Bitcoin Forum

A friend introduced me to btc a few years back, I registered a few accounts on several exchange websites and then just left it. Been seeing bitcoin news everywhere lately so thought I should give it a try. But the price looks VERY high! Newbie here so thought it'd be smart to ask more experienced investors. Is it still 'cheap' to buy bitcoins? Or should I study into alts?

The price will just get higher.

No one really knows what will happen in the future. There is still some issues to be worked out in relation to the current fee sizes and possible forks upcoming so we'll have to see what happens with those.

There is certainly a possible to make some good profits with altcoins but it is also risky as it is hard to know which ones will succeed and which will fail.

Good question, and you should do a lot of your own reading. When it comes to investments it's risky to let others make these decisions on how to invest your money for you.

I see two ways to think about return on investment (ROI) potential - (1) Nominal price appreciation and (2) Percentage growth

(1) Nominal price appreciation refers to how high the price can climb, what's that potential for the investment? Bitcoin will likely obtain the highest nominal price level over any amount of time, it's had a head start and it's clearly the first choice in crypto-currencies. For some people it's important to be able to participate in the investment considered "#1".

(2) Percentage growth refers to how much increase the price will achieve in percentage terms, can the investment have a higher ROI even if it doesn't reach the highest price point compared to similar investments? I believe there are options other than bitcoin that offer greater opportunity for percentage growth, i.e.., real ROI. Litecoin and Ethereum likely has the greatest opportunity for percentage growth compared to Bitcoin.

A test: What price do you think bitcoin will achieve by the end of 2018? $4000? $5000? More? Let's assume $5000. At today's price of $2550, achieving $5000 by the end of 2018 would represent a 96% return on investment. Nice run! Now what price level would it take other similar investments to achieve or exceed a 96% ROI? For Litecoin, at today's price of $28, we would need to achieve nearly $55 by the end of 2018. For Ethereum, at today's price of $355, we would need to achieve $695 by the end of 2018.

You can apply the test to any other investment you have interest in.

The question that only you can answer is what's the likelihood of any of these investments to exceed the ROI assumption over the same amount of time (Bitcoin reaching 96% by end of 2018 in our test). I think it's likely that Ethereum could exceed 96% in the next 18 months. And I think it's even more likely that Litecoin could exceed 96% in the next 18 months.

This is they type of thinking you need to have if you think in line with the percentage growth investment approach ((2) above).

The price increased this year from $1000 to now approximately $2700, it is expected that it will continue to rise upto $4000-$5000 in this year. Try to invest in BTC rather than any other coin because bitcoin is still the favorite in all cryptocurrencies to invest in.

Think bitcoin’s surge of more than 30 percent in the last week is impressive? Check out what some of its cousins are up to.

The market capitalization of digital currencies has soared over 50 percent to more than $90 billion in the past seven days as the frenzy around cryptocurrencies reaches a fever pitch. Demand is swelling as more companies embrace the technology backing the method of exchange and some investors see it as a haven from political uncertainty across the globe.

Bitcoin’s slice of the pie has shrunk recently as its peers have gained share. It now dominates about 45 percent of the overall digital currency market, down from around 85 percent in February, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s share has increased to more than 20 percent from 7 percent in February.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-14/scalise-shot-by-assailant-at-congressional-baseball-practice (https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-06-14/scalise-shot-by-assailant-at-congressional-baseball-practice)

You're mistaken. The price of Bitcoin has gone down in the last week. At it's current price of $2,555, Bitcoin is down ~6% this week (the price is down ~$163).

Let's keep the talk honest and fact based. Thanks.

True. That is why many picked altcoins rather than all in at btc because its growth is not that fast compared to the former. Ripple, NEM, Stratis and many others increased at more than 10 times rate. Bitcoin can't do that. Others strategy is to look for promising coins that has huge potential and a big room to grow.

Totally agree. The only additional caution I'll add in crypto-currency investment decision making is to consider what merits each coin has as a viable peer to Bitcoin. Many of the new coins that have come about don't add anything different, they just offer the same at a lower price. And when retailers aren't using these alternative currencies as an actual currency the potential for 10x price jumps will be driven by pure speculation, and therefore their price growth won't be sustainable.

TL,DR: If the alt coins aren't viable currency alternatives they're just speculative bubbles.

Your thread title question is highly incomplete in consideration.  A huge profit in an "unknown new coin" this month may be a "what coin was that" a year from now.  I decided to run with btc for the long haul.  I had the fortune of learning about them in 2009 and 2010.

No coins guarantee a high profit
All the coins in tradding will decrease and increase the price without we can specify. We only predict the traders' needs on a particular coin

Bitcoin is actually dumping as we speak so it is a good time to buy it as of now, for other coins meaning the alternative coins you just have to do your own research about thosee coins first before jumping into trading or whatever because you said so yourself, you are a newbie to this. Educate yourself first and get to know more about bitcoins and those alternative coins so when you invest in them you don't have to rely on what other people will say about it.

No one can tell it that which coin will provide a huge profit seems to me because trading is like a wave signal up & down always & it's price is not constant for a single moment. you are getting my point i think.

Bitcoin and ethereum are both really good if you want to hold them or trade. Don't really think the other coins are that good and most of them are pretty risky.

The future of any coins is unpredictable. No one here can know the future of the coins. Butcoin in too high. It Might increase more but i would suggest you to study some deep on altcoins. Make a deep research about altcoins and use some professional skills to trade them.
Use various trading platforms and purchase the coin you think is proper to purchase. Coins cant be predicted but some research can give you some profit.

Wrong! Bitcoin is good, but Ethereum is a disaster waiting to happen. When you see smoke coming from a dormant volcano and you feel the earth moving, you should see the signs that it is going to erupt in the near future. People are so blinded by their greed with Ethereum that they are ignoring all the warning signs. < Pre-mine / Pre-token sales / DAO / No Coin Cap / Centralized control / No use case / highly speculative / Hype / Original Developer jumping ship and I can go on and on >

A lot of people are going to get burned with Ethereum when it erupts. ^sad^

I think ethereum is good one for you. You just take a little profit using bitcoin. Bitcoin is not suitable for little amoun of investment but in ethreum you will get more rather than bitcoin. The bitcoin will get forked in the future

Its all about getting your timing right, when to buy and when to sell or keep holding your crypto coins.

If you monitoring price movements of most cryptos atm they have been dipping which might not show good profits if you bought coins late

Watching of alt value is very important, but we can't really guarantee whether we hit the perfect spot to sell or buy it. There are times that I trade it already then the valie increase suddenly. But its still fine as long as i gain profit on it

I could recommend waves currently doing very good . You can check recent growth market capitalization and also i could recommend litecoin its also having some speculation after joining some coinbase chief engineer to litecoin  team . But short term profit i could recommend waves.