My CryptoCurrency Investment Portfolio and Why

Having entered the crypto day trading game back in 2012, I have started to focus more on the underlying technology behind many of the “ICOs,” or, more appropriately termed “Token Sales.”

The reason being is this: I fundamentally do not believe that you can be a dedicated crypto day trade and master blockchain technology as a developer/entrepreneur. You have to make a choice: Pump and Dump or Study and Develop.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t play a mean hold and mining game as a Blockchain developer or entrepreneur. You just need to do your research and stay up to date on how the market responds to some of these amazing blockchain startups. My tactic is this — Idealist investment hold strategy: Hold on what you truly believe can change the world in the next 5 -10 years OR what you know, based on market response, has at least a 200%+ uptrend within the year.

But enough chit-chat, here’s what I own and why (and in no particular order of importance):

Preface — How to Best Prepare for Crypto Investment

I do the following for every investment and you should to:

1. Find and read the white paper — look for exploits!
2. Check the product traction and team
3. Generally analyze market need and total addressable market — potential for future state (does this work in scope of Web 3.0?)
4. Put up an amount you can lose

Idealist Investment Hold Strategy: Assets

1. Civic (CVC): Civic is an identity management service that allows you to protect and authorize the use of your identity in real-time. The Civic team has garnished leading support within the Identity Management Blockchain market, having one of the most successful token sales in history (albeit a short history of token sales. The company sold more than $33M in CVC tokens in less than a month alone, and the token price has increased 500%+ with strong market support. More on CVC here. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://liqui.io
2. (Non-Ideal, But Has Wall Street Support) Ripple (XRP): Ripple is a centralized digital token and NOT one of my ideal holds — in fact, it is the only non-ideal hold I have (and here’s why). However, almost all the major international banks have adopted ripple within their own international (bank to bank) transfer blockchain proof-of-concepts, and such adoption will inevitably lead to an increase in token value. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://poloniex.com/
3. Ether (ETH): Ether, the token of Ethereum, has as much potential as the Ethereum Virtual Machine does in the broader context of decentralized application development. When paired with frameworks like Microsoft’s Coco and others, it is starting to provide enterprise environments viable solutions, and has already been successfully tested by entities like the United Nations within the nonprofit space. As Ethereum continues to move forward in its development plan, we will most likely see Web 3.0 through the efforts of Vitalik and team. To support multiple verticals of DApps and DOAs, Ether must go up in value. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://coinbase.com/
4. Bitcoin (BTC): bitcoin — the Grandaddy of decentralized digital tokens, is not in a great place as of yet. Multiple disagreements within various block size communities have started to create user hard forks left and right (another one coming up in November 2017 as of writing this, after the August 2017 split). Though this might not bode well for 4–5 years down the road as Ether picks up steam, but cryptocurrency (as of August 2017) is by no means mainstream. In fact, less than 1% of the Western World even owns BTC as an asset. Since BTC’s primary purpose has always been as serving as a currency alternative to the centralized petro dollar (USD), it will continue to go up in value as laymans investors out in capital. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://coinbase.com/
5. Golem (GNT): Golem is airbnb for computing power. More specifically, “Anyone will be able to use Golem to compute (almost) any program you can think of, from rendering to research to running websites, in a completely decentralized & inexpensive way. The Golem Network is a decentralized sharing economy of computing power, where anyone can make money ‘renting’ out their computing power or developing & selling software.” This project is ambitious, but if they achieve what they’ve set out to do, it gives anyone with enough funds to rent as much computational power they need. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://poloniex.com/
6. Aragon (ANT): Aragon is developing a application to better enable users and developers to create Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). The Aragon team quotes, “Aragon was born to disintermediate the creation and maintenance of companies and other organizational structures.” Much like Golem, Aragon is one ambitious endeavor that could radically change the world (and the way that companies exist and interact with users) — let alone the entire operational structure of what we now define as a ‘company.’ EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://liqui.io
7. IOTA (IOTA): IOTA is not Blockchain at all, in fact, it uses a very scalable and novel blockchain variant network called Tangle. IOTA’s structure is feeless (currently) and hopes to truly and scalably connect IoT devices in their decision making and service to end users. This enables the development of smart cities, which seems to be the vision of the IOTA team. The platform has already gained some great market validation, particularly within the settlements arena, as Ethereum and Bitcoin networks are not scaled well (yet) to do so in a cost effective manner. There are some new developments within the nonprofit arena as well with regards to its widespread usage. EDIT: How to Buy IOTA
8. Basic Attention Token (BAT): I am not as “gun-hoe” about BAT as of yet, simply given that, despite its great idea, it need to prove itself beyond the concept (and given that it is for marketing, I don’t want them to market me into thinking their amazing before seeing the product!). BAT’s system is the foundation for decentralized marketing where the user chooses to divulge their personal information. To learn more about BAT: Basic Attention Token. It is a utility token based on the Ethereum technology that can also be used as a unit of account between advertisers, publishers, and users in a new, blockchain-based digital advertising and services platform. The token is not a digital currency, security or a commodity. Overall, the sale for Brave’s ethereum-based Basic Attention Token (BAT) generated about $35m and was sold out within blocks, or under 30 seconds. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://liqui.io
9. OmiseGO (OMG): OmiseGO is building a decentralized exchange, liquidity provider mechanism, clearinghouse messaging network, and asset-backed blockchain gateway. They are attempting to disrupt the payment gateway and banking exchange markets completely — and Vitalik (founder of Ethereum) happens to be an avid advisor. Unlike nearly all other decentralized exchange platforms, this allows for decentralized exchange of other blockchains and between multiple blockchains directly without a trusted gateway token.The OMG blockchain will be Proof of Stake — so the OMG tokens act as validating tokens within the network. The future-state blockchain/market thinking within OMG’s team could drastically change the world, and takes future, inoperable blockchain systems into account. The investment here is an investment to absolutely disrupt the digital financial system of payments. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://liqui.io
10. (Occasional Miner) Sia (SIA): Sia is the first decentralized storage cloud, in which there are two method of mining (renting your storage and PoW mining with GPUs). Sia and Storj are competitors, and have differing use cases — but both will be major players in the future of commercial (and maybe even enterprise) data storage. In addition, SIA is extremely cheap, making it an even more viable investment proposition with low risk depending on your fiscal threshold. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://poloniex.com/
11. (Profitable Miner) Hush (Hush): Hush is a private implementation of the “Zerocash” protocol forked from [Zcash]. Based on Bitcoin’s code, it intends to offer a far higher standard of privacy through a sophisticated zero-knowledge proving scheme that preserves confidentiality of transaction metadata. Hush is one of the only PoW-profitable mining tokens out there right now — so this investment is being down by my GPU rig. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/
12. (Profitable Miner) Storj (STORJ): Storj (pronounced: storage) is the first decentralized, end-to-end encrypted cloud storage that uses blockchain technology and cryptography to secure your files. Storj is a platform, cryptocurrency, and suite of decentralized applications that allows you to store data in a secure and decentralized manner. Your files are encrypted, shredded into little pieces called ‘shards’, and stored in a decentralized network of computers around the globe. No one but you has a complete copy of your file, not even in an encrypted form. Storj works NOW — a huge differentiator in a blockchain market full of funded and un-tested concepts. I ‘mine’ this by renting out data storage. EDIT: Exchange to get some: https://poloniex.com/

What are your thoughts? What does your portfolio look like? Let’s share research and help each other out!