I don't try to time markets, and I avoid things that seem volatile or overbought, most of the assets in this class have consistently seemed to be both.
Currencies of any kind aren't really exciting to me aside from the utility they provide when utilized for something new that wasn't possible without them, and sure there is some of that activity within the blockchain sphere, but nowhere near enough of it to account for the current capitalization.
Technically, blockchain isn't very remarkable to me aside from the mining Proof-of-Work scheme being an amusing hack when I first heard of it, but is in practice a pretty large detriment. Even if these data structures and algorithms were radically revolutionary, I wouldn't speculate in them.
From my survey, coin schemes gain only attention from being implemented atop blockchain -- no real reason to use the technology and be wrapped up in the volatile markets or to pay the price of the mismatch in design between a trustless distributed system and whatever their actual problem domain is. Most could provide their supposed value proposition while being a boring centralized system, a small trustful distributed system, or (very rarely) a more purposefully designed byzantine-tolerant system, and the only thing they'd lose is publicity.
Aside from all of the problems specific to blockchain, in general I see no reason as an individual investor to be in long positions on commodities or currencies as they are systems of zero-sum exchange; I much prefer to capitalize into the positive-sum system that is industry and owning diversified stakes in the productivity and growth there.
1. Store of Value: Bitcoin is better than gold at what gold does. Gold is about $7tn. BTC ~$180bn
2. Anonymous payments (Monero, Zencash, ZCash): Many use cases for wanting to pay in an untraceable way
3. Global payment network: Move large amounts of money around the world with only an internet connection; faster and cheaper than remittance options today
4. Censorship resistance: As hard as cash to censor, but you can move much larger amounts of it instantaneously, around the world.
5. Diversification potential: Sketchier since its early and return drivers are not yet clear, but early results show no correlation with existing asset classes, which if true would be a huge boon to asset managers
I am less optimistic about in near term about:
1. Smart Contracts: Think we are farther away from the vision of smart contracts creating a trustless society blah blah than most people think. Right now 99% of smart contracts swap ether for ICO tokens. There is potential, but IMO very very overvalued right now.
2. Most ICO funded start ups
Practically, I think due to BTC's head start it will win the digital gold box - it's my biggest digital asset position.
ETH has a head start in the smart contract world, but upstarts like EOS and Cardano promise better scalability and governance - so I have some of those. Plus my view is ETH will have a tough time once ICO bubble bursts, so not holding in short term.
Have some of the privacy coins too (XMR, ZEC). And have tiny positions in tokens from most promising projects.
I don't know many women who feel this way, and women's interest in jewelry has historically helped establish an important floor for the value of gold. If civilization collapsed tomorrow women would work hard to protect their gold, but not their Bitcoin (or similar). But of course , it doesn't require societal collapse to put downward pressure on Bitcoin.
I've never sold because I still believe in the long-term potential of Bitcoin.
Our thinking:
Possible negative outcomes:
a. Bitcoin is widely regulated or outlawed in ways that reverse it's growing popularity and it eventually flames out.
b. Another virtual currency comes into prominence and bitcoin holders or new investors migrate to that new currency
c. Bitcoin turns out to be a fad and people just lose interest in it.
Possible/Actual drivers for demand:
d. Bitcoin already has a following that values all bitcoins at $180 Billion.
e. Governments have been slow to regulate it. China has regulated it (many have some guidelines/regulations in place or becoming law soon), 5 or 6 countries (of 195 total) have outlawed it.
f. Financial institutions are starting to formally recognize it, including Fidelity (Fidelity is mining bitcoin) and CME offering futures.
g. Bitcoin has a finite supply, unlike all other currencies. So demand cannot be mitigated by increasing supply.
h. Businesses are beginning to accept bitcoin, such as: Microsoft, Virgin Galactic, Expedia, Subway, Whole Foods, (maybe 100 other lesser known companies)
It is very much a bubble at this point - something many people buy to sell off at a higher price. The difference between the crypto bubble and many other bubbles is that it's still much less than the potential value.
