Bitcoin Forum

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I have long written that diversification is a very smart idea.  No one can predict the future, etc.  But discussed below is another reason not be 100% in ANY investment, at least for long.  I ran into this argument at a gold blog.

Imagine that you are 100% invested, "All Inn", in gold.  Even if the price of gold were to go way up, there is still a big risk that many don't see.  Namely what happens if there is a big price drop JUST when the owner might NEED to sell (eg, an unexpected emergency).  If our imaginary friend bought in at $1275 gold (approx. price today), and then price drops to $900 (Martin Armstrong predicts a sharp price drop like this, prior to a big price rise, a "slingshot" price rise after its initial drop).

And then, just at a bad time for the gold owner, he might need money (US dollars) to cover an unexpected $200,000 medical bill.  And he if forced to sell his gold at a 25% loss to cover his bills...  Ouch!  It would hurt even more should gold then go to $2500 per ounce.

So, it is unwise to be All Inn on gold, even if we were to be very sure that $2500 gold is coming.

The above scenario would hold for Bitcoin as well, or anything else to be held long-term.

Some of us gold owners have a saying: "Protect the precious."  That means keep some powder dry (CA$H on hand) for the unexpected.

Maybe you are referring for the word "All In" rather than the word "All Inn" you repeated again and again. "Inn" is like a lodge or a restaurant.
By the way, I agreed on you that investing "all in" is something that noone should do. But on the way that you've explained it isn't really makes it so bad since he got money to pay his hospital bills even though he loss some money.
Yes, I agree that we shouldn't invest "all in" since in all investment there would always be a risk so rather than investing all in just one then why not spread it into other investments. But just as I've said don't put "All" so you must atleast leave 50% of all the money you have in you.
There is a saying that "We shouldn't put all our eggs in just one basket" (I don't know if that's the exact words in those saying). This must be kept in mind to all gamblers and investors.

It's a saying, mi amigo!  A metaphor...  Guess you're not a "gold guy", smile...   ;)

(Think that all your investment is staying at the inn)

But, you understand my main point well.

There have been multiple studies done over the years which concluded the vast majority of stock market & commodities traders fail to produce greater than 5% profits.

I think that's where most pro diversification rhetoric comes from.

The unspoken understanding that most who try to be successful traders/investors are not which makes planning for worst case scenarios a standard procedure.

Diversification could also be standard procedure for crypto given the lack of historical precedents to draw upon. Crypto is essentially uncharted territory.

I think this problem "comes with the territory" as the saying goes. You either view it as losses that is included in the job or just saying it's plain bad luck. But, I would say that this could have been greatly prevented if there would have been an emergency fund set aside or an insurance policy. What if the opposite happens though? If prices raised up by 2x or even ten folds? Mr. imaginary friend will be pleased of his choice for sure.

I 100% agree with you.

The way to go is to diversify your selected investments.

Hedge your bets so that even if one of the investments you made went down or went scam, you'll still have money more that you can rely on easily. You can sleep well in your dreams :D

The issue with most people is that they look at youtube, see "Gold is going up to $1 million an ounce" and then either dismiss it completely or make an investment in it with everything they've got.

That's not wise.

Investing all in on every investment program is a big no.Even if its a long term or short term investment all investment may lose and turn out to scam.Dont go all in on every long term or short term investment because you may up losing all your money if the investment failed or turn to scam

Thank you.   This forum has become like a New York City homeless shelter, i.e., a melting pot of illiterate retards.

But OP is right, and diversification should be so obvious at this point that such a long-winded explanation should be unnecessary.   I think crypto ought to be an extremely small part of anyone's portfolio because of the huge risk.

Personally I think the wisest thing that a prepper can do is to diversify his stock of everything, like you have suggested right here.

 You are absolutely spot on about even if gold is a good investment and is guaranteed to fight inflation, it is not a good idea to get all your wealth into gold. The reason for that is because if you are going for the long term and in the short term if you have a very big emergency that forced you to liquidate your gold, then you're probably going to liquidate it at a loss because of the spreads on physical gold.

I would say hold around 30% bitcoin, 30% precious metals, and the 40% should be your own decision what you want to invest in.

I wouldn't own any land because that's worthless in times of crisis. And it's in a bubble right now, i can feel 2008 repeating itself.

