ETH price hits $500
coinmarketcap.com
coinmarketcap.com
I invest a little bit each week in a lot of coins. I'm a fan of cryptocurrencies. And I gotta say, this is crazy. I've had a few people ask me if they should invest now, and my answer is: I have no damn clue.
Surely can't last but how long this bull market will go on for is anyone's guess. 2018 is going to be insane.
At the same time things like cars, food, toys, electronics, etc are hitting all time lows. Good if you're turning 60 or so I guess.
Very weird.
Has that much value really been created?
I trust one or two exchanges (Bitstamp and Bittrex). I trust Arrington's new crypto fund. I trust CME group. I trust Ripple (in so much as locking up their XRP goes and not abruptly shuttering the project 6 months from now because a founder got bored). I think Vitalik is the real deal (although I worry about what happens to ETH from an investment PoV if regulators start really turning the screws on ICOs).
Of course there's also a list a mile long of the crypto currencies, exchanges and ICOs I wouldn't touch with a barge pole :)
The gains at the moment are so large and so fast, if you have even $1K or $2K that you can afford to lose you almost can't go wrong. If you get even slightly lucky, you could likely pay that $2K back in to your savings account within a month or three and keep the remaining profits in crypto long term to see where it goes. The main risk is losing too much time to watching price tickers move on exchanges. That shit can get quite addictive if you don't keep a tab on it :)
shorting where? and you do know most of the market is BTC driven so even those different function/ideology - XRP, Iota etc are going to go down if BTC takes a hit. Maybe not a 1:1 ratio but a huge hit nonetheless. In which it's not diversifying but putting all yours eggs in one basket, albeit different colored eggs.
Bitfinex lets you short (although you'd obviously still get hosed if there was an enormous sell off).
>you do know most of the market is BTC driven
That's my point. It seems as the crypto market is expanding some tokens are losing their tether/bond to BTC (and one presumes the trend will continue if the overall market gets big enough and has enough time to mature).
I think next year will decide whether or not crypto is an asset class that's here to stay (perhaps with more modest growth in the years following) or if we were really all suffering collective tulip mania and the entire ecosystem dies a spectacular death.
For the moment I personally wouldn't put huge amounts in to crypto but if I had cash I could afford to lose, I'd certainly dip my toe in.
Edit: also want to say, if crypto currencies are here to stay, I hope at least a little light regulation comes in to force as there are way too many ways for new/naive participants to have their shirts taken from their backs. Watching some of the shenanigans going on has given me a stronger appreciation for the role regulation plays in fostering a healthy market.
The exchange with those Tethers? I am not sure hedging on an exchange with this kind of counterparty exposure is a good idea.
> It seems as the crypto market is expanding some tokens are losing their tether/bond to BTC
How do you figure? It will be interesting to see which tokens/coins are those because I am sure all of them have positive correlation with BTC.
Agree. I don't use Bitfinex and I don't short. But many people do and for certain risks/fluctuations it provides them some hedge.
>It will be interesting to see which tokens/coins are those because I am sure all of them have positive correlation with BTC.
Watching the recent lead-up to the 2X fork (and subsequent last minute cancellation) was quite instructive. There was a lot of correlation between BTC and most Alts (initially everyone selling alts so they could boost their BTC holdings prior to the fork date and then everyone selling BTC to get back in to Alts as soon as the fork cancelled). XRP on the other hand stayed relatively stable throughout the worst of it.
It's still early days but if the overall crypto market becomes big enough, has sufficiently diverse investors (with differing long-term/short-term goals) and some form of regulation appears to remove the worst excesses of scammers/manipulators, I think a handful of coins/tokens will float and exist independently of BTC's fortunes.
Will be interesting to see if DASH stays green or starts to hit the red like everything else.