I think it's very likely that in this new year we'll see a pretty big rise of altcoins if Bitcoin continues to have a few qualms. The confirmation times, ranging transaction fees, and volatility are all making investors shy away from the coin, and that clearly caused a pretty significant drop. Because of this, I could see why investors would start to favor other options like the explosive Ripple coin.

If bitcoin can fix some of those issues that the general public has with it, I could see it back on the rise but definitely not exponentially. I think exponential growth was just a 2017 thing. Linear growth and stability might be the new face of BTC.