Time for another post.
This past month has felt like an entire year. Getting into the market right after Thanksgiving and riding the December wave was one of the most fun times financially I've ever had. However enduring the 2 recent corrections in late dec and this past week have been frustrating to say the least.
However the one thing I give myself credit for is sticking to my values and avoiding pump chasing. It wasn't easy watching all those questionable coins pump daily while watching my solid research backed investments stay stagnant but I doubled down and made sure to not let my primal instincts get the best of me. I did chase CND once and rode it for a nice 40% profit but I was too scared to stay longer and of course it ended up doubling after I sold. Talk about frustrating however I didn't want to get greedy and who complains about an 40% return?
I say all this because while my portfolio value decreased during the corrections it didn't decrease as much as it would had I chased those pump coins. Sidenote I'm holding a little of ZCL cuz pump lol smh.
I want to keep this post short but I must end with some lessons I've learned over the past month and a half. Doing your research is priceless in this market. Everyone is promising the future but only maybe 90% will be able to accomplish what they are actually planning. With this in mind I feel like investing in a bunch of coins that sole value are in their ability to out Bitcoin Bitcoin is a fool's errand. Doesn't matter how much faster or cheaper to transact the coin is it will not replace Bitcoin because Bitcoin is king for being the first and most proven. Its lack of technological progress has not and will not allow any coin to overthrow it. Thus I'm focusing my money on the coins that are building a foundation for other coins to start with.
As of today ETH is the king of the platforms with over 1000 coins using ERC-20 tokens. This is an incredible lead that I doubt it will ever give up. I mean it's doing over 1 million transactions a day and most of the competing platforms are still in their implementation phase. However since ETH is a platform which other projects depend on, I believe it will susceptible to competition via innovation much more so than BTC. We have ADA, NEO, EOS, QTUM, WAVES, DTC and many others in the space working overtime to give ETH a run for its money and again while I doubt anyone of these will ever overtake ETH to be #1 solely because of the huge lead it has and the technical skillset of the ETH team, I do believe these other projects have a great chance to grow in 2018 much more so than any coin that's just trying to a be a better Bitcoin. Think of it like VISA and Mastercard one is the leader but the other is doing pretty damn good for themselves too. And this isn't even considering how humans tend to support projects created by locals. Calling something the "Chinese Ethereum" actually makes sense when you think about reality. You see how hard it is for FB and Google to enter the Chinese market why would crypto be any different?
This isn't to say LTC, XRB, XRP, ETN or any other payment focused cryptocurrency won't have a great year as well I just think in the long run think 5-10 years the platform coins have the best chance to grow 10, 50, maybe even 100x.
Of course my opinion on these things change every week so who knows what I'll be thinking by Valentines day but for the foreseeable future I'm going 50% BTC 40% Platform coins 10% Utility coins. Why the high BTC%? BTC is and for the foreseeable future will always be what drives this market and I'm in this for the long haul. And understanding that leads me to believe the life changing wealth still depends on how much Bitcoin you accumulate. Yes chasing altcoin offers more gains in the short term but this industry is still incredibly risky in general so to go 90% in altcoins to me is doubling an already risky venture and I rather prioritize not losing money over making as much as I can with no regard to risk.
In the future I'll be posting about the specific platforms I believe have a future and why I'm investing my hard earned money into them.