The bitcoin is yesterday's news?

The cryptocurrencies absolutely stole the show in the past year. From the beginning of last year to the end, market capitalization of digital currencies increased by more than 3,300% or nearly $600 billion. This may turn into the largest increase in the capitalization of an asset, within 12 months.
And while there were many factors that predetermined this increase in capitalization, the root of the rise of cryptocurrencies was largely the bitcoin.
The largest cryptocurrency then played a major role in the digital money world. Even today, the bitcoin has the largest market capitalization, but its dominance has fallen seriously.
Although the bitcoin is estimated at $190 billion, it occupies about 40% of the total market capitalization of virtual currencies.
For comparison a year ago, its dominance was serious with over 80% of the total market capitalization. How fast, though, things change!
For the period between 2013 and March 2017, the market share of the bitcoin from the total capitalization ranged between 74 and 96%. Over the last three months, however, BTC's market cap is less than 40% of the total.
Meanwhile, other cryptocurrencies, such as ethereum and ripple, have seriously increased their share of total market capitalization.
The problem is that new and better cryptocurrencies are created to perform the basic function that the bitcoin was conceived - faster and cheaper financial transactions without the need for third-party mediation.