I read a short story somewhere in which a person asking for directions asks a local how to get to his destination. The local then tells him, "you can't get there from here." Obviously, you can get to any point on the planet from any other point on the planet, except that it isn't always in a straight line.
Sometimes the way to get to where you want to go is circuitous and perhaps even treacherous. You may be able to see your destination but not be able to reach it directly. This is the way I feel about cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin benefits largely from being the first cryptocurrency. Many of the others are traded through Bitcoin, which is stupid given that BTC does not scale very well for trading. Thus we see the prices of alt coins going up and down with the price of BTC. Things would be more stable if we had a number of core currencies rather than just the one. LTC and ETH are trying to make a go of it; but, they are too tied to BTC to stand on their own two feet.
I oftentimes find myself having to go through contortions to buy a currency that I actually want. For example, STEEM requires that I have either BTC, LTC, ETH, SBD, Doge, or Monero. Of these, SBD and Monero aren't exactly frequently traded currencies. You end up having to use different exchanges to convert from some currency to another. BTC is worthless for quick transactions. I often have to wait a while to be able to spend it.
This is still very much the wild frontier in which well trodden paths do not exist. Just like the Old West, there is a lot of prospecting and mining going on. Fortunes will be made and lost. Some people will thrive and some will find ruination. There is a fabled city of gold out there. But, we can't get there from here.