Alt Coins
There are hundreds of crypto-coins in addition to Bitcoin (BTC). There are several that I considered top tier players. Some of those are solid top tier Alt coins, and others drift in an out of the top tier as their price and volume changes over time.
I look at it as you have BTC, which is the "main" coin. Then you also have Ethereum (ETH) which can be argued to also be on par with BTC, or it can just be the most solid top tier coin. I would say that right now the other top tier Alt coins, in no particular order are: Dash (DASH), LiteCoin (LTC), Golem (GNT), Zcash (ZEC), Monero (XMR), Decred (DCR), Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE) and maybe Next (NXT), Augur (REP), MaidSafeCoin (Maid), and Stellar (STR).
As a side note, ETH went through a split (which is called a Hard Fork) in 2016. That left us with 2 versions of Ethereum, ETH and ETC. ETH is the ticker symbol for Ethereum and ETC is the ticker symbol for Ethereum Classic. When they split, ETH moved on to the new branch and ETC stayed behind on the old branch, that's why it ended up with the name Ethereum Classic.
There is a lot of talk about BTC doing a hard fork. That is a very real possibility, but that is a topic for another post. What is interesting and worth mentioning about a hard fork is, if you own a coin such when a hard for occurs, then you'll own that same amount of coins in both sides of the fork. I owned about 500 ETH when it forked, so all of a sudden on the day of the fork, I also owned 500 ETC coins. Most people thought ETH would grow and ETC would go down to zero, but after a dive towards zero, ETC turned around and ended the day being work a buck or two. As I write this, ETH is about $75 per coin and ETC about $5 per coin.
It was one of those rare days when a trade goes just right. I bought 10,000 ETC when it was worth about 8 cents and then sold them later in the day when it was worth about 90 cents. I wish now I had just held on to them and that is the approach I now take with all coins.
Back to Alt coins. You can see a list of Alt coins on coinmarketcap.com, with the market capitalization (total value) of each coin: http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/
There are a couple common questions about Alt coins, mostly "What are they worth" and "Which one should I buy". The question about worth is easy to answer, they are worth their price on the market. They are worth whatever people are willing to buy and sell them for. Why are they worth anything if no stores accepts them? Well, every Alt coin worth anything brings something to the table. For example ETH and ETC use a version of the blockchain that can be programmed and it can be used to store contracts. So, for example, you could use the technology behind ETH to sign and store legal contracts. In fact Cook County in IL is already starting to use ETH to handle property deeds.
There are hundreds of crypto-coins in addition to Bitcoin (BTC). There are several that I considered top tier players. Some of those are solid top tier Alt coins, and others drift in an out of the top tier as their price and volume changes over time.
I look at it as you have BTC, which is the "main" coin. Then you also have Ethereum (ETH) which can be argued to also be on par with BTC, or it can just be the most solid top tier coin. I would say that right now the other top tier Alt coins, in no particular order are: Dash (DASH), LiteCoin (LTC), Golem (GNT), Zcash (ZEC), Monero (XMR), Decred (DCR), Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE) and maybe Next (NXT), Augur (REP), MaidSafeCoin (Maid), and Stellar (STR).
As a side note, ETH went through a split (which is called a Hard Fork) in 2016. That left us with 2 versions of Ethereum, ETH and ETC. ETH is the ticker symbol for Ethereum and ETC is the ticker symbol for Ethereum Classic. When they split, ETH moved on to the new branch and ETC stayed behind on the old branch, that's why it ended up with the name Ethereum Classic.
There is a lot of talk about BTC doing a hard fork. That is a very real possibility, but that is a topic for another post. What is interesting and worth mentioning about a hard fork is, if you own a coin such when a hard for occurs, then you'll own that same amount of coins in both sides of the fork. I owned about 500 ETH when it forked, so all of a sudden on the day of the fork, I also owned 500 ETC coins. Most people thought ETH would grow and ETC would go down to zero, but after a dive towards zero, ETC turned around and ended the day being work a buck or two. As I write this, ETH is about $75 per coin and ETC about $5 per coin.
It was one of those rare days when a trade goes just right. I bought 10,000 ETC when it was worth about 8 cents and then sold them later in the day when it was worth about 90 cents. I wish now I had just held on to them and that is the approach I now take with all coins.
Back to Alt coins. You can see a list of Alt coins on coinmarketcap.com, with the market capitalization (total value) of each coin: http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/
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| List of coins from CoinMarketCap.com |
There are a couple common questions about Alt coins, mostly "What are they worth" and "Which one should I buy". The question about worth is easy to answer, they are worth their price on the market. They are worth whatever people are willing to buy and sell them for. Why are they worth anything if no stores accepts them? Well, every Alt coin worth anything brings something to the table. For example ETH and ETC use a version of the blockchain that can be programmed and it can be used to store contracts. So, for example, you could use the technology behind ETH to sign and store legal contracts. In fact Cook County in IL is already starting to use ETH to handle property deeds.
So the Alt coins that have the most value are the ones that bring something meaningful to the table. There are coins that provide more anonymity than BTC (such as Monero and ZCash). There is a POT coin for cannabis companies and a GAME coin used as a payment gateway for the gaming industry. There are many coins made for specific industries and specific purposes. If one of those makes sense and gets adopted by it's targeted industry, then it may take off.
To me the whole point of Alt coins is trying to pick the ones that will take off like BTC did. The challenge is trying to figure out which ones might be right. Here are 3 tricks I use to determine which Alt coins I'll invest in:
1) Does Poloniex list it on it's small USD trading section. Only a small subset of all coins can be traded for USD on Poloniex. Almost all coins are traded to BTC and vice versa. But, there are about 10 coins that they have picked to trade to USD. I have found that to be a great indicator. If Poloniex lists it on their USD trading tab, then they see future potential in the coin.
2) Go to coinmarketcap.com and find the Alt coins with the greatest market capitalization. Those with the highest market value are the most likely to succeed.
3) Watch for high volume. Most trading sites (like Poloniex) let you sort by volume. Sort by volume each day and make not of the ones that frequently float up to the top of the volume list but are not yet a top tier player.
Most of all, don't chase an Alt coin that has already moved up. If you do, most likely you'll get burned. They tend to shoot up, and then just drift down over the following weeks or even months.
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