May 16th, 2017

This is the ALT - Experiences, news, and more from my personal crypto portfolio developed over the last year.

I have been quietly working since joining Steemit in July of 2016 to learn everything I could about the cryptocurrency space, utilizing everything that the community members here have shared about economics, strategy, and the ever shifting sands of TA.

All the veteran crypto heads have been at this for quite some time, so my purpose here is to share the experience from the perspective of a newb, a less than one year old in crypto. Crypto-baby... sounds creepy. But you get the point.

This isn't intended to be investment advice, so please do your research and as sage wisdom goes, only invest what you're willing to lose.

What I'm holding (Exchange Only)

First, be aware that I reside in New York City, home of the Big Bitlicense, graveyard of innovation. I'm pretty sure I saw a SWAT team tackle a middle-aged woman using an Airbitz app to complete a localbitcoins transaction. Jus' saying. Innovation does NOT live in New York for cryptocurrency, it's clear that the bankers will only allow it to be leashed in the backyard.

But I digress.

I view my investments in tiers. Perhaps it's because I work in tiered ad networks in ad ops or because I don't want to lose my shirt, but nevertheless, there are three tiers I view my holdings through. This does not include the PIVX I'm staking in their wallet, or any investments in current or recent ICO's like Particl or Peerplays.

Tier A

Tier A Coins are like gold, silver, or other long-term investments. They are places you want to stash your crypto because it's a Safe Haven. While BTC is on top, it's not the only safe place to store your value.

1: BTC - Currently Trading at 1 Btc = 1 Btc

I don't have to really provide articles here. BTC, with all it's current struggles, still seems to be the king of the hill. Widespread Japanese adoption seems to be cresting that wave, with increases in other areas of the world as well.

Read here for the Top 5 Cryptocurrencies in Japan. Spoiler Alert, BTC is #1

I view BTC as I do gold. It is a store of value for the long term. Thankfully my trading adventures have taken the form of altcoins for most of my time in the exchange, so I haven't had to transfer anything but profits to long term holdings since all the slow downs have happened.

As of today, it also seems that Bitcoin's Cryptocurrency dominance has fallen below 50% for the first time in its history. The times they are a-changing.

2: Ethereum - Currently Trading at 0.05229670 Btc

Last Summer I worked very early mornings at NBC. I had a lot of time in the early hours to read and work at the same time, and I read about ETH. BTC was my first crypto purchase, this was my third. I sold my ETH holdings within days of buying it at a slight profit because it had failed to deliver the excitement I think I was looking for, and I realized I should be using these early funds to invest in altcoins and learn more about all of the current projects.

Ethereum has been enjoying a first half of 2017 that has been accompanied by many articles and announcements. Everyone seems to be using Eth these days:

The Big Four Banks in Ireland aim to use Ethereum backed currency

The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance wants to "build, promote, and broadly support Ethereum-based technology best practices, standards and a reference architecture" but they also would like to develop private blockchains for validated members

Is Storj's move to Ethereum a positive signal for the market?

Finally, What the heck is Xeth? A new, open-sourced privacy service for Ethereum, that's what!

What was my first crypto-to-crypto, and second fiat-to-crypto purchase?

3: STEEM (STEEM) !! - Currently Trading 0.00057250 Btc

I am very long on STEEM and my choice to put it in this tier is a personal one. You may have a different darling coin that you put in your A Tier, but be cognizant of why you're doing it. I personally believe in the long-term continued success of this platform.

I discovered Steem within weeks of my first BTC purchase. As is normal (I suspect), I became hungry for all BTC related news, thought, opinion, speculation, and observation. It was there, somewhere in a random bitcoin forum, that I saw a post about a new blogging site that pays in crypto for content and community.

That linked could've had the Ransomware virus or given me Zica, but I clicked it instantly.

Back in 2016 July (5th or 6th), you had to provide a reddit ID. As a long time lurker on reddit, I only read articles and comments and didn't bother with the karma system. But Steemit intrigued me enough to sign up to reddit, so I could sign up to Steemit. I have no idea what that reddit login is any more, though still I lurk.

There have been some dramatic times in the last year, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I bought some Steem at 3+ USD, and I have bought Steem at .10 cents. If you're familiar with my blog, you know I usually give it away through the Poetry Slam Challenge, this place tends to do that to you :)

Steem has been in the news a lot lately for the recent price rise, and the journey continues.
STEEM back in top 10 Cryptocurrencies

Steemq is teasing us again with another image of the youtube killer video upload app for Steemit

And Steemq gets timeline support to scrub through videos

And speaking of killer apps on this blockchain:

Don't foget Zappl! It's over 83% funding at the time of this posting

4: Ripple (XRP) Currently Trading at 0.00019211 Btc

banking and finances. Instead, the goal of Ripple is to enhance the current, existing structure and to enable it to reduce waste while improving efficiency. This is obviously attractive to bankers who are entrenched in the old guard system.

So while Ripple is in my A Tier, it is at the bottom of that list, and is only there as a speculative bet. It doesn't matter what I feel about Ripple, what they're proposing, and what they've done so far, leads me to believe that this will be the project that will onboard all the normies. Mostly, because it will probably happen in the backend and show itself to consumers as easy to use applications being supported by the financial institutions the normies already use.

So don't hate me because I hold Ripple, love me because I'm trying to make good trades ;)

Ripple will replace the Venmo's, Chase Quickpays, hell maybe even Payza and Paypal. Mark this post and come back to it in a year to see if I've hit Super Saiyan Nostradamus level with this prediction.

