Disclaimer: I'm not a financial advisor, quantum physicist, or oceanographer and this is not financial advice. If you lose your ass by following the advice below, it's on you.
Here's how I pick which crypto tokens to invest in to make money both short term and long term AND support great projects. Create a list of potentials. Start the list with (1) below and continue on down to (2), etc., to refine your list. With each item below, your list will grow or shrink. By the time you get to the end of this article, you will have a solid list of crypto to invest in.:
Rank
(1) Though I hate/love Coinbase, they are popular, so I take their ranking of coins into account. When you are choosing which cryptos to invest in (and I recommend you get more than one), the higher up on their ranking for any given crypto, the better. Why? It's pretty simple: People tend to buy the ones most visible. Why "love/hate" regarding Coinbase? A Coinbase account can be useful for quick buys/sells. Their pro version has more coins and options. Keep in mind they report your transactions to the Infernal Redistribution Scum (IRS). IF you use Coinbase, I recommend any time you buy from there, you immediately send the coins to ... see (6) below to obfuscate the trail. NOTE: This is not a guarantee of obfuscation. There are other methods you can use instead of or in addition to this method but it's a good start.
(2) I then go to https://coinmarketcap.com and do the same (look at rankings). I set up a watchlist there.
Cheap vs Expensive
(3) For short term investing, I look at how "cheap" a crypto is, ideally below $1. These can make us a ton of $ if they moon. Of course, all coins can but keep this in mind: The newbs flocking to crypto don't necessarily realize you can buy FRACTIONS, so they see BTC and ETH as out of their reach and scroll until finding some they can afford.
Getting specific
Because of the current global political, cultural, and economic situation (think inflation) as well as what I see coming, I see a few types of crypto having extra value:
(4) Odysee.com (LBRY coin), PeakD (HIVE coin), Minds.com (MINDS), and Everipedia (IQ) because these are all competitors for YouTube, Fakebook, Titter, Wikipedia, and other corrupt big tech mainstream applications and as those corporations tighten their grip, the growth of the decentralized ones I mention here will accelerate. Which brings me to some of the decentralized methods some of these sites use to store large files:
(5) STORJ and FileCoin (FIL). Chia is an honorable mention but I suspect it is under the control of the Chinese government and I hear it is super difficult to profit from it and you may have heard peoples' SSD drives are being worn out by Chia. Why are these coins useful? Think IPFS (Interplanetary File System) and the increasing popularity of the sites mentioned in (4) above. Look up Theta coin as "video back end of web 3.0".
(6) Privacy coins! My favorites are Monero (XMR) and Pirate chain (ARRR). Edit: BE CAREFUL about pirate coin. It is centralized and some are saying it was overhyped.
Best new fast-rising and super-low-priced privacy coin: GET Lethean (LTHN)! Their site https://lethean.io has links to their wallet and best exchanges carrying them. I like https://tradeogre.com.
HOT TIP: Use https://simpleswap.io and https://changenow.io to get other privacy coins and send them somewhere private and secure. One easy to use desktop/mobile wallet supporting these coins and many others is https://Exodus.io.
(7) A few coins I've researched and for various reasons have invested in: Uniswap (UNI), Chainlink (LINK), and Basic Attention Token (BAT).
(8) Last but not least: FUNDAMENTALS. To me this trumps and compliments all of the above. So once you've got a list of a few from (1) to (7) above, start looking deeper at each one to see stuff like:
- Do I agree ideologically and practically with their cause/project?
- Are they fully decentralized?
- Are they colluding with or caving to government entities?
- Are they limited to a certain number of tokens (deflationary) or no limits (inflationary)?
- What mining method? Proof of work like BTC or proof of stake like ETH is moving to? OR something new and potentially even more efficient?
When to hodl (hold) and when to sell?
Best time to buy or sell might be the most difficult to predict! I'm sure you can find articles on this from far more knowledgeable and experienced investors than I! That said, I'll put in a few words of advice:
- Buy the dip. Duh, heh.
- When you think (you can't know for sure until afterwards) a certain crypto has peaked and is about to see a correction, you may be tempted to either hodl (good for you for your patience, etc.) or sell all. Of course, your choice here will be influenced by many factors! All that aside, my recommendation is to "take some profits" by selling a percentage of your holdings in that crypto. This way you still have some that may continue to rise in value and you have the benefits of having more cash and maybe peace of mind that you have made some profit and if the crypto you "left in" drops in value, you didn't lose your ass.
Does any of that help? What are your favorite ones?
Great stuff brother! It is so important that people figure out the hows & whys, instead of just always asking others for which one is next :-P
I've been teaching 2x a week crypto classes for the last month or so... definitely realized fully how few people understand the old financial/markets/banking/tech, much less are ready to really grasp the new haha.
I really love the comparisons of IPFS vs HTTP, credit vs crypto!
Remember to DCA (Dollar Cost Average)! If you buy Hive at $0.50 and it drops to $0.25, either you give the coin up for dead, or you buy more to lower your cost-per-coin, meaning you require that much less movement to get back to break-even. This is probably THE most missed thing for average people in investing of all kinds.
As to specific coins and such, I do have a couple specific things to throw out:
2a. The "insta-mine" nature of it - in only 3 years, over 90% of the coins have been mined, largely by a handful of folks.
2b. The entire recent rise in price is due to Jeff Berwick making it his TCV newsletter pick, and then raving about it constantly on social media (captain pump & dump - something the creator of KMD is also known for)
2c. The "trusted setup" required of zk-snarks privacy
2d. Komodo's centralization issues (ARRR is governed by KMD's notary nodes)
2e. Some other, much smaller issues.
3a. Thorchain (RUNE) is a private DEX/DeFi protocol
3b. Lethean (LTHN) is a Monero fork, entirely community run, with a working decentralized VPN marketplace built in (the token's main/built-in utility is buying VPN service)
Thank you! Making a couple edits to my article based on your advice!