This is my first post. I'm an investor in technology stocks for many years who followed the beginning of the cannabis stock story and finally decided to move into that area over a year ago, which paid me very well and continues to do so. I have been watching the alternative currency markets for about the same time as cannabis, a few years, before finally taking the action to move into it as well.
In technology, I invested many years, 20 years, in Globalscape, a secure file transfer company and owned a percentage of the company. Blockchain technology reminds me very much of secure file transfer, secure file and data management. It is very natural for me to enter cryptocurrencies with this understanding of it, seeing it as a most secure method to conduct business rather than seeing it as just digital money. The concept of digital money can be scary because you can't hold it in your hands, but really, when we have money in stocks, most of the time they are not held in physical certificates but in what is known as the DRS system. DRS stands for the electronic direct registration of securities and is done in an investor's name on the books for the transfer agent or issuer, and allows shares to be transferred between a transfer agent and broker electronically. In other words, stocks on the stock market are usually in electronic, digital form held by the transfer agent, the company the shares are in, or a brokerage where one has an account and that is the same as digital currency, so there's nothing to be afraid about it being held electronically.
For my first post I will offer that new investors should look to a handful of cryptocurrencies and spread their investment among them. Do your own due diligence and make your own decision, talk to as many people as you think you need to, and usually start small just as you would with stocks. By taking a small position, you will be encouraged to learn about each of the holdings you have, and then you can re-allocate your money into those holdings that you think are the best for you to hold. I started with Bitcoin. Then I took more Bitcoin. As I got into bitcoins, I began to learn about Ethereum and how it is put together. I decided that Ether just might be a better investment than Bitcoin and decided to go more into it than Bitcoin. I set up some mining on two computers, laptops actually, and did Litecoin mining with them. So I began to read on Litecoin. I was doing the mining because I ran into a good app and that got me to setup a wallet at a US based firm. I left that to itself and one day went to the wallet to find Litecoin wasn't a couple of dollars anymore, but tens of dollars. My Ether had done up dramatically as well. That inspired me to do more research and discover Ripple. To me, Ripple seems like the best of the best, and we shall see. I liked what I discovered in my due diligence, all the banks using their technology. They have the strong likelihood of upselling the XRP coin's use to the banks because it works with the Ripple system so well, and I think that's a natural next step for banks to make. If you didn't understand that, Ripple is a company with a technology and it's also a coin, and you will find that out when you do your first day's due diligence on it.
Currently I also added a tiny amount of Golem and a small amount of Siacoin as the tiniest percentage of my alternative coins. I don't need to go further than the ones I have picked here. But the urge to discover other opportunities has spurred me onward and I am now considering Steem and Music. These seem to me to be very promising coins. And so I find myself here, having just set up this steemit account and writing this first post. Let me encourage you to learn more about cryptocurrencies and to start small and learn about your holdings, and then to expand. And keep in mind, should you get a windfall from them, that it's important to be able to have the time to properly manage all the investments. What is easy to do with 4 stocks you will find difficult to do, to oversee and write or post to message boards or blogs, because of the sheer number of more investments you are dealing with. I mean, you still have to sleep, cook, dress, shop, live life with family and friends. So try to keep an eye on keeping it as simple as you can. Don't get so spread out that you can't manage the ups, down, and turns you want to make. You don't want to miss the opportunities that will come your way because of being overloaded and just never got to check out a chart or read all the news. Charts and news are very important to keep up with. Ripple news that is recent and big is just out that you can now use Ripple in your retirement account. As a financial investor for many years, this I know to be a very big thing. So much money is in retirement accounts that now can be tapped to purchase Ripple. Now retirement funds won't likely all be buying Ripple tomorrow, because big ships turn slowly, but the change has happened, the door is now open, and the light of that is being shed around more each day, and you have to decide if you think in one or two or three years there's going to be a lot of 401K money in Ripple. If you do, and you are right, that's a bullish view. I have a bullish view for Ripple.
Okay, that's it for my first post on steemit. I hope you guys liked it. I tried to put a picture of myself but have to do that this weekend or later. I hope you like my advice and insight. Thanks. Glad to be here.