I have noticed that coins which don't have much going for them besides gimmicky features and more importantly low supply end up doing the best in terms of marketcap. Coins with usability appear to be overlooked or prices driven down so others don't take notice. Is the altcoin market used purely as a slot machine?
Care to make a particular example or two? Be careful about putting too much emphasis on $Fiat price. A lot of alternates are still worth the same in Bitcoin or have increased in BTC value, but their $Fiat value decreased because Bitcoin went from $1250 down to $255 over the past years.
It's true the coins without gimmicky features and smaller supplies seem to be doing better, but in a long term position I think that's all an illusion of timing. Litecoin, for example, for all intensive purposes has been abandoned (Charlie Lee left for CoinBase) and I don't think Litecoin will produce any ecosystem breakthroughs that will send it to the moon.
That's compared to Bitshares, NEM and NXT which seem to be working on ecosystem initiatives which could later pay off. Bitcoin right now is 100,000 users according to the Federal Reserve and that is after 6 years. That's compared to Bitshares, NEM or NXT where maybe one will produce some platform product that nets them a million users.
