I'll preface this article with a bit of background about me. Always had interest in computer technology. My first Computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 (google it) which I learned BASIC on. My Atari 600XL came next, then on and on. Needless to say, I know my way around a computer. Cryptocurrency came onto my radar when I read an article about Bitcoin in 2010. It peaked my interest, to the point that I was actually mining BTC for a few days on my 300 HZ AMD Processor PC. I had a wallet I downloaded for free and was given a few bitcoins for free. At that time, there bitcoin faucets that gave away free bitcoin all over the place, and I accumulated about 20 BTC total over the next few months. The problem was that BTC was worth a few pennies at that time. I didn't do a super deep dive into that tech, as it held no real value for me at that time. Eventually, I built a newer PC, formatted the old one and gave it away. The wallet.dat file was gone forever and the bitcoin held within was instantly vaporized as well.
Time passed, and around 2015-16, I started to realize that cryptocurrency was going to be a huge part of the digital future. I started reading whitepapers that seemed to be popping up like mushrooms all over the place. Each new use case seemed more compelling that the last. Over the next few years, thousands of new projects were launched using the ICO model. That model was basically: "give us money and we'll give you digital tokens or coins and start working on our great project. You'll hold onto the tokens and when the products we are working on launch, the value should go to the moon".
People often speak of those days as "The Wild West" of crypto. No rules, do whatever you want. Make huge money. The white papers all had a similar structure and all promised to deliver their ambitious roadmaps. Anybody with a few hundred bucks could get in early and become a millionaire in no time....except, almost all of these projects failed. Some were undercapitilized and ran out of dough before the product could launch. Some were just bad ideas that didn't work out when completed. Some were flat out criminal enterprises that absconded with the investors money without ever trying to launch. The SEC and Department of Justice got involved in many investigations in the USA, and queered the deal for many Americans who wanted to be involved in some of these projects.
The ICO frenzy peaked in December of 2017. Bitcoin hit it's all time high, other projects were suddenly worth BILLIONS of dollars, then it all crashed about 80% or more from the top. People (like me) who had done their due diligence and invested in ICO projects were suddenly looking at massive paper losses, and were left to cling to the hope that the developers were still working on the roadmap items. These "altcoins" suddenly had a new name: "shitcoins". I invested early in some of them which included Halo Platform, DBET, FUN, Gifcoin and a few others. The big problem with these projects is that they launched based on promises. When the market crashed and the seed money raised during the ICO was devalued when converted to fiat money. Invariably, the promises, one by one, were broken or abandoned. This left a wake of angry, disillusioned and poorer investors. The projects never completely disbanded. They simply downsized themselves to the point where nothing positive could happen (I'm talking about you Scott Morrison of Halo Platform), or pissed away the ICO money bulding a wet dream that eventually meant that the only road to profitability was to sell the underlying assets (I'm talking about you Gifcoin's Krasimir Popov).
So what is the answer going forward?
Firstly, no more promise coins. I will only consider investing in finished products. No more "we need your money to build/complete it. If it isn't done, I don't want it.
Secondly, use cases that make sense to me. If I cannot see the value that the finished product brings to the market, and how it benefits me to hold the coins, I don't want it.
Thirdly, Audited code. The majority of ICO scams were developing code without any external auditing. This means they were ripe for hacks and exploits, leaving investors at the mercy of bad actors. If it doesn't pass an audit from a reliable provider, I don't want it.
Fourth, Decentralized availability of tokens. Centralized exchanges tend to be fee heavy. They also control your crypto while you are trading there (not your keys, not your coins). They also tend to charge large listing fees for the big ones like Binance, which comes out of the developers wallet. These are bad things. Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap work just fine, have good liquidity, allow trading directly to and from my wallet, and tiny fees. I want that.
So what is on my radar now?
Smart contracts. These are products that feature completed immutable code. You run the code and the contract does what it is supposed to do. It's that simple. No third party with their hand out. I get to be the bank for a change.
Defi Products. That's the newest "buzz word" classification of cryptos. These tend to mimic services offered in the fiat financial world.
Platform Coins. Coins issued by working projects that have utility within their network ecosystem. Think Ethereum. Polkadot. Maybe a few others.
What's still in my wallet?
Ethereum (not much, but it tends to be useful for transaction gas fees, etc.)
Gifcoin (My original ICO coins and bonus coins are there, but are virtually worthless.)
Halo Platform (a tiny amount still in my wallet. Virtually worthless. A promise coin with zero future, no matter what Scott and Recourier say in their chats).
HEX - An ERC20 token on the ETH chain, which means it is in my ETH wallet. Hex is an immutable smart contract. It has 3 successful audits; passed all of them. HEX is a blockchain version of a Certificate of Deposit or GIC depending on what country your in. There are plenty of detractors for this project out there calling it a ponzi, or a scam, but I defy any of them to show me a single person who has been victimized. It is a smart contract. A piece of audited code. You input ETH, run the code and get back HEX. You can then run the code and stake your HEX to earn trustless interest. Without going into great depth, the code works very well. It has already had huge gains. I expect it to continue to grow. I have already Cashed out enough HEX into ETH, and then converted the ETH to US Dollars to cover my full investment in HEX, as well as all of the money I put into Halo and GIfCoin. Even after doing that, I still have 24x my initial ETH investment in HEX as of this writing, locked into stakes that are earning me solid interest. Cry wolf all you want. I have made a lot of money with HEX. Your mileage may vary.
What am I researching right now with an intent to buy later?
WISE Token - A project that has some minor similarities to HEX, butsome excelent attributes that I think will make it better. Start with audited smart contract code. 50 Day launch period starting November 11th. Staking begins on Day 51 for trustless interest that can be scraped into your wallet whenever you choose to. The best part of this token is that it is being launched by a non-profit foundation. All of the ETH raised during the launch, less a capped amount to cover development costs will be sent to Uniswap, creating an Ownerless Liquidity Pool. The smart contract will burn the Uniswap liquidity tokens, so the liquidity will never be removed by the foundation. This is important because it means that you will always be able to sell your tokens if you wish to. That huge amount of ownerless liquidity will undoubtably be used in a lot of DEFI transactions as well. If you are still looking to invest in something, I would recommend visiting www.wisetokendaddy.com . It is an referral link that takes you to the main Wise webpage and will give you an additional 10% tokens when you buy after the launch starts. Read the Teal Paper. Join the Telegram group and learn all you can. This could be the biggest player in the DEFI game in 2021.
DOT - Polkadot 's platform token. I have just started reading about this one. Looks extremely promising...but so much reading to do....sigh.
I hope this information will help you on your journey...leave me a comment below if you have one.