Not sure how to stay afloat in crypto by 2026

Airdrops are done for Meme coins are toast NFTs are over ICOs are a thing of the past IDOs are gone IEOs are history Web3 is flatlined Testnets are irrelevant GameFi is finished Honestly, I just don't see any way to stay afloat in crypto by 2026. The economic fallout from the ongoing conflict is massive and it looks like it’s gonna take a while to bounce back. Speculation in the crypto space seems pretty much dead in the water for 2026. Guess we just gotta hold onto Bitcoin for now and keep a cool head while looking ahead.

Testnet dead?  But for the rest, I'd argue that none of it has anything to do with the war, and more to do with the memecoins and pump fun that sucked the liquidity out of markets. This has been the state of the crypto market for a few months now.

There are some people that do not do research but some will do research and make conclusions with wrong information. A good example is the COVID 19 that people thought that caused bear market in early 2020. This is another one but I think this is more about not doing a good research and I will not be surprised if AI also say something like this but I do not think it should.

From 2024 to 2025, this year's meme coin community sucked up most of the liquidity in the market. The result was a lot of scam projects and investors were constantly losing money. Then after the arrival of ton ecosystem and telegram gaming bot there was a lot of excitement about meme coins which resulted in only scams and scams all around. These two years we were only in losses because we were addicted to the addiction of getting rich overnight. But crypto does not promise to get rich overnight.

Maybe he mean they no longer provide the same incentives as they did when they were part of the hype. "Investors" is just a fancy term in their marketing, but they're not really them. They might be more accurately called junk collectors to fill their wallets. lol For honest people, no. For scammers, crypto is a paradise.

Those what you mentioned are scam and instead of wasting your time, getting worried about the situation happened with those  scams better divert your attention on top alts. You will not easily got choked by scams if you just try to deal or trade those known or top coins in the market. But if you feel to hold for long term no other best coin to choose here than Bitcoin, since that coin is proven to be good and other alts even we say tops are so risky to pick up when we talk about holding it for many years.

I feel the same way. There were periods of similar despair in early 2019 and in spring of 2020 but they were nowhere as long as the current one. One of the main lessons the crypto has taught us is that patience is usually rewarded in the end. Not all of what you've listed will have a comeback as some of those probably were just a short lived mania but I do believe fun times will come again eventually. For now you can DCA a bit into high conviction plays or farm airdrops that almost no one else farms anymore and if the good days come back you'll be rewarded.

Due to the bearish market, many projects cannot stand upright when the market is shaking hard, I see that there are several projects that have been running for a long time finally closing their operations due to market instability, so this is when the bull comes again, many projects will grow and may even be testnet providing good incentives? Don't expect too much because expecting a portion of the airdrop is almost all uncertain even though you have spent a lot of capital.

Gone are those days when all these things were turning people into millionaires overnight. Now it feels like most of them have become ways to scam people out of their hard earned money without remorse. The space is not really dead, it’s just more risky and saturated now. The easy money phase is gone and only the more careful and patient people will survive. So holding strong assets and staying calm makes more sense now than chasing every new trend.

You shot it well, mate. Price performance of altcoins is heavily influenced by Bitcoin (BTC), the main catalyst in the crypto market. If Bitcoin (BTC) doesn't perform well, altcoins will follow suit. Given the current conditions, the best way to maintain portfolio value is to simply hold Bitcoin (BTC). If market conditions improve, I think we'll see other categories perform well as well.

You know why all the are dead? Because the hype train crashed and the people who programmed all this have benefited and left it for those who are going to collect junks to buy and fill up the space in their wallets but personally I don’t see any of this to be a direct causality of the war instead we can say that yeah truly they have no direct value to the make anymore or utility is what they lack and most are just mere hype stuff and once the hype is over everything is gone. Of course sticking with bitcoin was the solution and is still the solution. But on a personal level I’m in to take risk for new innovations not this already existing hypes but what next to come in.