Yep.  And that explains why volatility isn't completely acceptable - if you put a lot of money in something, you're going to have to sell it eventually, and the price might be down dramatically then even if you think it'll go up in the next 5 years.

Still, in my country the health services are in the public sector, and we have safety nets in some cases.  If you're wealthy though and you pay for things often it's always a huge problem.  People ignore that the end goal of this isn't money, it's enjoyment - you're not just saving until you're 100 years old and your back hurts too much to go paragliding.

You basically confirm what I'm repeatedly telling myself to the public here

Namely, that hoarding gold makes sense only for the rich and by rich I refer here to those who are already rich well beyond the necessity of looking for cash in case of emergency. Gold is not an investment asset in the sense of using it as a means of multiplying your capital, i.e. making more money out of money. Gold is there to preserve wealth when you already have that wealth and don't trouble yourself with questions of procuring money for paying medical bills

there is a simple solution for you all in scenario:
invest the money you don't need and can afford to invest.

all of us usually have some funds for emergency that we don't touch. and it is always best to invest some additional money you have which is just lying around and does nothing.

all in, diversify,... are for that money not all your lifesavings. in which case i think your argument doesn't apply. because you invest and you never get to a point where you abosolutely need the money so you can only sell when the time is right.

It depends. If youre a person who doesnt have enough money to make diversifying make sense then going all in in one stock or one altcoin and hope for the best is your only ticket out and create a meaningful amount in your life.

Diversifying for the sake of it without thinking of your situation is stupid.

I agree. Unfortunately many people do not understand this, they can probably feel offended


Huh I think that people should have money and then do research and have at least 2 or 3 investments.

If you have only money to invest in one place, I suggest you do not knife it, wait until you have the money to make 2 or more investments.

if you don't have enough money you can not diversify there is no point in that since you are not getting any benefits out of it. so it is best to go "all in" in one thing that you think has the best to offer you in sense of profit and stick to it.

and "waiting around to make more money then invest" is a terrible advice in my opinion. you can use that "wait around" time to double what you already have.

Very well said mate. When I was starting on buying stocks, this is the first thing I've learn. You have to spread your investment around so you will not be caught your pants down when the scenario you mentioned above will happened. This strategy is complex to some, but it is simply about spreading your portfolio across several assets like stocks and bond, mutual funds and others. Diversification can also reduce the risk and volatility in your portfolio, But you also need to remember to also hold cash as well, just in case of certain emergencies.

Diversification: "Place your eggs in different baskets."

Nature itself is unpredictable and that applies to business too. It's the reason the expression,"Don't put all your eggs in one basket."  will forever remain the wisest saying in busines for me.

Yes, sometimes the temptation to go all out on a particular investment because of its juicy nature may be there. But as humans, no one can correctly  predict the future. We can only take a guess and most often than not we make bad business calls. So, it's advisable not to throw in all one's fund into one investment. Diversification is key in business.

There is no place for guessing when it's about investing :). Banks, for exemple, don't make bets about their investments. Thet have drastics studies about markets they plan to invest and make strict due dilligence. But I agree. Diversity is a basic while building any portofolio simply because the financial markets do not evolve in the same way, each sector has its logic of progress and can be influenced by external events independently. Rarely you will see big investors, banks, or investment funds putting all theirs funds in only one plan. So, in my opinion, It allows to limit the risks and the impact of a decline in a sector on the overall portfolio. At the same time, it also allows to increase the performance potential of the portfolio

Going all in in just single investment for a long run is not a good idea because it is very risky because you are not trying to make your money in different investment as flexible as you can because if you are just putting it on one then you can consider yourself in danger because you don't have any back up if the investment will experience bankruptcy.

Seems our old folks already had it figured out when they tell us to "don't keep all the eggs in one basket,". Sure, going all in might get you a larger profit if ever, but you could also lose a lot if things go wrong. I agree with OP in that it's possible that you might need the money just at a time when the value is dropping. And this is why we still have fiat. It's just more liquid than precious metals.

I believe this go hand in hand with common sense stuff like having a separate emergency fund as well as a living fund so you don't have to bother touching your other investments. Also, you shouldn't invest money you can't afford to lose anyway. If you're buying gold or bitcoin, I assume you already have some money stored for your regular and unexpected expenses.

