(Must have an understanding of blockchain and Ethereum to understand this post. Think of it like a decentralized super computer.)
Why I am betting heavily on Ether? Why have I built my portfolio around blockchain protocols instead of currencies?
The Ethereum network is the dominant general purpose blockchain as of now. What is a general purposed blockchain you might be asking. This "general purpose" chain has an expressive coding language that can be programmed to do almost anything. Very comparable to the internet itself. When the first blockchain was created "Bitcoin", this chain could only perform the task of sending simple information forward and backwards. The idea behind the Ethereum network was that you could build programs on top of the network using this highly expressive computer language. If the Bitcoin network can only use 1's and 0's to express, Ethereum can use every number and letter in existence.
Everyone likes to compare the crypto space to the dot com bubble which is a great comparison because of how it similarly disrupts and the bubble aspect (We have not seen the true crypto bubble form as of yet). Almost no one had the ability to invest in the infrastructure of the internet. If they did invest in the internet early on, it was likely through a venture capital firm that picked COMPANIES they thought would win. With Crypto when you invest in ETH, you are investing in the infrastructure the industry will be built on, instead of the companies that will use it. More than 80% of tokens use the ETH network.
The opportunity for the regular person to invest in the new technology that will power/facilitate new and up incoming industry and companies as never existed in this way before. Still to this day you have to be an accredited investor to be involved in most start ups. Not to mention the disruption to venture capital with the invention of the ICO (initial coin offering) which is build and facilitated on the Ethereum network. This is just the financial reasoning for owning ETH. Could go on to mention how ETH will power everything from Voting, Healthcare, Legal system, Data storage, Self driving cars and much much more. In the perfect world this idea goes beyond financial motivation to be able to make the world of technology more democratic.
HEDGING your bet(s).
I will go more into detail in another post, but wanted to lightly touch on the subject of hedging in this space. Ethereum is the clear front runner in the space, even more so with the recent news from the SEC that Ether is not a security. With that being said, there is a lot of competition. The obstacles of scaling, governance and privacy have become major issues for the future of these general purpose chains. There are many projects aiming to fix these problems on the Ethereum network as well as creating entirely new chains without these problems. I have chosen to invest in Zilliqa (ZIL), Icon (ICX), Cardano (ADA) as well as others just in case Ethereum fails. Zilliqa is my favorites because I like their idea for solving scalability using sharding. Furthermore, unlike most of ETH competition they have a working prototype. And that is an important point to focus on, prototype. Most of Ethereum's competition is built on Ethereum and does not even have their own product yet.
Zilliqa (ZIL) My favorite hedge on ETH
I am not a financial advisor, take everything I write with a grain of salt. Do your own research!