BACKGROUND

A few days ago, I read an interesting post on the sub where the OP made a good point about how historically most cryptocurrencies won't make a new ATH. He provided a few examples, but I wanted to dig deeper. METHODS I picked the top 100 coins from 7 January 2018, right at the top of the bull market where we achieved the highest (at that time) market cap. I did this by using the historical snapshot feature on CoinMarketCap. This is perhaps not very accurate, as it doesn't actually have a snapshot of the highest market cap day which I believe is 9 January 2018, but it's representative enough. Also, a side note, I am aware that I probably missed a few projects that were not present in the top 100 on that day of the snapshot. After that, I made an Excel sheet with the 2018 ATH, the new ATL for the respective coins between the bull markets, and then the 2021 ATH. From then on, I looked at a few metrics that I was interested in, such as the max return if one "timed the market" and bought at the ATL and then sold at the ATH of 2021, how many coins made a new ATH, how many are not present today, what was the average % loss from ATH of 2018 and their new found ATL.

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Here are the top 30

Before the results, I want to share the fact that I couldn't find relevant info about 14 of the coins from the list because some of them are not supported anymore by CoinMarketCap for different reasons such as them being scams like Bitconnect or changing their token such as LEND to AAVE. These are the coins in question: BCC, VEN, XP, PAC, FUN, KNC, FCT, RHOC, ICN, BTCD, TNB, POE, ZCL, LEND(AAVE). So I assumed these never made a new ATH.

RESULTS

Here are a few results that I found interesting

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Disclaimer, because these 5 would effect a lot the following numbers, I have excluded them from the other calculations. I did the same with the projects that turned out to be a scam ( like BitConnect ) and the ones that just died and coinmarket cap just didn't support them anymore. Also I have excluded USDT because it's a stablecoin.

Average loss from ATH was 95.16%.

Average loss from ATH without BTC was 95.32%.

Bitcoin's loss from ATH was 81.69%

Out of the top 100 of 2018 bull coins only 21 fully recovered and found a new ATH in 2021.

The projects that recovered made a new ATH only recovered on average about 35% of the 2018 ATH.

The average max return (if you bought the dip and sold the top, and without the big gainers) was 34x. Take this number with a big grain of salt, buying the dip and selling the top is highly unplausable. Plus there were some pretty big gainers that still might affect this average such as LRC that made a 170x from the ATL and that I did not exclude.

SHORT TAKEAWAYS

In the light of this bullmarket, I thought this might be useful to some of you guys that are looking forward to fill your bags. Take into account that this was the top 100, pretty big projects for 2018, so even in the top 100 we only had 21 coins that made a new ATH.

From the top 100 of 2018 we hardly see a few that survived today and still hold a bit of relevance.

Nevertheless it still interesting to see that even dead projects managed to make returns from the bottom. Tread carefully though

CONCLUSION

This short analysis reveals the harsh reality of the crypto world: despite some notable exceptions, most coins from the 2018 bull market have not recovered to their ATHs, and many have disappeared or been exposed as scams.

While there are certainly opportunities for profit, as shown by the few exceptional performers, the average loss from ATH was over 95%, and only 21 out of the top 100 coins in 2018 reached a new ATH in 2021. This highlights the necessity of caution, thorough research, and a well-considered investment strategy in the volatile and unpredictable cryptocurrency market.