Bitcoin acts as a gateway to altcoins, with only 24% of investors keeping faith, according to research from Coinbase. Bitcoin acts as a gateway down the altcoin rabbit hole, according to new research from Coinbase. The research found that while 60% of users buy Bitcoin as their first cryptocurrency purchase, only 24% of investors keep faith with Bitcoin.
Investors seem more willing to consider altcoins during bullfights, such as when the domain Bitcoin market share fell below 30% on Coinbase during the ICO and Ethereum craze of 2017. For a brief time, Ethereum was the dominant asset that was traded on the platform with around 50% of the trading volume.
- Antonopoulos, Andreas M.(Author)
Bitcoin for Altcoins?
Some have noted that Bitcoin acts as a kind of 'starter drug' to other cryptocurrencies in the past. Bitcoin analyst Nick Colas said in a interview with CNBC that the enthusiasm during the 2017 bull run «now it's turned into a general insanity ... I think Bitcoin is some kind of gateway drug«.
Coinbase Corporate Development's Justin Martin explained the sentiment behind this behavior on Around The Block:
This could be for a number of reasons, but one is largely psychological. As people feel good about their initial crypto investments, they branch out to find other possible categorical winners..
In June 2019 in Bloomberg Markets , Messari Inc co-founder and CEO Ryan Selkis suggested Facebook's Libra could act as a 'starter drug'for cryptocurrency investors, which could lead them to Bitcoin.
It may have some truth, but not because investors do not want to have bitcoins. But because of the lack of infrastructure of other crypto projects that do not have as much (or no) access to them from traditional systems. Which are made up of public / private banking, payment processing companies and fiat money.
