I wrote two blogs this morning: the first discussing coins I decided to sell to buy more bitcoin, and the second was a justification for continuing to hold Ethereum. This blog post will discuss why I'm continuing to hold other coins.
Steem
This one is obvious: by holding Steem and not powering down, not only am I investing in the future of Steem, but I am investing in myself. I'm not one of those spammers that upvotes every comment I make on another person's blog, but I upvote my own posts, receive some rewards from curation, and when i put a lot of effort into a comment on another person's thread I upvote that too.
I considered buying up more steem in the past week while the price was dipping, but I couldn't justify the EV of it yet.
Some basic back of the envelope map explaining why I'm not actively buying more:
I have just over 5000 steem in my account and my upvote power is currently $0.75. Suppose I bought 50k more steem for roughly 27.5 bitcoins. Let's suppose I write 20 blogs a month, and that this investment would gain me $7.50*20 = $150 more in posting rewards, and another $150 in random posts, curation, and future rewards based on my personal investment into the product. Without accounting for any price changes, this results in a gain of roughly $300 in the next month by buying this steem up.
Now let's suppose I kept those 27.5 bitcoins instead. For one, I can use those coins to take part in the next byteball airdrop on August 7th. For every 16 bitcoins in your wallet, you receive 1 byteball. The price of 1 byteball is currently $525, but let's assume the increased supply decreases the price to $300 per: this means that just by using those bitcoins in the byteball airdrop, I would make $515 in the distribution.
Further, I make money lending bitcoins. The lending rates have been pretty terrible the past month, but assume I gain roughly .05% per day on my bitcoins lent. 15 days (not 30 because I'll begin sending them over to my wallet in preparation for airdrop) * 27.5 bitcoins * .0005 = .20625 bitcoins gained, plus the small amount of compound interest by reinvesting those coins profited. This equates to $483 given the current price of bitcoin.
So by taking 27.5 bitcoin and investing in steem, I gain roughly $300, but by keeping them as bitcoins I gain roughly $1000. I can't justify doing that just yet.
However what I can justify doing is powering up all my posts 100%.
I believe in this platform, and do want to invest in myself, so instead of selling the 50% of SBD rewards like some users, I'll just power those up and continue to increase my position on this site organically.
I do plan on buying up more Steem at some point to further invest in myself, but unfortunately I can't do it just yet. If you think I'm wrong about this and should do it sooner, please leave a comment below!
Bitshares
I'm holding Bitshares for 3 main reasons.
- Transaction speed is orders of magnitude higher than BTC/ETH
- Just like I loan Bitcoins, I loan Bitshares on Poloniex and can continue to do that while I move my BTC over to my wallets for airdrops
- Large potential community demand based off connections to Steem and EOS
Bitshares is multifaceted, anti-inflationary, has the fastest transaction times, and has a large potential market of users. I've also made 5000 bitshares by loaning on poloniex in the past month so despite much lower rates than previously I'll continue loaning them out to make more.
I have friends who are Bitshares fanatics that continue buying more as the price dips. I'm not quite as confident as they are, but I'll hold onto the coins I currently have.
Iconomi
As stated in a previous blog, I bought Iconomi during the ICO at the recommendation of 
Iconomi is not without competition.
I prefer Iconomi to Melonport because it had a larger initial investment, is more anti-inflationary, and has better software to use. Some people will flock to Melonport because it is more decentralized since it is based on a blockchain rather than a website, but the speed and ease of use of Iconomi is enough for me to look past the single point of failure. I may change my mind about this in the future, but I own stock of normal centralized companies like Amazon and Apple, and the invention of the blockchain is not going to prevent me from investing in traditional ways.
Tezos
Earlier today, I outlined why I'm not worried about Tezos with regards to competition for Ethereum. But I invested in the early stage of the ICO to receive the 20% bonus and while the tokens have not yet been distributed, I plan on holding them after they are. Tezos has a very similar setup to Steem, which will allow me to get involved from the get go due to familiarity.
Further, since I don't really view it as strict competition for Ethereum, I look at it as a different company with different possible features. There is room in the world for both Tezos and Ethereum since some features are better suited for fat-layered protocols, and some are better suited for applications built on top of a thin-layered protocol.
Finally, since I have so much Ethereum, this does act as a hedge. Unlike other areas where there are many possible similar coins, I only had to buy one more and I view them as sufficiently different.
Byteball
I planned on reading up more on Byteball, but I just never got around to it. All I need to know is that by owning byteballs I can get more byteballs in each airdrop distribution: for every byteball in your wallet on August 7th, you will receive .2 more byteballs. So far only 36% of the byteballs have been distributed, so there should be a few more airdrops in the coming months. Holding onto them and receiving compound interest at least guarantees I'll profit coins, rather than holding a set amount and hoping the price goes up.
Anyone have deeper thoughts on Byteball than just holding because it makes more coins?
I plan on taking a break from buying new coins
There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies, and without knowing details about every team, all of the possible competition, combing through the code, and seeing market inefficiencies I don't see a reason to invest in new ones for the time being. Instead of reading another theoretical whitepaper about an idea that already has 5+ applications every day, I can spend that time reading up on current crypto news, learning coding, and taking classes online.
Maybe I'll find new coins I like more in the future, and maybe I'll find reasons to sell some of the ones I already have. But for now, I plan on holding these and spending less time refreshing and obsessing over the charts.
My name is Ryan Daut and I'd love to have you as a follower. Click here to go to my page, then click in the upper right corner if you would like to see my blogs and articles regularly.
I am a professional gambler, and my interests include poker, fantasy sports, football, basketball, MMA, health and fitness, rock climbing, mathematics, astrophysics, cryptocurrency, and computer gaming.