The main reason why alt coins had a big jump at the end of 2017 was that Bitcoin was having problems. Blocks becoming full and transactions becoming slow and costly. But not anymore, bitcoin has upgraded and transaction speeds have become fast and cheap with the adoption of Segwit2x.
Here is an image posted by Roger Ver last week that explained the problem.
The argument was that BTC is having problems and that was why people were buying alt coins thinking that BTC will die off, but never would they have thought that BTC was upgraded and became better than before. So we are potentially in a BTC cycle once again, that is BTC would be used widely while alt coins which has nothing to show for will suffer in this period. Those that have a different function than BTC would probably survive while others would die off. I shall look into most of the popular altcoins and assess their survivability in this bitcoin cycle.
Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum has been touted as the only coin that can really replace bitcoin due to its usability. A smart contract platform that people can build their coins on. But the problem for ETH this year would be regulation. Major government bodies will be cracking down on more alt coins that went through the ICO phase and generally all coins on the ETH network will be red flagged. We do not know which ones are scams and which ones are legitimate, and just this would be detrimental for ETH. Until ICOs are fully regulated I think ETH would be going sideways or even crash to new lows. But it will survive this year.Ripple (XRP) & Lumens (XLM)
Much has been said about ripple being non-decentralised. The truth is noone cares, as long as you can transfer money using ripple cheap and fast, it will have users. The fact that XRP is being tested by some companies means that Ripple will survive this year. Lumens was initially a fork of XRP but it has totally changed the coding. I would say that for super fast transfer of coins, Lumens is the one to beat, it is very fast. When the BTC network is having problems you can be sure coins like Ripple and Lumens will be there to take Bitcoin's business. Yes they will survive 2018.Bitcoin Cash (BCH)/ BTG
Now BCH and BTG are forks of BTC with "cooler" features at the time of forking. But now that BTC is fast and good there is really no point in these coins unless BTC is having problems with their network, and even so people would use other faster and cheaper coins. When i see the charts of BCH and BTG they are looking very much like pump and dump schemes. They get pumped attracting people to buy and get dumped leaving there poor people holding these now useless coins. These coins would not necessarily die off this year but would probably see less use, their only use is probably for the miners as they can mine these coins and sell them to get more BTC when the profit potential is higher than BTC. And as the price of BTC increases, the value of BCH and BTG would also follow, just that in the perspective of usability, they really have no use now unless they get creative and become better than BTC or become more usable as a form or currency by being able to buy real world stuffs. BCH is trying to do that but until it reels in a big fish, I am doubting its usability.Litecoin (LTC)
The silver to gold of Bitcoin. Litecoin is probably the most advanced coin in terms of usability as a currency. But it is essentially a clone of Bitcoin and would compete with Bitcoin in the money transfer market. Again the only reason Litecoin had a massive jump at the end of 2017 was the Bitcoin network was having problems. Now that the major problems are mostly solved, Litecoin is seeing less usage. Will Litecoin survive? Yes it will, when the Bitcoin network has problems, people will turn to Litecoin first as an alternative and the value of Litecoin would go up as the value of Bitcoin go up. But no it would not surpass Bitcoin.Every ICO
NEO, EOS, ADA, TRX, IOTA, VEN, ICX...etc etc (~1000 coins)
There will be a government crackdown on all coins that started off as an ICO or has raised money from the beginning. The problem is that there are so many of them that we will never know which ones will be in trouble. Some coins shows a lot of promise but nothing to show for yet. Mostly hyped up and asking people to buy on future hopes and dreams. When they are proven as a scam, those holding the coins will probably have made a loss on it. I would think most of these coins will die off and go to zero. We will never know which ones until the government crackdown report is released. As such no point touching them this year until the crackdown is complete and they have survived it.Privacy coins XMR, ZEC, XVG, PIVX...etc
If you want to move your money around and not wanting people to know about it, Monero is the coin to be used. If you are paid for writing scams and hoax reports, you want to be paid in Monero. If you want to sell some shady stuffs and not want anyone to know, get paid in Monero. So Monero will always have uses until people realise that the fact that they are using Monero means they are hiding something and people would want to know. You can replace Monero with another privacy coin and it reads the same. Privacy coins will survive as people would use many types of privacy coins to move their money around, the more coins you use the harder to track all the money moving around.
There are many other coins in this space and depending on their usability and products to show for, they will either survive or crash to nothing. Most coins currently are still in their developmental stages and launching ICOs to get funding. Some are scams, some are legitimate, but only the team working on the coins know which category they belong to. Every coin will be tested againts Bitcoin but with the current features of BTC, and I think we will not be having any flippening soon.
We are in a BTC cycle currently, BTC would gain in dollar value more than most coins, so technically there is no point in holding alt coins as some have the risk of going to zero. Bitcoin will be king and dominance would probably go back up to at least in the 60% area or more in the months ahead.
Just my analysis so far in this crypto market, it may be flawed of biased, but hope it is of use.