The altcoin market has not disappeared, but the era of making profits through token issuance and hype alone is ending, according to an assessment.
On June 17 local time, blockchain outlet The Crypto Basic reported that CryptoQuant CEO Ju Ki-young (주기영) said the crypto market is becoming more selective and funds are concentrating on some altcoins with long-term survival potential.
Ju wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “altcoins themselves are not dead”. But he said market conditions are rapidly turning against projects that rely only on exaggerated expectations and narratives. As institutional money enters the crypto market and regulatory involvement grows, investors are placing greater value on real businesses, working products and proven ecosystems, he said.
He said the shift was evident even in the recent bull market. Bitcoin kept drawing money from traditional finance, but many altcoins failed to regain the upside momentum they had in the previous cycle. He said the era of easily making money just by issuing a token is fading.
In past altcoin runs, money shifted quickly whenever new narratives emerged, such as decentralised finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT), gaming and meme coins. Prices repeatedly surged simply because projects belonged to a trending area, even before they proved meaningful revenue or sustainable demand. But Ju said the market is starting to distinguish between speculative narratives and platforms that show real economic activity.
He presented three categories of altcoins that he said can still generate profits. They are the tokenisation market layer, decentralised finance services that generate real revenue, and ecosystems linked to broader financial flows. He cited Binance’s BNB and Telegram’s Gram, formerly TON, as examples of platform-linked assets with large user bases and revenue structures. He said such assets are not just based on expectations but are a way to gain exposure to the underlying ecosystems.
He also called decentralised finance protocols that generate fees from real use promising. Platforms that process real demand, are profitable and have trustworthy founders are better than overheated projects, he said. He cited Hyperliquid (HYPE) as an example.
He said the direction of capital flows is also changing. Stablecoins, tokenised real-world assets, tokenised stocks and blockchain-based financial infrastructure are drawing interest from both crypto users and traditional institutions, he said. Unlike past structures where funds circulated only within the market, these areas differ because they directly connect blockchain technology to traditional financial markets and services. He said the market is beginning to understand how blockchain technology can be used, and as a result more liquidity is flowing in.
He also said the culture of the crypto industry has changed significantly. The early industry was unpredictable, experimental and freewheeling, like jazz, but it has become closer to Wall Street as regulation, institutional participation and professional capital allocation take centre stage, he said. He said the change could increase transparency, reduce risks and promote broader adoption. At the same time, he acknowledged that the industry has lost some of its original character.
For future promising areas, he pointed to fields that go beyond traditional blockchain use cases. If artificial intelligence becomes more deeply integrated into everyday digital systems, blockchain infrastructure for autonomous AI agents could become an important development field, he said.
He also partly agreed with criticism that most altcoins lack long-term value. He said he sympathised with the claim that “99.9 percent of altcoins have no long-term investment value,” but drew a line at viewing all altcoins as meaningless at once, calling that a bias. He said that as the market matures, it will be more important to see which projects prove substance than to expect a broad revival of altcoins.
The assessment focuses on the idea that the altcoin market has not disappeared, but is shifting from a speculative arena driven by simple expectations to a market that evaluates real use, profitability and links to the established financial system. The trend of money rushing in on new narratives alone is weakening, and going forward only projects that prove real users, revenue and sustainable ecosystems are increasingly likely to survive over the long term.
Altcoins are not dead.
Narrative-only altcoins are. The era of making money just by issuing a token is over.
My personal view on which altcoins can still survive