It has been more than two months since I first began to look into cryptocurrencies and buy them. I was fortunate to catch the altcoin boom, which has motivated me to research coins that have longer-term potential. As of today, I hodl five coins and I'm looking to add more.
Part of what influenced my decisions to buy certain cryptocurrencies was through people sharing their portfolios. So without further ado here is my portfolio. The proportions are based on fiat value as of February 4.
Ethereum: 24.8%
Ethereum consists of the largest portion of my portfolio. I first bought it back in late-November, when the price was at around $400 per ether, and I have been hodling ever since.
I believe Ethereum will soon overtake Bitcoin in market cap. The smart contract ecosystem is thriving, and with the Casper proof-of-stake protocol on the horizon, I'm confident that Ethereum will have a great 2018.
Stellar: 23.6%
Stellar is my second biggest hodl. I was impressed by the Stellar Development Foundation's team and mission, as well as the developer-friendly technical documentation. I previously wrote a post on Stellar which sums up most of my thoughts on why I like Stellar.
I also have an additional 7.6% in Mobius tokens. While the price of the token has dropped since the public sale, Mobius has announced a partnership with WaltonChain, so I'm waiting to see what happens.
Nano: 16.2%
When I first heard of Nano back around Christmas, it was called RaiBlocks and it was being heavily shilled on Reddit. The near-instant transaction times and zero transaction fees were particularly appealing. I looked into how to buy it, but it was being traded on shady exchanges.
A lot has changed since then. It is now listed KuCoin and Binance, and it has rebranded to Nano. The block lattice, the tech behind Nano's fast transactions, has been stress-tested with promising results. I believe that eventually Nano will epitomize the true meaning of a cryptocurrency---a medium of exchange.
Cardano: 14.1%
Cardano was the first altcoin that I bought. Their mission---to build an academically peer-reviewed, formally verified cryptocurrency from scratch---is ambitious. The development would rather take the time to get the details right from the very start rather than rush to release something, and I respect that.
While Cardano is still early in its development process, it has the fifth highest market cap which has prompted a lot people to accuse it of being vaporware. But from looking at the team of researchers working on the project, I disagree. Now I acknowledge that there is a risk that the team might fail to deliver on their ambitious long-term goals, but if the team succeeds, Cardano will make huge waves as the most technically solid smart contract platform. That's why I have some money in Cardano for the long-term.
Ark: 13.6%
Last but not least is Ark. It originally forked from Lisk, and is being actively developed based on their roadmap. What also drew me to Ark was its staking system. Ark's delegated proof-of-stake system awards forging rewards to the 51 delegates with the most votes. If you store Ark on a wallet that you control, you can vote for a delegate; the weight of your vote is proportional to the amount of Ark you have. Every time your delegate is awarded, you earn a share of that reward. Being rewarded for hodling Ark with more Ark sounds pretty cool to me.
Potential new coins for my portfolio
In the coming months, I'm looking at expanding my portfolio by buying new cryptocurrencies. In no particular order, I'm considering buying:
- NEO
- ICON
- Monero
- OmiseGo
- Basic Attention Token
- Po.et
- Ambrosus
I probably will end up buying only about two of three of the above, but reading their whitepapers and doing research on them has actually been quite enlightening.
I try to keep all of my coins in my portfolio off of exchanges when possible. Many of them are on my Ledger Nano S, which is secure and supports many different cryptocurrencies. I highly recommend it if you're looking to hodl crypto. If you decide to buy one, I'd appreciate it if you use my referral link.
I've bought many of my altcoins off of Binance. It has the largest selection of coins out of any exchange; and while the withdrawal fees on some coins are too high, I recommend using Binance for buying most altcoins. Again, if you want to sign up, please use my referral link.
If you like this post, I'd appreciate it if you donate some cryptocurrency. My wallet addresses for the coins featured in this article are listed below.
- ETH: 0xc2b7253a2b2FFc45c7F894bBEe4a66D233534e04
- XLM: GBHPIYBSUEVFVL7LKG37PR6IWTY6GBCDJQM2EHRHTUGZSQK6YRTKLVBJ
- XRB: xrb_1gt7bf7zueu5fpq8wyk8cnpgi8qap6emxr315bkfcbub4burnmz8pp5ude8f
- ADA: DdzFFzCqrhtC2HEA6j2qjy1pjEDLphW2cWvahDCMPiMxc8MyiVM2ZdVmLyTfkRhiRTPbfWz6achsWb4GdRd1AzRDVwNpHDriP864yuZb
- ARK: ARiUVE9b82ubcZUNrtPEs49w1FNK3hnUrQ