Why are there no new coins in the top 20?

[lordoliver]

I am sorry, that you see that as negative, but I find it good and needed, that the top coins keeping their top position. I guess it will be harder and harder to get to the top position in the next years. The reason is, that people want to have a consensus, which coins will be used in future.
And if top coins loose their top position and die, that means everyone who worked for it, was not payed for the time any more...

Crypto will replace fiat and we will have several payment possibilities.
But there will not be hundreds. Only a few will stay on top, the rest will always stay on a starving position.

I personally also don't like it, that there are every week new coins, that wants to be invested to.
I invested in a lot of coins, just to make sure not to loose any train. But the more coins there are and wants to be invested, the more I have to invest to keep on track. Thats why I don't want the top coins to drop down into the nowhere and always coming new ones.

Every innovation can also be implemented in top coins. Competition is needed, that is true, but that is already there. No need for new companies all the time, if innovators, can join already present ones...

[Mjbmonetarymetals]

A constant flow of new coins just sweeping in and replacing the old ones would be bad, really bad. Why would you bother buying the coin that's coming out in 6 months if it will be replaced with the one coming out in 12 months?

It would be better if altcoiners got behind a couple of the top tier aLTCoins instead of being divided up into oblivion behind hundreds of coins. if you were a die hard bitcoiner how many alts would you want a few really strong ones or a blinding blizzard of hundreds and hundreds ?

[starblocks]

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?

Who knows

[montaga]

Why are there no new coins in the top 20?

Because:
If the coin is not minable is like parallel |||||||||||| always a new start and the coin cant get traction because a new more innovative coin will be on market tomorrow version  2.0.4326

If the coin is minable is like serial ---------- you build on top whats there, a new coin cant compete with existing one. If it tries to overcome the handicap it must be some kind of scam or cheat. 

[Hollingsworth]

The importance of market cap is highly overestimated or sometimes even misunderstood.
Market cap alone really doesn't tell anything even remotely important about a coin.

I think liquidity and distribution are what people should start looking at first when trying to gauge a coin, but that's just my opinion.

Yes, what he said.

I always sort the coinmarketcap by 24hr volume. That to me is much more indicative of a coins popularity and standing... I.e. how much people are actively trading in it.

H.

[TaunSew]

The importance of market cap is highly overestimated or sometimes even misunderstood.
Market cap alone really doesn't tell anything even remotely important about a coin.

I think liquidity and distribution are what people should start looking at first when trying to gauge a coin, but that's just my opinion.

Yes, what he said.

I always sort the coinmarketcap by 24hr volume. That to me is much more indicative of a coins popularity and standing... I.e. how much people are actively trading in it.

H.

I put a lot of importance on volume, but your rationale of it being important is actually way off.  It's no indication of number of unique users trading the coin - as far as you know it's just cash loaded bots ping-ponging each other. 

[Joshua kingpin]

Check XRA. RATEcoin can be in first 50 without any issue.

They are working on some kind of "Grid cluster multipool"

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1092273.0

Looks like best investment right now.