When I began investing in crypto on August 7th of this year, I had no idea how much of this would fluctuate between total excitement, and complete worry. Luckily, I have earned my HODLing stripes and I am up 140% on the year so far. While I do not have a lot of money invested in the space, I hope to grow my portfolio in 2018 to a substantial size. Here is my reasoning behind why I hold what I hold:
Ethereum: This is my platform play. I believe Smart Contracts are the way of the future, and ETH is paving the way. Also, I love the updates they have planned in the future regarding Proof-of-Stake, sharding, and the Raiden Network. All these should help Ethereum scale and be THE major player in Dapp development, as well as payment.
Bitcoin: The king of crypto. Yes, is an old algorithm. Yes, there is a lot of forking and in-fighting within the community. But these negatives still don't deter it from being worth over $17,000 currently with an all-time high of over $20,000. While BTC definitely has vulnerabilities, it has shown an incredible amount of perseverance. It's always a good hedge with all the alts I have my hands in. I'm up about $350% on it, and I will continue to HODL the majority for the next few years.
Omise Go: This is the golden-child of platform developments on top of Ethereum. The founder, Vitalik Buterin, is an advisor on an already proven board. The partnership with Omise in Thailand is extremely exciting to see what they can do to become a major player in the payment platform world.
Stellar Lumens: I mainly have invested in Stellar because of their founder, Jed McCaleb. He helped build Ripple into what it is today with a $30Bil marketcap. While it functions slightly differently than Ripple, I think McCaleb will use his wealth of knowledge from that project to make this a success. Payment infrastructure that is boarder-less will be a game-changer for the world of commerce by connecting people & institutions for pennies on the dollar. Also, paying .01 XLM per transaction is extremely cheap and convenient :) The Western-Union is about to have tough competition.
VeChain: With counterfeits being a huge problem in today's economy, VeChain aims to place authentication on the blockchain. They have a big partner in PwC. The use case is huge for this, and I'm glad I picked some up at 22 cents.
Chainlink: The blockchain is a revolutionary concept, but most businesses will need a connector of crossing the elements of their business over to the blockchain. Chainlink strives to be that connector. They have been quiet with news lately since they are hard at work. I believe this is a long term hold and a potential big player.
Salt Lending: I like the idea of credit-free loans. Staking your crypto in order to get a loan seems like an interesting concept to me. If you pay off your loan on time, you receive back all the crypto you personally staked as collateral. I bought a tiny amount just to see what happens.
Monero: This is a coin I want to stack heavily in 2018. With the US government getting more involved in crypto and tracking certain BTC holders, privacy is going to be a big need in the future. Monero is completely anonymous and even blocks IPs from being detected. Their concept and implementation of Ring Signatures & Stealth Addresses is genius. I look forward to see what elements they add in 2018 to increase privacy further. Regardless of how you feel about the dark market starting to use this coin often, it is a good sign that the technology works and has a proven use case.
2018 Plan: Plain and simple. Stack all my coins but heavily beef up Monero. I want to increase my potential ROI on all these coins. I am open to bringing on 1-2 more coins, however.
Anyways, I would love to hear your thoughts on what I own, as well as other coins you are big on! Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope everything moons so we can all buy lambos in 2018!
-Sir Rye Winchester
PS: I mainly do vlogs that concentrate on things outside of crypto. I would love for you to check out my content if you are interested in food, beverage, and sports.