After a morning of repricing my positions on Cryptopia, I came to find that I had a modest-sized position in Home Block Coin. I remember when I did my initial research that things looked decent enough to take a position in due to the wide spread.
For the HBC/DOGE spread I actually was able to close out half of my position at twice the price, consistent with my investment objective to keep half of all of the altcoins I buy to HODL onto, if I can.
When I went to see how the price was doing I noticed that it had dropped by about 2/3. When I went to their website to do further sleuthing it turns out that they appear to be more of a HYIP than a stable altcoin. I was surprised to learn that they have some sort of lending program that purports to give 48% a month and encouraged larger amounts to be given greater rewards, similar to a HYIP as well.
Woops, this was not what I signed-on for.
On the way down I had one of my buy positions executed and when I looked at the buy/ask price it's about 1/3 so I must have bought right about at the top.
Lesson learned.
With my altcoin portfolios I can afford aberrations but I'm keen to learn as much as I can from each loss. In this case the signs of problems were all too apparent and although I did achieve exactly what I wanted to with the HBC/DOGE spread, the HBC/LTC spread purchase left me hanging in a big way.
You may be looking at the numbers that I'm presenting and thinking that they are on the small side. I would encourage you to look at the number of markets that a coin has on Cryptopia: USD, NZD, BTC, LTC, and DOGE. When I spread these various coins across the markets it does add up to a healthy chunk of bitcoins. That being said, it just takes one coin to rocket upwards to provide a handsome return for the entirety of the base bitcoins I'm putting in.
Now I'm sure that there are fans of Home Block out there so I don't want to be closed-minded, please comment in the section below if you feel bullish on the coin and think I should reconsider liquidating my position. Maybe the wave of the future is aggressive affiliate marketing and volatility software-based coins that push themselves up much in the way that companies buy back their own shares on the stock market. I just know that this extends beyond my comfort levels at the moment. There are so many more coins that are straight-forward and still offer wide spreads on various markets to be focusing my capital on a coin with so many question marks and red flags.