Just getting into cryptocurrency? Not sure what to buy? If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to establish some solid, blue chip portfolio anchors before getting into anything more speculative. Here are my plays for November/December to start you off. (please note Luna has crashed/died and is no longer worth touching)
The market has seen a bit of a healthy correction over the last few weeks. Bitcoin has retreated from it’s all time high of $68k to the $56k range and appears to be holding steady. This is prime real estate for growth in smaller ecosystems and because of the Bitcoin dip, everything is at a very good price right now.
This “first day in crypto” series is intended to help you get comfortable making a cryptocurrency purchase. Getting into the game is hard for many people. Likewise, we don’t want to start out with highly speculative plays. You can certainly make a lot of money but the risk/reward is never worth it when you can make easy, safe gains without all the stress. For this exercise, we’ll start and track our portfolio with a $3,000 initial investment split evenly among these 6 plays.
Ethereum
Ethereum is and should be the long term anchor of a portfolio. It moves faster than Bitcoin and the most widely used cryptocurrency in the entire market. Ethereum’s ecosystem is vibrant – there are countless projects that rely on the Ethereum network and utilize its powerful smart contracts capabilities. Ethereum was the first smart contracts platform to go mainstream, and as a result, has the legacy and first movers advantage. Ethereum is not perfect – it was never designed to handle the volume and throughput the modern cryptocurrency market has, but none of this has curbed its growth. Ethereum will move with the market and with major news regarding Ethereum 2.0 lurking in the coming months, Ethereum is a rock solid play.
LUNA
LUNA has long been a favorite of CoinBusters. It is well established but still moderately sized in terms of market cap. It has been “boring” over the last few months, which is a significant buy indicator we like to use. Buying projects when they are boring (rather than pumping) is a surefire way to get great deals. LUNA’s ecosystem is growing rapidly – hundreds of projects are developing applications within it, and the UST (LUNA’s stablecoin) pairing gives it a lot of unique utility. The combination of LUNA having a highly functional network, growing ecosystem, and unique offerings makes it a strong portfolio candidate with high upside. We’re bullish on LUNA.
Polkadot
Polkadot is one of the most intriguing plays out there right now. We have covered it extensively in previous articles such as PolkaDot and Parachain Auctions. In short, Polkadot is a blockchain with a specified number of “slots” available for other projects to use. Projects that “win” these slots (through auctions) essentially have a lease on a spot for 96 weeks. The network is fast, cross chain compatiable, and has recently completed the first auction on its main net (Acala). As is common, Polkadot’s price surged prior to the first auction and the launch of the main net. It has since pulled back, making it a great value play at the moment. DOT, with the ongoing parachain auctions and robust staking is a no brainer long play.
MATIC
Polygon (MATIC) is a favorite of ours. It blasted onto the scene this past year and has continued to deliver both investments and ecosystem developments ever since. Polygon is the leading Ethereum scaling solution. It has a number of distinct ways that it improves the cost and throughput limitations of Ethereum, and a significant development community. Gaming, in recent months, has really moved to the forefront of the crypto space. Polygon, due to its low fees and development capabilities
LINK
Chainlink (LINK) is the king of oracles in the crypto space. We cover Chainlink in great detail here Chainlink, the King of Oracles. In short, oracles serve as the price feeds that most applications rely on for DeFi and other activities. It’s complicated, but “accurately” and “safely” obtaining that information is hard when doing so across different blockchains. Chainlink serves as the litmus test for legitimacy and growth on blockchains. With more and more major chains cropping up, all of these projects are working to incorporate Chainlink into their ecosystems. There is no more desired crypto with a real use case at the blockchain level than LINK. An added bonus is that right now it is an incredible value.
Fantom
Last but certainly not least is Fantom. Over the last few months we have seen unfathomable growth in main blockchains (L1) with functioning products. AVAX and SOL are recent examples. Identifying projects likely to explode would seem to be a lucrative exercise. Fantom (FTM) fits this category. Behind every successful major blockchain product is a vibrant and active community, which FTM has. Many really good ideas never make it in crypto solely because they lack a dedicated community. Fantom has low fees, fast speeds and a ton of projects live on it. As we speak we’re watching FTM begin its ascent. The market cap still is low (~$6.7b, but was under $5b a few days ago). FTM is more speculative than some of the other ones, but given the temperature of the market, it’s a solid play with tremendous upside.
So – with our $3000 investment we’re buying $500 of each of the following:
1. FTM (available on KuCoin and crypto.com) – Current price is $2.52
2. MATIC (available on Coinbase) – Current price is $1.67
3. ETH (available on Coinbase) – Current price is $4216
4. LINK (available on Coinbase) – Current price is $25.29
5. DOT (available on Coinbase) – Current price is $38.22
6. LUNA (available as wLUNA on Coinbase) – Current price is $38.24
The purpose of this portfolio is to create something that doesn’t require meticulous management, will grow significantly in the coming months, and help you get exposure into the crypto market.
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As always, the crypto market is going to continue blossoming with or without you. Are you going to miss your piece?