I see that tesnet is still quite alive, meme coin is also the same as well as web3 is still quite active now, it's just that the volume of transactions and activity is reduced, it does not mean that there is no hope of life, it's just that the market is in a state of consolidation or the strongest word is natural selection between projects that can survive and projects that go bankrupt. But certainly when bitcoin is alive everything will be fine, new innovations will always appear in the bull market you will see it again in 2027, 2028 and 2029. People like you will go in a bear market and fomo in a bear market, it's not strange.

You see the pattern there that every trend that becomes hyped, they're not all surviving or if there are, they're so very few. And if you're thinking of surviving for this year, you don't have to choose any of those that are part of those trends. Choose Bitcoin and you'll not need to think of that much. You hold BTC and you don't care of these trends because it's always been, Bitcoin!

Airdrops are not dead. Free airdrops might be, but paid airdrops aren't, and they still exists. Meme coins aren't either. It's just not their time right now as we are in a bear market. NFTs are dead that's for sure, and so is ICO, IEO, IDO, GameFi and maybe Testnet. I don't think that Web3 is dead though because there are still projects that are being created. You know what's the solution for you to survive this year? Go find a stable job that will help you survive at least this year. Unfortunately, we are in a situation where even average person is getting affected in a negative way. At this point, we are in a spot where we just need to survive, and maybe that's what I'm feeling, but I think that's the case for some as well. YES!!!!! Just hold on Bitcoin right now and stay calm. That's the best advice that you can give because that's the best thing that we can do right now. Have emergency funds, and if you have spare money to use, buy some "safe" assets like Gold and Bitcoin.

We've transitioned to real pmf and real revenue generation. No more short lasting hype I guess and the only project generating revenue consistently are the ones that is truly needed such as hyperliquid. But you know what's not dead and will never be dead? holding bitcoin. You don't even need to stress about hunting those airdrop or anything risking all your money. Just buy the bitcoin and you're set.

Bitcoin is not, big coins are not. This is why always go with the tested ones, because if you go with the untested trendy stuff, and fall for just buzzwords, this is your money going down the drain. NFT was so bad that even during NFT times it was easy to see that NFT would lose money to people, and we warned everyone that just because we are interested in crypto doesn't mean that we like NFT and it's something totally bad, yet still some people still invested into it and all of those NFT's worth nothing now. Some claim that was good because they got in and got out at the right time, but the thing they sold for profit, is down right now. Why not invest into something you get to see growing, instead of investing into something you have to get out at the right time.

By surviving you mean what exactly? You mean making money in bear market? Only way to do that is to be very lucky and find some gems that are pumping momentarily, which you can sell. Or predicting which one trend will survive, or even bloom trough the bear. Finding that is just near impossibility, and nothing to do with skill. Other option is to short the markets, even though you can lose it all by leveraging too much. As there are probably some bounces killing shorts on the way to bottom. If you don't have need to spend your cryptos (or bitcoin), then you survive it just by waiting it out. Even though it's going to take more time then you would like.

Do not forget about RWA. They say that it's the next big thing during the bull run but, we're going to see if they're right about that. I haven't followed most of the projects that are in it but just as the perfect example of those trends that died, it could be the same for rwa.

Web 3 is actually dead in my opinion, but I think testnet is not dead, only free treatments are dead. Meme coins hype has gone down drastically in the past two years, and ICOs and others are long dead in crypto space, so what next? This is a good reason to avoid altcoin and focus on Bitcoin investment, you will never regret holding Bitcoin, but any altcoin you might have been holding in the past two years will now be in loss because the hype is not there anymore. Bitcoin investment is the best investment one can have in cryptocurrency, you are secured because it is not centralized.

With all that has happened to altcoins, the only positive thing to do is hold Bitcoin. Altcoins will have their season in the future, but current events prove that only Bitcoin is worth holding in this cycle. I have dumped some of my new coins for Bitcoin, and that's the right thing to do now. I'll wait until the crisis is over before looking at altcoins again, but for now, it's all Bitcoin.