The unexpected announcement by Elon Musk that prospective Tesla car buyers will no longer be able to pay with Bitcoin sent the world's most valuable token plunging earlier this week. Ethereum also faced a bearish period after some analysts questioned the ability of this token to achieve meaningful circulation.

It did not take long for both BTC and ETH to mount a comeback. In the case of ETH, the psychological trading ceiling of $4,000 was broken in just a few days. As for BTC, traders were able to easily break through the $60K level within 48 hours of Musk's bearish comments were posted on Twitter.

BTC and ETH were not the only digital currencies that experienced positive action this week. EOS, REV, and YFI posted heavy trading volumes at the same time, and they too enjoyed nice gains. Even though we should attribute this positive pricing trend to the overall bounce back in the cryptocurrency markets, there is something to be said about the state of token mining, which is moving away from Bitcoin and heading in the general direction of altcoins.

It's also worth noting that most cryptocurrency miners have been moving to Ethereum, because that's the largest overall source of ERC-20 tokens and. In fact, the number of altcoins that are not ERC-20 compliant is declining even among miners, as mining pools have moved to Ethereum. When we check mining activity on trackers such as BitBucket, it is clear to see that miners will continue to pursue ERC-20 token acquisition opportunities for the foreseeable future.

The value of mining for ERC-20 coins is that they can be easily converted to ETH and into major fiat currencies such as the United States dollar, the euro, the British pound sterling, the Japanese yen, and others. The Bitcoin mining field is hopelessly crowded, and there will come a time when new tokens will be impossible to mine because of their finite supply. In the end, we should not be surprised to see altcoins surging because many of them have greater circulation prospects when compared to BTC, a token that has not been able to achieve the circulation it once promised.