On August 7th, I said "I expect to see BTC to break through $5,000 this year" and "I believe cryptos continue their trek higher and soon eclipse a total market cap of $200B". I was 100% right on these topics, BTC blew through $5,000 on October 12th and surpassed a total market cap of $200B on November 3rd. I also predicted Ethereum would hit $500 this year and have been wrong on that front, but there is still time left.
My main focus has been to be heavily invested in the bigger coins with multiple network effects working for them. It has paid off as only a handful of coins control the vast majority of the market-share even though there are now over 1,200 coins listed on CoinMarketCap. I think this trend continues and on October 9th I noted that bitcoin had regained 52.5% of the total market and in less than a month that has grown to ~61% for a gain of 8.5%, pretty impressive with the risk profile of Bitcoin and the fact that it continues to make new highs.
Bitcoin is my largest holding at this time. It will continue to be with headlines like "Someone ‘Accidentally’ Locked Away $300M Worth of Other People's Ethereum". A hard-fork may be required to recover these funds. That is just not acceptable and clearly smart contracts are not ready for the mainstream. Bitcoin has never been hacked and even with all the disagreements has continued to move higher. The smartest people in the space are working on it and I believe just like with the internet there will only be a handful of winners and standards such as TCP/IP will arise in cryptocurrency and bitcoin with its first mover advantage and multiple network effects will be a standard and many things will be built on top of it. This explains its large market position. You can have a much superior technology, product or service but if no one knows about it because you are lost in the crowd of 1,200 other options you may never reach your full potential and market value. Since these protocols are just computer code, improvements to bitcoin can be made over time with market consensus. It will be extremely tough to break through the network effects of bitcoin.
That brings us to the SegWit2X Fork. Some are predicting calamity and the death of the original Segwit1x BTC as well as collapse in the bitcoin price. I for one do not subscribe to this due to the network effects mentioned above. Segwit1x Bitcoin (BTC) has millions of wallets and also thousands of merchants, exchanges, and other use cases. I believe Segwit1x is going nowhere and will survive the upcoming fork as it has done with Bitcoin Cash (Bcash) and Bitcoin Gold (Bgold). This is another way for bitcoin owners to cash in on their coins and collect bitcoin dividends. SegWit2X futures are currently trading at $1,301.13 and the market seems to agree with me on this. There is clearly value in forking Bitcoin as seen in the SegWit2X futures price as well as Bcash and Bgold, however Bitcoin (BTC) has remained on top and I expect this to continue. I do believe that we will likely see volatility leading up to and after the fork on November 16th and will likely see some price decline, however I expect Bitcoin to rally into year end and hit the coveted $10,000 by year end.
I follow the space closely and still see many people heavily invested in alts and I believe there will be winners, but you should be very selective. My favorites at this time are NEO (NEO) $26.34, Monero (XMR) $99.99, Dash (DASH) $295.64, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $634.41. I think Bitcoin Cash will rally if there is any turbulence in the fork. You can see the greed of wall street coming even after they dismissed bitcoin for years. There is money to be made and they will not pass up this opportunity. The announcement that the CME Group will launch Bitcoin futures by year end was huge and is the validation needed to bring Bitcoin to the mainstream. I believe if approved, there is no turning back and Bitcoin will be well on its way to $20,000 to be reached sometime next year. Many have called the death of bitcoin and said its in a bubble and about to pop. I say this is just the beginning in a total transformation in how we think about money!
Bitcoin (BTC) price at time of writing $7,332.06.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price at time of writing $634.41.
Disclaimer: You should perform your own research and make your own investment decisions, this is not investment advice. I own or may plan to own cryptocurrencies mentioned above.