It's actually very sad that privacy-oriented blockchain is not emerging right now. Everyone is creating a blockchain for the meta universe or artificial intelligence. Everything is done just to raise as much money as possible so the team can make money. We are about to lose this fight for the ability to have privacy. We will all end up using CBDC and the government will be able to block all our accounts at any time and leave us with no money. They will decide what we can spend money on and what we can't.
We can blame mainstream governments for that. They've done their part by trying to keep as many people away from privacy coins as possible with their false propaganda and misinformation. Now almost everybody thinks such coins are meant to be used for illegal activities. The vast majority are now focused on "meme" coins with no value, hoping to get rich quick fast. It took one man (Elon Musk) to positively express his comments about Dogecoin, for the craze to begin.
As for Bitcoin, it's still popular because it was the first cryptocurrency that started it all. It may not have those fancy features found on other coins (smart contracts, staking, etc), but it's the best thing around when it comes to sending/receiving money in a completely secure way. ETH is only popular because it's the #1 platform for tokens and "De-Fi". If it wasn't because of that, it would've lost its luster by now. The crypto market is widely unpredictable, so we should expect the unexpected. Who knows where market prices will be heading in the future?
