Steem is full of people that are interested in Cryptocurrency. Many of you are new and looking for advice on where to invest. Others of you have been in crypto for years, and have great insights to offer. In today's blog post, I'd like to talk about my personal investment strategy which has been working pretty well so far for me. I'd also like to hear back from some of you more experienced investors about improvements that could be made.

To begin with, I'm new to crypto myself. I've been reading every article I can find and watching every YouTube video I can about the topic for the last few months in an attempt to educate myself. Over the last month, I've begun investing. I'm a hard working family man in his early 40's who draws a decent salary, but I don't have a whole lot of disposable income to invest with after paying the bills. At the same time, I know my 401k isn't going to be enough to provide for a comfortable retirement, and I have to find a way to cultivate a better retirement fund. Im banking on cryptocurrency to get me there. I greatly feel that block chain technology will change the world. The coins coming out today are the equivalent of the Googles, Ebays, and Amazons of 20 years ago.

I've decided to simply take a very small amount of cash each paycheck and put it into crypto. It's very important that you only invest what you can afford to loose, similar to gambling. For me this has equated to $20-$50 a paycheck.
That basically means we cook at home one more night a week instead of eating out.

So where am I putting my money? Well, I feel like it's smarter for an investor like me to put his money in the smaller alt coins. The investment is minimal and the possible rewards are much higher. In my mind, investors that are entering the market right now have missed the boat on Bitcoin (BTC). It would take a tremendous amount of money entering the market to double or triple your investment if you put it all in BTC. Conversely, it wouldn't take much at all for a coin valued at $0.01 to go to $0.02 or $0.10 and effectively multiply your investment ten-fold. With this in mind, I look for coins that are in the top 25 for market capitalization. I know people are investing in and using these coins, so they probably have a future. Once I find a coin that has a good market cap and a price I like, I will research the project. Is this something I can see a use for in the future? Next I'll look into the development team. Do they have good talent? Do they have experience? Only when I'm comfortable with a coin in all these aspects will I put money into it.

Right now, these are my top picks.

#1 Stratis (STRAT) - Stratis is a technology similar to Ethereum (ETH), only better. What Stratis and Ethereum do is create a platform where other developers can write software that access blockchain technology without having to create a new blockchain or really even fully understand the minutia of how it works. It's basically a way to plug blockchain technology into an application. The cryptocurrency is the 'gas' that is used to perform operations in the blockchain. With Ethereum, this is done through a proprietary programming language that the programmer must learn. Stratis, on the other hand, has done the same thing using a programming language that most developers already know.

Current Price: $6.00
Market Cap: $591,227,535
Market Rank: 11

#2 New Economy Movement (XEM) - XEM is a blockchain that's has similarities to both BTC and ETH with upgrades. It is more secure then both. It is the first blockchain to utilize Eigentrust++ technology. It also has the ability to eliminate spam nodes without taking down the whole network. The thing that I like most about XEM is that it doesn't rely on power hungry miners to create new coins. Simply by holding 10,000 coins or more in the official XEM wallet, you will start generating new coins in your wallet.

Current Price: $0.22
Market Cap: $1,964,727,000
Market Rank: 6

#3 Ripple (XRP) - Wikipedia defines Ripple as "a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS), currency exchange and remittance network... (I)t is built upon a distributed open source Internet protocol, consensus ledger and native currency called XRP." In lamen's terms, this means that Ripple is a vehicle for financial institutions to is to transfer large volumes of money quickly and cheaply. It is already adopted and being used by many of the world's largest banks. Many people shy away from XRP because of it's ties to banks. I'm not one of those people. While I do believe that cryptocurrencies will deliver a blow to the traditional financial institutions, I don't think banks will ever fully go away. They will have to adapt to survive. XRP is the first step in that evolution. The fact that so many banks have already adopted it, means that it will be used and has a future. Another neat thing to keep in mind about Ripple is that a small amount of XRP is destroyed with each transaction. Therefore, as more and more transactions take place, the supply will get smaller and more valuable.

Current Price: $0.17
Market Cap: $6,713,124,805
Market Rank: 3

#4 Siacoin (SC) - Siacoin is pretty easy to understand. What Sia does is bring blockchain technology to cloud services. Most cloud services are currently stored in centralized data centers. Sia is a decentralized network of data centers that comprise the world’s fastest, cheapest, and most secure cloud storage platform. To begin using the service, you simply install the official wallet, and purchase drive space with Siacoin, and start uploading files.

Current Price: $0.009
Market Cap: $262,860,286
Market Rank: 23

#5 EOS (EOS) - EOS is a brand new coin that is being billed by many as the new 'Ethereum killer.' EOS is being developed by Dan Larrimer, who is a big name in the world of cryptocurrency. He was one of the developers of Steemit, Bitshares, and others. EOS is his newest project, and it is an attempt (similar to Stratis) to take Ethereum's smart contract technology and make it more efficient. The project raised a ridiculous amount of money during it's ICO and is already in the top 15 coins by trading volume. Being a new project, there's still not a lot of technical data, but success seems to follow Dan Larrimer, and I see no reason to think that EOS will be any different.

Current Price: $1.81
Market Cap: $471,817,608
Market Rank: 13

I hope you've found value in this post. Be sure to follow so you don't miss tomorrow's post where I will discuss my number 6-10 picks.

How do you feel about the above picks? Is there a coin that you think should be in the top 5? Let me know in the comments below!

For Part 2 click here.
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@beastley/my-top-crypto-picks-part-2