The days of minor cryptocurrencies may be numbered as the market shifts back into bitcoin for secure long-term growth.

The market move away from minor cryptocurrencies to bitcoin hit a breakthrough level Aug. 11, when it was reported that bitcoin had returned to 50 percent of the cryptocurrency market by value, the first time in 2018.

Bitcoin’s market share has continued to rise since then. As of 9:35 p.m. EDT Sunday, bitcoin had a market capitalization of $112.4 billion, 51.5 percent of the total cryptocurrency market value of $218.1 billion, according to Cryptolization.com.

While a 51.5 percent share certainly leaves room for other cryptocurrencies, there’s still mass market consolidation at the top. The next four leading cryptocurrencies after bitcoin account for a market cap of about $60 billion, with the combination of those with bitcoin accounting for about a 79 percent market share.

Lee McKnight, associate professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, told SiliconANGLE that many cryptocoins are down almost 50 percent over the past seven days. “Bitcoin remains the leader of the cyberpack with a current market cap of over $100 billion today, while many lesser coins have lost much more of their value,” he said.

“Still, 58 coins have a market cap of over $100 million,” he noted. “Are these relatively liquid coins worth investors — excuse me, speculators — taking a chance and piling in at this time? Should we buy cryptocoins at 50 percent off? Hard to say.”

But he added that the downturn in crypto markets will “take out” some of the lesser coins.

“These include many scams/bad ideas, and likely, some new, innovative coins struggling for their place in the market, who would, could or should have gone to market in 2016,” he said. “I expect most of the 1,833 listed cryptocoins will only live on immutably beyond 2018 on the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive before long, as the reality of the brain-dead easy (for geeks, students and scammers) creation of a new coin becomes better understood.”

Echoing sentiments discussed by John Furrier and Dave Vellante, co-hosts of SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio theCUBE, at the Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit in Toronto last week, McKnight said he believes there is a future for blockchain technologies.

“I am confident that by 2019 it will begin to be obvious to many of the currency speculators that they have been focusing their time, money, and speculation in the wrong direction,” he said. “Real, sustainable blockchained market value can be, and is being created in part with the use of blockchain technologies for decentralized trusted data management.”

Sorting the cryptocurrency wheat from the chaff may come sooner rather than later. Blokt quoted a study that found that more than half of the top 100 cryptocurrencies have no purpose, with only 40 appearing to provide any real value to the public.

An analyst report from eToro also attributed some of the price declines to the strong U.S. dollar but noted that not all those declines have been the same. Bitcoin dropped significantly less than altcoins, which eToro claimed have dropped 95 percent since their peak in January.

Bitcoin may be falling in price, but it has become a far more stable solution to crypto investors than the far riskier altcoins.

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