A new year has begun and like every year investors brag about their price gains of last year. Especially the crypto currency scene interferes again and again when it comes to big numbers.
There are people who started with 1000€ and are now eagerly waiting for the delivery of their new Tesla sports car. The 35% yield, which would have been the ultimate in every investment group just a few years ago, is dropping, because hardly anyone is out to become financially free with compound interest within 10 years. But the crypto scene stands rightly in criticism. Are we going to go into this now and enter the people who want to get rich as easily as possible as soon as possible? No. We will do it just like them, because time is precious, effort is precious and wealth, well you can always use it and increase it, after all it doesn’t hurt to belong to the winners of history.
Like every year beginners ask themselves:
- I have hardly any money, is it still worthwhile to start investing?
- What should I invest in?
- ETF’s, gold, bonds?
It may well be that I now make many enemies for myself, especially among those who like to use the word “bubble” in their mouths, but at the moment 5 names are enough to push Apple, alphabet, Amazon and cannabis stocks from the throne. And each one of these 5 names belongs to a crypto currency.
Times are changing and investors should always move with the times. The investment strategy I will share with you in this article is highly speculative, but still the best advice I can give at this time. It just works, because we don’t want to spend much time on it and sleep peacefully. That’s why we decide against trading and for long-term investments. Surely there is a lot to be gained by selling whenever the price is high and then waiting and buying after it has fallen. But with this trick it quickly happens that we get emotional and bite too hard into the prices. We always have to be up to date and annoy ourselves both when the price rises (because that means we can’t buy cheaply) and when it falls (because our portfolio loses value). Conversely, we are also happy about falling and rising prices, but this does not make the situation any better, because through all the messenger substances that our body releases we restrict our calm and rationality. Only very few people can cope with this and so we opt for the highly praised HODL strategy. “HODL” is an insider within the crypto-community and it stands for the fact that we should simply keep our coins, come what may.
Why HODL?
I recommend the HODL strategy because it allows us to sit back and relax. We don’t care where our coins are today, tomorrow or a week from now. We just want them to be worth more at the end of the year. If you don’t hodelt, you lose time and joy by looking at the prices every hour and theoretically you have to research, buy and sell all the time to get the best deals. My lifetime is too bad for me for that and so I decided for a very uncompromising form of Hodelns: I buy once and sell a year later at the earliest. In the meantime I don’t study courses and don’t even look into my wallet. All I am counting on is that my original decision was good enough. But how do I make this decision? Which currencies do I choose and why?
My strategy
I’m lazy and I want to be on the safe side. I know that Bitcoin is getting better and better known and I know that there are crypto currencies out there that are ten times better than Bitcoin but still 100 times cheaper. But that’s not enough as a reason to invest in all these alternative currencies. I need some other factors that almost assure me that it’s going up. In the fluctuating crypto market you are desperately looking for solid clues, but you will find them if you look right. Because even if it violates the actual intention behind decentralized means of payment, crypto exchanges like Binance and Anycoin have a huge influence on the value of a currency. Because buying alternative crypto currencies is complicated. Often so complicated that for this reason the broad mass does not invest in them. But what if the buying process is simplified and everyone can access the crypto currencies with just a few clicks? That’s right! The purchases and thus also the prices go upward. Now many platforms exist on which cryptos are traded, but none is as important as Coinbase. And hardly any platform is as selective as Coinbase. Half an eternity only Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin were sold there, but at the latest when Bitcoin Cash was added at the end of 2017, it became clear that the implementation of further currencies is only a matter of time.
