very fundamentals-based analysis, it may also be that this chaotic ecosystem - as long as it lasts as we regard it now - favors another wilder approach to be used: reflexivity, a self-fulfilling cyclical enforcement of development. Taking extreme riskiness as given, it may not be impossible that a speculative boost in valuation may encourage and fuel fundamentals higher to reach such results that many have feared to be unrealistic. Though, it must be noted that the same force can also work to the opposite direction.