Hey guys, wondering if anyone here has experience investing in alt coins (cryptocurrency other than Bitcoins). I've got $1000 to play around, not concerned about risk or anything. Wondering if anyone has any experience with investing in it and what exchanges they used etc which are easy for Australians and without needing to convert to USD to lessen fee's etc.
Cheers
Yes, they say it's due for a rise soon.
i doubled my money in 3 weeks. :)
Damn, that's aweome!
I got into altcoins just 2 weeks ago so I missed buying everything when they were cheaper!
I bought some now.. 50% in ETH.
It just jumped enormously over the last month, rising again would be a surprise.
too much hype around it atm i think
ive sold my 36 ETH for $4700 yesterday night after buying for $2000.
good enough ROI for a month.
which site can you buy ETH?
btcmarkets.net
Can send AUD via Poli for a flat $3.30 fee, usually processed within about 10 mins (first ones a bit slower). Trading fee starts at 0.85% but reduces as your trading volume increases.
thanks for this post mate, more than doubled my money.
My facebook feed has been bombarded with all of my friends that I went to high school with (mainly the dropouts and single mums) boasting about TBC.
They tend to copy and paste each others statuses, saying how they've made so much money with it - and then they ask if you want to enter into a raffle to win a TBC coin.
Not sure what TBC is but i'm looking at ETH/Ripple myself.
I wouldn't touch Ripple, it's centralized.
Ripple has risen a lot over the past few weeks. However, only looking to trade it for short term. Too risky
investing
Check out coinmarketcap.com for a long list of crypto currencies available. If you click into each of these you can get a link to buy/sell mainly through their partner changelly.com. Crypto prices are pretty hot at the moment with a huge boost over the past 2 months. Do your homework on what frameworks are being built on as they're typically the ones that get the best support and hence price rises.
+1 for coinmarketcap. It's replaced ozbargain as my homepage :)
Ethereum looks promising. Major investment banks are invested in it (may be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view), and companies like Acronis are using it too. http://www.acronis.com/en-au/business/blockchain-notary/
— General —
Recently (before the BTC rise from $200), I made the most money getting in early on some of the very low-volume altcoins on bittrex. It's worth putting some money in there, potential for high reward (I got 80x return on a coin I bought 2 months ago)
For a less risky investment, try some of the anon coins like ZEC and ETH. I'd avoid DASH because of the insta-mine.
I think the former has very good potential considering all the funding behind it. Founders don't get to cash out for another 3 years.
Also, ignore any IRC/trollbox messages telling you to buy or sell a coin. If they say "buy! to the moon!", it means they're trying to sell. If they say "dump! it's a scamcoin!", it means they want to buy in cheaply.
— Security —
Make sure you keep the majority of your coins in a wallet where you control the private key. I lost some money leaving btc in exchanges which 'got hacked' on 2 occasions.
If you invest small amounts of money in some of the low volume alts; imo, it's worth the risk leaving them in the exchange rather than getting a wallet for each of them.
— Wallet recommendation —
For everything else, give this a try: https://jaxx.io
It's a single wallet which lets you store BTC, ETH, ZEC, DASH and some other alts.
EDIT:
Also, don't put in any money you're not willing to lose. BTC can lose a lot of value overnight.
IMO (and I hope it doesn't happen), BTC is due for a correction soon. I think this will drag the altcoin prices down. Others belive it will cause altcoins to rise.
Currency, like gold is not an investment. It doesn't create anything to improve its value. It's therefore a speculative gamble.
It can now be used in Japan as a currency. It's tax free for purchases up to 10,000 yen, and Bic Camera are adding support for it.
It's also an easy way to send money across the world, very fast, with very low transaction fees.
Some of the newer altcoins like PIVX even give you instant, anonymous and very cheap transactions.
Doge coin. Much Wow! Many profit! *actually dogecoin is designed not to increase in value dramatically
Lol. I saw a guy bought a lot of doge, leveraged last week, and lost hundreds of thousands when his margin call kicked in.
I like to think of myself as a fairly financially literate guy but I can't get my head about the concept/value/security of Bitcoins or alt coins.
Can someone give me a quick run down on how it works, who controls it, how secure it is, etc.
All I hear about is you mine/create your currency out of thin air, your coins can be hacked etc.
I dunno, I just can't grasp my head around why you would buy bit coins other than pure speculation or illegal trading.
All I hear about is you mine/create your currency out of thin air,
You don't just create coins out of thin air lol. With proof of work (the bitcoin mining proof), you're being paid (as a miner) to verify transactions. Once you solve a block, you get a reward of 6 coins.
Solving a block on your own is nearly impossible, so these days you would join a mining pool. Each time your pool solves a block, all participants will receive a portion of the reward based on how much 'hashing power' they're providing.
These days, you can't earn anything at all mining bitcoin with CPUs or GPUs. You have to buy dedicated mining hardware called 'ASIC Miners' from China. This is unfortunate as it centralizes mining power.
More details here: http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/ including the fact that there will be a finite amount of bitcoins.
Some altcoins are exactly like this. Others are a little different.
Rather than 'proof of work', some coins use 'proof of stake (PIVX)', where you're paid for holding coins, or 'proof of service (DASH, SIB, CHC)', where you're paid for performing a service such as mixing coins for anonymity. Hashing algorithms are also different with some altcoins. Vertcoin for example uses algorithms which are very hard to build ASIC miners for, preventing centralization of power (you can mine with your GPU profitably).
your coins can be hacked etc.
Your coins can't be 'hacked' or 'stolen' if you take precautions. But if you leave them in exchanges (other people's wallets), then you can lose your money. The exchanges can be 'hacked'* or they can just disappear (particularly some of the Chinese ones).