When Coinbase takes in a currency, it’s always one of the most promising projects, one that won’t disappear so quickly. So it is perfect if we invest in a currency that will eventually appear on Coinbase in the long run. Now no one can predict the future and it is therefore a very hypothetical directive, but at the same time a directive which is worthwhile because it confines us to the only right question:
Which coin is so promising that it will be in the top league in a year’s time? Even if our coins don’t appear on Coinbase, we only invest in the most promising projects and thus get the safest profits in the long run. In my opinion, there are 5 coins that have the potential to be on Coinbase by the end of 2018 and/or to increase in value. Each of these currencies is already enjoying a certain popularity and brings with it a revolutionary concept. Together they form the portfolio that I would like to recommend to every investor:
Top 5 Coins At The Moment
Ethereum
Admittedly, Ethereum has been on Coinbase for a long time and yet it is the largest item in our portfolio. Why? Ethereum is the android among crypto currencies. It is not a currency, it is a platform. Although we invest in the related currency ether, this is rather in the background. It is merely the fuel for the future vehicle. How can I say that Ethereum is like Android? Well, ethereum brings DApps with it. Apart from the fact that the name DApps needs to be revised, it points to a wonderful possibility: Decentralised programmes that are no longer located on just one device, server, etc., but on several at the same time. Sounds complicated? It is. But a simple example helps here: We rent out our room, but we don’t want it to be stored on any database that has full decision-making power over which rules we have to abide by when renting it out and that also retains part of the money for itself. Time to use the Ethereum network and conclude a so-called Smart Contract. We offer a night for ETH for the equivalent of 29€ and as soon as someone knows this 29€ ETH he receives our address and a code to enter his room. Our own effort is almost 0 and we are independent from platforms like Airbnb. We don’t have to write around and point the way, we don’t have to make sure that we get paid, everything that can’t necessarily be done with human work is automated. This was just a very simple example and Ethereum goes much further, because in principle any task that can be formulated in the form of “If … Then …” can now be outsourced to machines. The good thing about Ethereum is that many companies, banks and corporations already have their keys in play. At a certain point enough investors will be dependent on the functioning of the Ethereum network to get it going.
IOTA
IOTA is a network with which machines communicate and MIOTA a currency with which they can pay each other. This may sound like science fiction at first, but it is real enough to attract Bosch as an investor. IOTA is harder to explain than Ethereum, but this is because it is even more revolutionary. It does not resort to the blockchain, but establishes the more efficient tangle structure, thanks to which miners are no longer necessary and the transactions become faster over time, not slower. All in all, IOTA has a tremendous potential because it does more work for people than Ethereum and can use other currencies for itself. For example, it would be no problem to use Ethereum to conclude a smart contract with the automated gas pump at the nearest gas station and have your car paid for by IOTA. Admittedly, these possibilities have not yet been exhausted, but that’s exactly the trick: if you get in now, you’ll multiply your money if even a tenth of what is currently being planned is turned into reality.
Ripple
Some connoisseurs will stone me for mentioning this company with its currency XRP, but it is undoubtedly the currency with the greatest relevance at the moment. The crypto currency, which is most commonly used and supported by banks and corporations such as Microsoft. But what is Ripple? The easiest way to imagine Ripple is as a central bank. It is a company that issues the currency XRP, this provides infrastructure and manages the payment traffic.
Ripple solves many problems of the banks. Especially the problems of international money transfers. These usually take several days, are cumbersome (currency exchange, administration, human processing, 4% error rate) and expensive. Grade banks themselves, which move hundreds of millions of Euros, Dollars and Yen every day, pay a lot of money, which can be saved by Ripple as a digital central bank. Transfers with Ripple take only seconds and can take place worldwide at the same (extremely favourable) conditions.
The opinion about Ripple within the crypto community is divided. This is due to the fact that the power over the currency XRP lies technically seen completely and completely with the company Ripple and from anonymity and decentralization no speech can be. Nevertheless, Ripple is a reasonable interface between the old monetary system and the new alternatives and very interesting for investors, because the currency XRP immediately gains value as soon as the first banks use it and thus attract more banks and companies.
Monero
Bitcoin should be anonymous and Bitcoin should ensure fast transactions. Both are only partially fulfilled and therefore Monero has a good market chance with the crypro currency XMR. Monero splits a transaction into multiple transactions, making it impossible to find out anything about the user. Anyone who knows the wallet address at Bitcoin knows the content and all transactions that have ever taken place via this wallet. So if you ever reveal your wallet address, your transaction partner will know about your payments and your “account balance”. With Monero this is not possible and therefore Monero can be used for absolutely anything. Furthermore, the block size of the Monero blockchain is scalable, which means that the transactions will never take as long as with the Bitcoin, because with one block several transactions are processed at the same time.
Cardano
Cardano with his coin ADA is the problem solver among the crypto currencies. The developers want to create an alternative blockchain with currency in a transparent way, which eliminates errors of other crypto currencies. The programming of Cardano takes place via an open source code and is therefore accessible to everyone. In a democratic way, the currency exchange via Cardano can be modified with the help of several layers, guaranteeing security, anonymity and speed. Many researchers and start-ups, such as the co-founder of the Ethereum, are involved in the Cardano project and share their concepts and ideas transparently with the public. Despite massive price rises towards the end of the year, the currency is still undervalued for the benefits it brings to the crypto community. While it is unlikely that it will join the ranks of Coinbase currencies before 2019, it is worth investing.