Pulling back the mask on altcoins … why altcoins in 2020 were vastly different than 2025 … seeing the space clearly for what it is … 10X returns are still possible
Most altcoins aren’t worth it.
The truth is you’d be better off taking whatever amount you were going to invest, flying to Vegas, and putting it on red. At a minimum, that would be more fun.
But if we replace the term “invest” with “trade,” we arrive at a far different takeaway…
Yes, altcoins are absolutely worth it.
And when you add a new macro catalyst that I’ll detail below, the potential for explosive trading gains climbs even higher.
In fact, our crypto expert Luke Lango believes 10X, 50X, and even 100X returns are on the table – potentially, in 90 days or less…but likely, not for reasons you’d expect.
You see, the world of altcoins is vastly different today than it was in 2020. Making money in this space requires a different perspective than in years before, along with a realistic assessment of what altcoins are – and are not.
Today, let’s pull the mask off the world of altcoins to see their warts…and their unparalleled capacity to generate wealth.
In 2020/2021, many crypto investors had drunk the altcoin Kool-Aid
If you were in the space at the time, you likely remember the excitement. Things just felt different.
Altcoins represented a brand-new, revolutionary financial instrument that was going to change the game. The blockchain was a tectonic shift, a sort of “financial Rubicon.”
Projects built on the blockchain were going to upend countless stodgy, antiquated industries that were ripe for disruption.
But as time passed, a new, underwhelming reality emerged…
While blockchain technology was – and is – a big deal, making the case for any given altcoin having genuine, intrinsic value was challenging from an investment perspective.
To avoid a misunderstanding, there are some incredibly interesting and novel blockchain applications that seek to address real-world challenges. For example, take VeChain.
Many supply chains (think verticals like food, medicine, luxury goods) suffer from fraud, counterfeiting, and inefficiency. VeChain uses blockchain to track goods at every stage, verifying authenticity and improving logistics.
But from an investor’s perspective, a core clash was brewing between crypto believers and naysayers. And at the heart of it was one thing…
Would making money in the space be based on anything tangible and sustainable?
The rudimentary value proposition in crypto
How do you make money from altcoins?
Let me add a wrinkle…
If we remove hype, FOMO (fear of missing out), and the “greater fool” theory (someone will buy it from me at a higher price), what’s the real investment value case for your typical altcoin?
The answer is “adoption.”
Let’s say I come up with “Jeffthereum,” an ecosystem that I want to build upon the blockchain.
If Jeffthereum is attractive, offering some sort of real benefit (say, faster financial retail transaction speeds between countries), then it might entice other developers. They’ll want to build their own applications atop my Jeffthereum universe.
But to operate within this world, that requires my altcoin, JeffCoin. That’s the “coin of the realm,” literally and figuratively.
So, what makes JeffCoin’s value rise or fall?
Removing the emotion-based drivers from above, the answer is the basic principles of supply and demand, which leads us back to adoption.
The more developers who want to build within Jeffthereum, the more demand there is for JeffCoin (all else equal), so JeffCoin will rise in value.
But let’s say our Editor-in-Chief and fellow Digest-writer Luis Hernandez comes along and creates Luisthereum and it’s vastly superior. My project will likely suffer massive attrition as developers leave me and flock to Luis. Unfortunately, fewer developers needing JeffCoin means its value is going to plummet.
Now, there are other ways to make money in the altcoin world which I’m not including here for simplicity. For example, staking and gas fees. But the overarching bottom line is that an altcoin’s fundamental value comes primarily from the developer adoption and ecosystem growth that increases demand for a token.
In 2020, the prevailing narrative was that an abundance of altcoins would soar in value because of the genuine, intrinsic value of their underlying platforms and the ensuing demand for their tokens. That rose-tinted perspective is no longer the predominant narrative in 2025.
There are too many blockchain projects (with their respective tokens) battling for limited developer interest…and there are too many mockeries of the altcoin concept, such as FartCoin.
But just because there are fewer cases of real “adoption” driving altcoin prices, that doesn’t mean there’s not enormous opportunity here.
We’re talking 1,000%+ opportunity.
Seeing altcoins for what they are in 2025
From an investor’s perspective, the biggest change between 2020 and 2025 is that we need to let go of the pretense of “investing” in altcoins, and embrace “trading.”