If you keep your coins in your wallet, use a strong passphrase to encrypt your wallet, and leave it offline or locked when you're not using it, you should be okay.
I like to think of myself as a fairly financially literate guy but I can't get my head about the concept/value/security of Bitcoins or alt coins.
If you understand why Gold is a store of value, the same applies to bitcoin.
I dunno, I just can't grasp my head around why you would buy bit coins other than pure speculation or illegal trading.
There are many reasons why people would want these coins. I've been holding bitcoins since they were ~US$160 and will continue to do so, hoping that their value increases. This has been the best investment I've ever made.**
People in countries like Venezuila buy them to store their wealth and survive the extreme inflation of their currency.
People in China buy them to store wealth in a way which can't be taken away from them by their corrupt government. Perhaps that's why they're buying up our properties as well?
I'm guessing Japan are accepting it as currency now because they're desparate to increase spending in their stagnant economy.
*Some people say that the 'hacked' exchanges, are 'hacked' by the staff/founders, who run off with your coins.
**I've made greater gains on low-volume altcoins, but I didn't invest as much in them as I did bitcoin.
I appreciate your detailed answer.
I still don't understand who is 'paying' you to solve a block. It's like getting paid for giving someone facebook likes.
As absurd as it sounds to create coins out of thin air to you, it's absurd to me you get paid verify transactions. What value is it to anyone to verify transactions.
And after 21,000,000 Bit Coins have been produced. What happens then?
Why would I swap my real goods for a Bit Coin? Currency has the Reserve Bank backing behind it, Cash is like a 'promise' the Government has made that it the cash in your hand will be accepted by everyone in that country as value for payment, not sure who is backing BC.
I understand Gold as a value. It's a precious metal people like to wear and is useful for manufacturing as it's very stable. I don't understand why people think of Gold as a financial product, yes people flock to it in times of sharemarket volatility, but you don't get paid for holding it or lending it to people.
BC just seems too speculative to me as no real Company/Organisation/Government is backing it.
Good luck, and I hope you cash out if it crashes. I hope it doesn't, but I still don't understand the details of it. Just like the valuations of Tech companies (that had no hope of turning a profit) just before the Tech Wreck,…. 'but, but, this time it is different….' The same can be said about Property Valuations today.. the difference is that you can live in and rent out a house.
"What value is it to anyone to verify transactions."
Seriously? You don't see value in that?
"And after 21,000,000 Bit Coins have been produced. What happens then?"
Same thing that happens now, miners get paid by fees. Everyone pays a fee to make a transaction. Fees go to miners for verifying.
Psst… Buy low, sell high.
How much do you guys trust the exchange you're using. Do you withdraw to wallet after every trade? Ive got jaxx and using mostly btcmarkets and occassionally poloniex
Well just an update, i bought ETH when i made this post. More than doubled my money and now have diversified into other coins (dgb/xrp/monero/nem) and have made quite a bit. This is addictive as hell.
welcome to the gold rush
Love that this has made its way into ozbargain 😁 I too, started cryptos early april and have over doubled my $. Little things ive learnt along the way:
-buy ledger wallet (if you have anything over 5-10k imo) its worthwhile just dumping coins into that and using it as a high interest bank account (no withdrawing) 😬 Add more as you see fit & obviously keep some on other wallets/exchanges to trade with.
-excel spreadsheets help keep track of money in, # of coins held, value of coins in usd, value of coins in aud, total vaue, profit/loss per day/month.
-active user of forums/reddit
-Coinbase is the best exchange service by far when it comes to simplicity & price. Very easy to use and cheaper than btcmarkets. Can use a debit or creditcard directly, no bank details required. Only downside is they have a small weekly limit on deposits initially. Mine started at 250$aud and has since gone up to 1000$aud after a few months of use. I usually use btcmarkets and coinjar too when i need to but for anyone only investing small amounts after an initial large investment use coinbase! They also have a great app for android/apple
-Try coinigy its a great service online which intergrates all your accounts via API keys so you can get more functionality + control of all your accounts from one place. Its easy to use and free for i think a month after which it becomes like 20usd/month but for what it is and does you wont think twice about the monthly fees. It gives email alerts that you set up yourself which is probably the best feature imo.
-coins worth checking out? Xem/gnt/eth/ant/tkn/strat/dgb/sc just to name a few
-split? Personally im only 50% in ethereum.
-ICOs learn about them and follow closely you'll see why! Beware of scams
Goodluck, hope this was helpful and made sense
I'm writing this at 530am 😂 oh what my life has become
Using that at the moment which i found pretty useful. What i'm kinda scared of is BTC crashing which sendsmy alt coin value going down since to withdraw at all i need to convert my alt coins to btc to usd.
Pretty hooked at the moment got a comfortable amount from my initial deposit i'm playing with. Not going to deposit more. At the moment i'm hoping ETH dips a bit so i can rebuy into that but i've made quite a bit on XBY i've got faith in that coming up even more. I've now got a good mix of long term/short term coins and yep coinmarketcap is my new homepage. See you boys on the moon with your lambos!
Damn a lot of green trader/investors in crypto right now. Make sure you guys use high leverage, the long squeeze will be glorious.
Market is booming right now. Hope you guys made money from this. From my initial 1k i'm on about 3.8k in a month. This comes after making alot of stupid decisions too (should held onto more ETH for longer).
Boom times are fun but scary. I've been around a long while. What always, always happens is people get too excited, things shoot up, and the inevitable correction occurs. Once the correction hits, all the band-wagoners leave, and things settle down for a few months with a steady price. The cycles been happening ever since bitcoin started.
That said, my pick from earlier in May was Lykke, and it's done extremely well. That's one that I'm looking at long, long term (5 years).
ETH