In the past few weeks, Bitcoin has been hovering in the 8000-9000$ range. This is not only a fairly healthy retracement of 60-70% from its prior high, but, in my opinion, a sign of a momentum building up. The overall trend is still downwards, but, in my opinion, mildly so. Short-term lows (even lower than the previous ones) are still possible, but the upside looks so much more attractive. The risk to reward ration, in other words, is not bad at all. Interestingly, the "bitcoin" and "buy bitcoin" searches have been low according to Google Trends. Coupled with negative media, this low public interest looks like the proverbial opportunity in investing - buy when there is blood in the street, prices are low and nobody wants it. If you are not a trader making a living off smaller short-term gains, now seems to be a good time to start accumulating Bitcoin in small installments.
In additional to the technical side, there have been rumors about the crypto space getting as massive as a 5 trillion dollar injection later this year. That should bloat any asset, provided it is a quality one, beyond the all-time highs of last December and January. Considering the growing dominance of Bitcoin over other crypto assets (as measured by Coinmarketcap) and the likelihood that big money will be interested in bigger cryptocurrencies with a lot of volume and liquidity, Bitcoin certainly looks like the best, albeit conservative pick.
I can see a situation where the events of 2017 repeat themselves - Bitcoin grows and suppresses other cryptos in price cause sellers to sell thus speeding up the process. Eventually, the money that went into Bitcoin may return to alt coins to drive their prices ever higher to be liquidated later through mainly BTC, thus causing the whole crypto market to have another massive correction.
If this situation is to happen, the best strategy would be to accumulate Bitcoin and play the alt coin card when BTC reaches its peak while alt coins show signs ready to explode. If you want a particular alt coin now, it seems wiser to me to buy it with fiat money in order to avoid losing its value against BTC. In 2017, the USD value of many assets did not change as dramatically as the value against the rising Bitcoin.
Finally, I wouldn't want to bore my readers with long passages why I think certain assets are worth investing into. I assume a diligent investor would do his or her own research. However, here is a list of assets I am personally invested in, or am looking to invest in, given an opportunity. My short opinion follows every pick.
Big boys/big caps
Bitcoin/BTC - good buy at the moment, anywhere between 6000 and 10000$. Grab it if it is below those numbers. Many analysts do not rule out the possibility of 3000$. Have some money ready for that scenario as well.
Ripple/XRP - lost a lot of its value since its all time high; high liquidity, high market cap, likely to be a favorite of institutional investors
Cardano/ADA - has gone through a major retracement and is hovering in a decent buy zone right now.
Monero/XMR - good buy between 150-200$. Preferably, get it in fiat. BTC charts are too volatile to my taste.
To my knowledge, all but Cardano from the list above can be purchased with fiat money on different exchanges. Inability to buy ADA with USD makes it a bit riskier and susceptible to the potential loss of value against BTC. This can be partially circumvented by purchasing a certain amount of BTC at the current rate and immediately converting it to ADA, thus preserving its current USD value.
Middle weight
Lisk/LSK, IOTA/IOTA, Stellar/XLM, OmiseGo/OMG
All strong projects with good teams and sponsors. IOTA is at a good buy level right now. The other three can wait. I would buy Lisk around this area only in USD. It doesn't look as good on BTC charts to me. Same for OMG - it is a good buy in fiat, but not so much in BTC. XLM has had a major retracement, but can see as low as 0.0002, where I personally will buy it without second thoughts.
Minor league
Quoinex/QASH - good buy level, a project with a clear vision and purpose and a working product, backed by a team with connections in Japan (reminds me of OMG in that regard).
Hshare/HSR (soon to be Hcash) - good buy level, likely to see some appreciation soon with MainNet in sight and the not-so-long-ago negative sentiment surrounding this otherwise interesting project with some big names behind it.
Cindicator/CND - Very low at the moment, sort of "endorsed" by Teeka. He is not somebody to ignore. A working project overal.
Why no insert coin?
There is a certain point of saturation beyond which your portfolio becomes either hard to track or less profitable due to how thinly your funds are spread over many assets. In other words, choosing quality assets and choosing the ones you like among them is the healthiest approach. That's why, for example, I don't have Ethereum here. I have no doubts in its future, but I am not as excited about it as the projects above.
As usual, please do your own research about those projects if you have never invested before or never heard about them. Start with Coinmarketcap, continue with their respective websites, finish with social media and official communication channels. GitHub if you are curious and/or literate in the language of code.
Yours,