Because of Bank Trials in Japan, Ripple has become one of the most popular cryptocurrencies there and is thought to be responsible for the upward march of the price.

Would you sell half your BTC for XRP?
Someone in this Chat asked the question, and the answer is a little more complicated than it might seem at first.

Tier B

This tier is reserved for the crypto projects that I feel are up and coming and more than promising. They aren't necessarily long, though a medium-term hold on these is how it's seem to be going, ousside of swing trading.

1: Stratis (STRAT) Currently Trading at 0.00070597 Btc

The Stratis Platform purports to offer end-to-end solutions for the development, testing and deployment of native C# blockchain apps.

Keep up with their News

###

2: Zcash (ZEC) Currently Trading at 0.05304370 Btc

What Zcash lacks in governance model it makes up for in privacy centric design. While all transactions are public, all details of each transaction remain private.

Zcash celebrated its 6 month anniversary several weeks ago, and in a blog post discussed the milestones accomplished as well as the vision moving forward.

3: Lumen (XLM) Currently Trading at 0.00002846 Btc

Stellar is a platform that connects banks, payments systems, and people.
Integrate to move money quickly, reliably, and at almost no cost. But is it being manipulated?

Tier C

This is where I place my most risky bets and my pet project investments. Having this tier lets me vent my need for speculation on upcoming endeavors in spaces that I like. For example, I was part of the MUSIC coin price ride for a while until I decided that the research indicated that the team wasn't headed in a direction that resonated with me. Super risky bet but considered a Tier C, so there's no money that I put here and expect to ever get back.

Also, when I choose correctly, I make sure to slowly withdraw my initial investment upon realizing upside. As long as I recover my initial investment, I'm much less prone to feelings of anxiety when the price does the Hero's Journey.

1: Ardor (ARDR) Currently Trading at 0.00005307 Btc

2017 seems to be the year of governance models, and I'm all about it. I like the idea of Ardor and child-chains, and the possibilities it opens up for the future, and used it as a muse for the #blockchainfiction series I've been posting recently, The Blockchain Explorer Pt I | Pt II | Pt III. If you haven't read it yet, go and give it some love and comments, and a upvote don't hurt either!

These are the features that most attract me to ARDR:

1. A Decentralized Asset Exchange - Building off of the Asset Exchange on Nxt, Ardor will enable the ability to trade assets on any child chain for any of the child chain tokens. This allows child chains to interact with each other and opens up numerous opportunities for collaboration as well as allow cross chain asset trading, a long-requested feature within the Nxt ecosystem.

2. Decentralized Voting and Governance Systems - Ardor will be at the core of decentralized consensus in the future. Secure and anonymous voting will be an available feature on all child chains as it is on the Nxt platform.

Do I think ARDR will dominate the cryptocurrency market, and the world? Nope. But I do think that innovation and experimentation is important, and I think their tech creates some interesting potential use cases for the future and may inspire features in later independent projects that value what child-chains could do.

2:Digibyte (DGB) Currently Trading at 0.00000150 Btc

This is a pet project. When I bought this coin, I was interested in BCY and Spells of Genesis, a blockchain-based TCG (Trading Card Game). I wanted to further explore this space, but I wasn't liquid enough in BTC to grab GAMES or Counterparty.

After making my bets, they suddenly announce they are activating segwit, and the price starts an adventure that has left my heart in my stomach at times. I have more than recovered my initial investment in this token, and still have enough skin in the game to clean up nicely should this mobile gaming platform continue to perform, and the price continue to march upward.

As of this writing, DGB is trading at 0.00000149 btc.

Digitbyte's Website

Follow the talk on the ANN forum

3:BitCrystals (BCY) Currently Trading at 0.00021403 Btc

This is another pet project I wanted to support. I've since downloaded the game it supports, Spells of Genesis, and it is indeed a fun, billards style fantasy art adventure. I haven't "blockanized" a card yet, at least I don't think. But once I do, I should be able to trade those card assets on the blockchain and report back to all of you what that's like.

I have no idea where this will go, it's really just a bet on a cool game that I enjoy playing. I hope the best, though, for both their team and my portfolio. This is the only coin that I have not recovered my initial investment from yet.

Check out BCY Website

---

The Biggest Lesson/s

• First, don't EVER ever trade with value you cannot afford to lose. Don't be reckless with your savings, your future is your responsibility to protect.
• Don't ignore price points, upon entry or at profit/loss taking. But don't let the price hypnotize you. They are not the only reason to participate in a project. Every Project has to start somewhere, and having a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the development team, roadblock, and technology set itself will help you sleep better at night knowing you're protecting your value.
• Listen to/Ignore FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Despair). But don't trade emotionally. Every company has its ups and downs, it's never a straight line to the Moon. Speaking of...
• Beware TGTBT - Too Good To Be True. If everyone is shouting from the rooftops that the current en vogue crypto coin (say, PINKCOIN for example) is headed for orbit, go ahead and have a look at the charts and news. But all long green candles are liable to turn into long red ones at any time. You can never know what is churning behind the scenes that drives a PND, and anyone who tells you they know is not being entirely on the level.

I've tried to live up to the 10 Steem Commandments for Success, something I posted almost 1 year ago. It still mostly applies, and I've done my best to stick to it. It's been easy with such a great community that appreciates fiction, poetry, news, jokes, and all other types of information and sharing.

---

I'm still a crypto-noob, so please leave comments, thoughts, insights, or anything else, below.

Thanks for spending time here, please support #blockchainfiction by posting stories under that tag or voting on the ones already there!

@prufarchy