The bear market in cryptocurrencies has punished investors who bought bitcoin at the height of cryptomania last year. But losses have been even more brutal for those who invested in once-promising rivals of bitcoin.

Consider Bitcoin Cash, an offshoot of bitcoin that launched on August 1, 2017, which moves independently of bitcoin itself. While bitcoin has fallen 67% from its record intraday high of $20,089 in December, Bitcoin Cash is down a crushing 88% from its peak of $4,355.62, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Friday evening, it traded at around $533.

Hundreds of other coins have also plummeted in value, but the underperformance of Bitcoin Cash is notable because it touches on a bigger theme: whether virtual currencies can really become a means of payment that would supplant traditional money.

Supporters of Bitcoin Cash conceived it as a way to fix problems that they believed were impeding bitcoin from becoming a mainstream payment tool, akin to PayPal or Visa.

Boosters—including Roger Ver, a prominent crypto investor often called Bitcoin Jesus—argued that the original bitcoin network had become too slow and that users were paying overly hefty fees for sending each other bitcoins. This faction contended that bitcoin’s clunkiness was causing people to treat it as a store of value, like gold, and not as a practical way to buy Big Macs or cappuccinos.