in terms of metal we have gold, silver, platinum. In cryptocurrencies we have 1000. If cryptocurrencies persist over this current hype, then its still open which of the +1000 ones will be the "gold" and which ones will go to 0.
I think crypto is in a huge bubble, and I think ICOs are dumb and will eventually die off or be killed off, but saying that there are 1000+ cryptocurrencies is pretty misleading. It would be like saying that due to the various stock exchanges we have millions of fiat currencies. It's only true given a particular definition of cryptocurrency.
Outside of ICOs, there are probably only a couple dozen cryptocurrencies that are not piggybacking off of some other cryptocurrency's smart contract infrastructure.
Think disagreement between miners, changes to algorithms, forks of blockchains. Gold does not have the same risk.
One nitpick: I think the SEC ruled ICOs to be comparable to certificates from what I understood. This is quite different to stocks. I could be wrong.