Crypto industry veterans are skeptical of a revival for altcoins but argue that Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) and Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) remain among the few assets with compelling long-term cases.  

Is Everything Except Bitcoin Dead?

Speaking with Milk Road, Electric Capital co-founder Avichal Garg pushed back against the increasingly popular argument that "everything except Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) is dead."

He acknowledged that many cryptocurrencies may ultimately have little reason to exist but argued that Bitcoin’s success doesn’t necessarily mean there can only be one valuable internet-native asset.

Instead, Garg sees Ethereum, Solana and Near Protocol (CRYPTO: NEAR) occupying distinct niches.

Ethereum: In his view, ETH combines many of Bitcoin’s store-of-value characteristics, including liquidity, divisibility, seizure resistance and global transferability, with programmability.

That could prove particularly important as stablecoins and tokenized financial assets expand.

Ethereum’s smart-contract infrastructure could potentially become a major settlement layer for the global financial system, with ETH functioning as underlying collateral.

Solana: Rather than competing directly with Bitcoin as “digital gold,” Garg sees SOL’s high throughput, cheap transactions, stablecoin integrations and strong developer ecosystem positioning it as a consumer-focused blockchain.

Applications such as decentralized trading platforms could eventually generate sustainable businesses on top of the network.

Garg also highlighted Near as a potential beneficiary of the emerging AI-agent economy.

Bitcoin Remains The Core Holding

In an interview with "When Shift Happens" on Aug. 6, Scott Melker took an even more concentrated approach with his current crypto exposure at roughly 80% Bitcoin, 10% Ethereum and 10% Solana.

Melker still considers Ethereum and Solana attractive long-term investments, particularly as institutional interest grows, but doesn’t view them with the same permanence as Bitcoin.

He argues that many crypto projects never needed tokens in the first place. Others built businesses without creating tokenomics capable of transferring that economic value to token holders.

However, spot Bitcoin ETFs, institutional adoption, stablecoins, tokenization and blockchain integration by traditional financial institutions are expanding despite depressing retail sentiment towards many tokens.

The emerging divide, therefore, may no longer be simply Bitcoin versus altcoins.

Instead, the next phase of crypto could become Bitcoin plus a small group of networks with demonstrable utility versus thousands of tokens with little economic reason to exist.

For Melker, that still leaves Bitcoin as the simplest bet.

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