Looking at the top 10 coins according to Coinmarketcap, they are mostly older coins (coins younger than 1 year old are in blue):
1. Bitcoin (~6 years)
2. Ripple (~3 years)
3. Litecoin (~3 years)
4. Dogecoin (18 months)
5. BitShares (19 months if one counts Protoshares)
6. Stellar (12 months)
7. Dash (16 months)
8. Nxt (19 months)
9. Banxshares (8 months)10. Peercoin (~3 years)
The coins which occupy the 11th to 20th positions on CMC are mostly older coins too:
11. MaidSafeCoin (14 months)
12. Namecoin (~4 years)
13. Bytecoin (~3 years)
14. Monero (14 months)
15. BlackCoin (16 months)
16. Counterparty (18 months)
17. Vertcoin (18 months)
18. YbCoin (~2 years)
19. MonaCoin (18 months)
20. SuperNET (10 months)If you look at snapshots of CMC from June 2014 (
example), you'll notice that roughly 1/2 of the coins in the top 10 and most of the coins in the next 10 were relatively new:
1. Bitcoin (~5 years)
2. Litecoin (~2 years)
3. Nxt (7 months)4. Darkcoin (4 months)5. Peercoin (~2 years)
6. Ripple (~2 years)
7. Dogecoin (6 months)8. Namecoin (~3 years)
9. BlackCoin (4 months)10. Mastercoin (12 months)
11. Bytecoin (~2 years)
12. Monero (2 months)13. BitShares-PTS (7 months)14. MaidSafeCoin (2 months)15. Counterparty (6 months)16. XC (2 months)17. Quark (12 months)
18. Vertcoin (6 months)19. Zetacoin (11 months)20. Qora (4 months)Is innovation slowing down? Are the days of investors making massive profits by mining or buying into a brand new altcoin early on and having it shoot up in value over? Seeing how so few new coins are able to make it into the top 20 these days and the whole scene is now dominated by older established players like NXT and Dash, is it even worth keeping up to date with new altcoin launches anymore?