So personally, I hold on to Bitcoin, which is already stable and proven. The others look good too but are still at very high risk of failure.
I have no regrets not buying earlier because they were all uncertain in the past.
My stance is hopeful, but distant.
It's in my portfolio because I believe in the revolutionary value of the technology and the anonymous position of its founder is profoundly unique and powerful.
If you want to invest, in anything, the best bet is to form a plan and stick to it.
What's the overall best plan? There isn't one. But dollar cost averaging with buy-and-hold gets close. What's that? Invest the same amount every fixed period of time. Like, 100$ every Tuesday or $500 on the first of the month. It doesn't matter, do what you're comfortable with. But don't buy more when it looks cheap and don't sell when it looks high. Just keep building, just keep building.
What else? Once your plan is in motion kill all your google alerts and rss feeds and so on and so forth. You need emotional distance or you will drive yourself crazy. Basically build a machine and let it work.
If you need to put your money somewhere, and you've filled up your Roth IRAs, are in index funds, real estate (?), I don't see why not. I think the baseline argument is diversification, the high volatility, and lack of regulation
Now is probably not a great time because the price (of bitcoin) is so high, or maybe it is... No one really knows, it's all pure speculation
I wish I would of put a lot more than 400$ in Nvidia last year personally: https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:NVDA
Though at current, I do feel BTC is currently in a bubble. I have a nagging feeling of manipulation in the BTC market, or maybe it is just me. When corporate big-wigs start talking about Bitcoin, there is no stopping these big corps doing a pump and dump. I would be wary. (Or maybe it is just me?).
Verge team is releasing Wraith protocol very soon (http://www.wraithprotocol.com/).
I'm a mid-30s senior tech person in NY. I've been in and out of crypto over the past few years as a hobbyist speculator.
Heard about BTC in 2012-ish and thought it was an interesting novelty but probably wouldn't amount to anything worthwhile. Tried to buy/mine some but it was hard so gave up. Bought some drugs with it in 2013 (a night out that "cost" me $70k at current prices hah). Made about $3-4K in the 2016 surge, got out for a while, got back in around $1,300 just before it went crazy again.
I have a crypto portfolio worth about $20k, my cost was around $9k. It's about 5% of my net worth which I consider high, but I want to to try and get ahead by taking a few measured risks and this is one of those attempts. Most of my net worth is in boring investments like Vanguard index funds/401k and I have 6 months expenses in cash so I'm otherwise a fairly conservative investor.
My crypto portfolio looks like:
* 40% BTC
* 20% ETH
* 20% LTC
* 10% IOTA
* 10% Spread between DASH, OMG, LSK, NEO, EOS
BTC has been the money maker (up 140%), IOTA was my "missed the BTC boat lets try something emergent" punt (not worked out so far, I'm down 40%), the other 10% are just to give me an incentive to follow the tech.
I think I'm probably too late to get life-changing riches from crypto, but am buying and holding using money I can afford to lose until it either goes to the moon or goes to zero as there is a small chance I am not too late. I'm back to putting my monthly savings allocation into Vanguard now though.
My brother (non-tech industry) put a few thousand into Bitcoin a couple of months back, I advised him not to. I'd stand by that advice.
I think cryptocurrencies are the start of something extremely interesting, but I'm not sure if the current crop will be the eventual winners. I'd recommend people in tech picking up small amounts of various emerging currencies just to understand the ecosystem and how it works. It's a fascinating field.
I consider all cryptocurrencies to be way too high risk for my desired investment profile but I'll happily leave my 0.06 coins and see what happens.
Bitcoin needs to become more stable so that it can be used for payments rather than speculation. I'll probably buy small amounts to spend and trade but not as an "investment".
coins:
BTC
FIL
SALT
LAT
COB
balance - wefunder.com/balance
polymath.network
shapeshift.io
I could see going as high as 5% of total net worth in crypto, but not yet.
his setup: https://i.imgur.com/T1TPIwI.jpg