But that's what the vast majority of these cryptocurrencies are. The reason is simple, most of them do not have any real use-case, besides speculation, of course. Even Bitcoin was considered a pump and dump in its early days, until people finally realized that it is useful for something.
I think you are right. Bitcoins have been called in pumps and dumps and people didn’t like it at that time. After revelation of the fact that this is the beauty of bitcoin and people are so impressed by this all. Other crypto are not of use, except someone as the bitcoin is only more spreading over the international market.
