As 2019 closes, a look back at what happened to the altcoin boom – TechCrunch

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Today we’re peeking at what’s gone on in the world of altcoins recently, the other cryptocurrencies aside from bitcoin.

As 2016 came to a close, altcoins like ether and XRP saw their value soar. Toward the end of 2016 through early 2018, bitcoin’s relative share of the aggregate value of all cryptocurrencies fell to about a third.

Since then there’s been a reversal. Bitcoin is not only back over the 50% market share mark, it has effectively doubled its portion of crypto worth over the last two years.

What happened? Why altcoins have struggled isn’t something we can answer with a single data point or chart. But we can highlight a few reasons that help explain what happened. We’ll start with a look at the data and then we’ll highlight three ideas concerning what changed that pushed altcoins down, and bitcoin back up.

Over the past…