Cryptocurrencies have done very well in this almost finished 2017, with returns of more than 10000% in tons of coins. Of course, past performances do not guarantee future results, but I'm very excited about 2018 and I think some cryptos are going to grow a lot. There are a lot of interesting projects with huge potential that are in their initial phase, so it is a good opportunity to invest.

In this post I present the 1000 € HOLDING CHALLENGE. As the title states, I'm going to HODL 1000 € of cryptos the whole year. It is totally forbidden to sell. These are the requirements:

• Use an initial capital of 1000 €.
• Buy different coins on January 1st.
• It is forbidden to sell. Not matter if the price goes down.
• Hold minimum 1 year.
• All coins must be stored in a secure wallet.

Preparation

So, first things first. If we want to hold 1000 € in cryptos, first thing we have to do is to select how many coins and which coins we want. Due to the fact that I want to hold the coins in a wallet where I control my private keys (cold storage), we can't choose like 50 coins, because we will need to pay a lot of fees to move the coins from the exchange (i.e. Kraken) to the wallet (i.e. MyEtherWallet). So lets say we are going to hold no more than 10 coins.

Once that we know the amount, next step is to select which coins we want to hold. In this post and future ones, I will explain which coins I have selected and why. If you also want to join the 1000 € HOLDING CHALLENGE, you don't need to select the same as me. In fact it would be really interesting if you selected different ones, and at the end of 2018, we can compare the returns of each portfolio. Here are some basic tips you can use to create your own portfolio:

• First of all, do your own research. Invest in coins that you believe. We don't want speculative coins with nothing behind that can dump in months, because there is not a team developing it.
• Diversify your portfolio. If you are going to invest in 10 coins, divide the capital into 3 parts. One part will go to coins in the top 10 with market cap. Second part to top 50 and third part, beyond top 50.
• Try to minimize the exchanges that you need to buy the coins. It would be messy if you need to create accounts in 7 exchanges to buy them.
• Think where you are going to store the coins. Exchange? Paper wallet? Online wallet?
• Related to the previous point, if you are moving it to a wallet, keep in mind the fees you need to pay. If for example you want to hold just 20 € of X coin, but you have to pay 5 € fees to move it... its probably not worth.

My 1000 € HOLDING CHALLENGE

Now I will tell you about my portfolio. At the beginning I thought about holding about 20 cryptos, but then I realized that I would need to pay a lot of fees if I wanted to move them into a wallet, so I ended with 8 coins, which are:

• Ethereum
• Ripple
• Bitcoin Cash
• Litecoin
• Iota
• Neo
• TenX
• WaBi

You may be wondering, why not Bitcoin? This is the reason. I don't think we are going to see a x10 in Bitcoin, and also, with the existing issues with fees and transaction time, I don't really think it is a good option. And also, what would happen with the SegWit2x?

Of course there are other cool coins like Monero or Dash that are also a good options. But, anyway, this is my portfolio with the percent I allocated to each coin.

Of course we have the name, market cap and price at the moment (Dec 28th). Then we have the exchange that I will use to buy each coin with the withdraw fee (note that the TenX withdraw fee is set to zero because HitBTC has not implemented it yet). Total withdraw fees are around 21 €.

Then we can see if it is a ERC20 compatible token, if it can be stored in a Jaxx wallet or if it needs to be stored in an own paper or online wallet. Last two fields are just the percent of the total investment and the final € of each coin.

Conclusions

So now we know how many coins we are going to hold and which ones. We have also allocated an amount of money to each coin, taking into account its market cap. We also have in mind where we are going to buy each coin and where we are going to store each one. With this in mind, we are ready to buy on January 1st after having dinner and before hanging out.

Are you in with the challenge? Which coins are you going to HODL? Why?