I've been mining crypto since 2014. I have seen coins come and go. I have seen exchanges come and go. I've made money, and I have been burned. To be honest, I never thought there would be so many coins available at this point. I always assumed a few would survive and the rest of die but they keep popping up, like a mutating virus. I have never purchased crypto as an investment. Everything I have owned or held I mined and converted to Bitcoin and USD.
I shut down my miners a few months ago because the value of most coins is too low to justify the expense of electricity. In the past I would continue to mine because prices would fluctuate and come back to profitability but I do not see that happening anymore. If you have free energy it might be worth it to mine a few coins but they are mostly pennies a day now.
In my experience if you are going to invest in crypto other than Bitcoin and Ethereum, pay attention to who is controlling the coin. Understand the business plans and future directions. There is a lot of pump and dump because there is not an SEC like agency to regulate schemes like there is with stocks and commodities. Remember too, the government is requiring crypto exchanges to report any transactions over $600 now so the IRS will be aware of even your small trades.
Bitcoins is down right now, but it is far more stable than it was a few years ago. Swings of 50% were not unheard of at times. It all depends on how aggressive governments want to be in regulating or even banning it. And to me, that is the problem. If the US government, for example, were to ban Bitcoin, the price would nose dive and a lot of investors would get burned.