There’s a mindset shift that can help…
Instead of struggling to make the case for why altcoins are valuable, let’s just accept them for what they are: tools for generating wealth, no more, no less.
They might as well be baseball cards, Beanie Babies, or Dutch tulip bulbs.
But these “tools” can make you an awful lot of money. For example, after the third Bitcoin halving event in 2020, over 70 of the top-performing 300 altcoins saw their values skyrocket by more than 1,000% within the 18 months following the event.
How would you like a $10K flyer to turn into $100K?
Again, that happened with 70 different coins – and some of them exploded far higher than 1,000%.
This wasn’t because they all had enormous intrinsic value. They erupted higher mostly for the same reasons we identified a moment ago: hype, FOMO, and the “greater fool” theory.
Now, this begs a question…
If we’ve come to peace with what altcoins are and are not, and we’re ready to trade them, how do we find the “wealth-building tools” that are beginning their explosive moves higher?
Simple – by focusing on identifying the early stages of enormous, bullish price momentum.
The only thing that matters to your wealth
Circling back to our crypto expert Luke, in his trading service Crypto Trader, he uses a framework called stage analysis.
For newer Digest readers, stage analysis categorizes a stock’s price movement into four stages – consolidation (sideways at a bottom), breakout (up), distribution (sideways at a top), and downtrend (down) – helping investors identify the optimal times to buy, hold, or sell.
At the heart of stage analysis is one thing: price. And when it comes to making money – from any investment, not just altcoins – price is all that matters.
From Luke:
At the end of the day, the only thing that will make a difference to your portfolio is whether the altcoins you own rise in value while you own them…
Let’s say you found a truly atrocious altcoin – It has no real-world use-case, has awful management, and is in a dying niche.
But what if its price had just broken out and, hypothetically, was on its way to doubling from $5 to $10? Would any of those negative characteristics matter to you?
If what you care about is your personal wealth, they shouldn’t. Why would they?
All that would matter is that the token surges while you’re invested.
This brings us full circle to Luke and his belief that 10X, 50X, and even 100X returns are on the table today from select altcoins – and in 90 days or less.
Tomorrow at 10 AM Eastern, in an event called The Great American Crypto Project (sign up automatically here), Luke will detail why this is the case, and how he’s going to find them.
Luke and his team have created a quant-based algorithm that’s engineered to identify the early stages of surging momentum – the type of buying pressure that’s capable of driving the returns just highlighted.
And why now? Luke believes we’re on the cusp of an enormous generator of emotion that will trigger a wave of bullish sentiment…
President Trump.
Specifically, a handful of policies that Trump is likely to enact very soon.
Luke believes we’re going to see three specific crypto policies put in place during Trump’s first 100 days in office
These policies have the potential to unleash a wave of bullish emotion in the altcoins space – which is what Luke’s algorithms are engineered to flag.
Equally important, Luke’s system seeks to alert investors when it’s time to sell after a major move higher, before an emotion-driven pullback.
Here’s Luke:
[After watching Bitcoin’s volatility], I asked myself, “what if you could just ride this roller coaster on the way up and get out before it goes down?”
Only capture the upside, skip the nasty multi-year crypto winters, yet still get the big gains.
You can. I’m happy to report that our team was finally able to develop our first-ever quant crypto trading algorithm…
I call it the POWER 5.
And tomorrow, February 6th at 10am ET, I am going live with its big reveal.
Seeing the altcoin world for what it is
I don’t endorse altcoin “investing.” Candidly, I question the long-term, sustained value proposition.
But I’m a huge believer in shorter-term trading.
History shows that when any one of these small coins becomes the target of hundreds of thousands of emotion-driven crypto enthusiasts, the returns can explode far higher than just about any other asset – and in a far shorter period.
The challenge is: 1) finding a catalyst that can stir the emotions necessary to drive a quadruple-digit altcoin return, and 2) being able to identify that coin toward the beginning of its meteoric rise.
Tune in tomorrow morning at 10 AM Eastern for how Luke is meeting these two challenges in his The Great American Crypto Project. You can click here to automatically reserve your seat.
Bottom line: No, altcoins aren’t going to transform the world like we thought in 2020. But they can absolutely transform your portfolio here in 2025.
Have a good evening,
Jeff Remsburg