Well experienced traders know this stuff and there is no need to lecture them about this. But your topic is quite useful to the newbies who are very excited and emotional about trading and investing. Diversification is a good principle in trading since it will lessen your risk but also lesser  income. But for some risk takers diversification is not necessary since even before they placed their capital on such item they already are ready to take the risk and willing to earn big.

but remember that sometimes going all in is what it takes to change your life. i am not suggesting it but that is something to consider. it is a high risk, high reward type of situation. you find some good opportunity and do your research and analyze all the risks. if you find the reward worth the risk, then going all in can change your whole life for the better.

imagine buying 1BTC one year ago at $400 versus buying 100BTC the same time which is investing $400 versus investing $40,000 which is kind of a all in.
the first investment makes you $800 profit and your money is a total of $1,200
but the second investment makes you $80,000 profit your total into $120,000

I guess there is a lot more than just not putting "all your eggs in one basket"

Just blindly diversifying your investments may not decrease your total risk but actually increase it (read mean more losses). That means that you would be better off if you didn't diversify your investments at all. Just repeating the same mantra again and again will most likely lead you nowhere on its own. You should first understand how assets in your "baskets" are correlated against each other, and how they will behave under economic stress since such diversification seems to be primarily directed at preserving value (for the case when your proverbial basket gets crushed)

I think that would something for professional investors.
For an average person it's asked a little too much to analyse how different investments behave when the market developes into a certain direction.
An average person simply has to split up to keep his risks at a low level.

Yeah the first thing that I learned when bitcoin was first introduce to me was never to put all of your eggs in one basket,
And also invest only what you can afford to lose so I never tried to invest all of my money in just one investment.

It is like technical analysis

The more intricate and complicated it becomes, the more you expect it from it. But in most cases this complexity doesn't add anything to your profits (though it allows you to use buzz words like Elliot waves and similar nonsense). If you randomly split up your assets, how do you know that your risks did in fact reduce? What if all your assets start collapsing simultaneously, as it often happens?

I think that the investment decision of an average person is random.
So in the end, it ads up to the hope that a lot of random decisions lead to an increase of your fortune, when the superior market is growing. And in general, markets usually grow.
When you pick just one fraction of the market, that fraction alone may decline.

Well one thing is for sure that you are afraid of what you are investing in. Can you imagine the opportunity that will be lost if you have diversified your portfolio? Don't get me wrong on this one but if you spread your money to a lot of investment you just lessen the risk but did not maximize your profit also you added a lot of things to be manage by you. I still believe that you can always go " all in" in the investments you are sure will pay you the most. Just my two cents.

My reason not to be all inn on any single investments for long time strategy is high risk losing money (include on digital coins),
in all of instrument of investments always there are risk must be taken by investors
the good investors always calculate about risk in investments, they don't just think about the profit.

you have some point from there mate, if you are really sure regarding to your investment you can do an all in, the thing is how sure are you with that particular investment? that's how things changed up placing your investment, splitting it up to lessen the risk and also to try some stakes we aren't sure what crypto will bring us so we just understand the movements and try to manage everything.

Yes, we never can be sure about the future. Even for short-term investment, financial experts never suggest to go "all-in", because no one could foresee the future.

One investment must be based on calculated risks like we should not always think about profits but we should always be ready to face losses too. I believe no one will be ready to lose all his wealth just with the one investment opportunity. Hence "all-in" should be avoided.

And how does it relate to (not) "putting all your eggs in just one basket"?

If markets usually grow (as you say), you could just buy a market index and (allegedly) get done with that. While in reality markets grow as well as collapse, so all your baskets of eggs will get crushed if the latter happens. After all, isn't that what we use different "baskets" for, i.e. to avoid crushing? I guess putting eggs in random baskets doesn't actually decrease the chances but you may hit a jackpot, of course (just like a broken clock is correct twice a day)

I do agree with you to some extent.I would rather invest 60% of my money into an asset or bitcoin and would keep the remaining 40% as cash in my hand.And i would chose bitcoin for that 60% to invest and not gold as bitcoin could give me more returns than gold.More over,bitcoin price is yet to increase more in future.

Even the holy scripture said " scattering your bread on many waters then few day you will find them" it is very unwise for one to put all his investment in either bitcoin or gold e.t.c. Diversification is the key to long term investment success. With the hope that bitcoin will get to $2000 before the end of this year is not a guaranty for me to put all my risk capital into bitcoin.

While this is true there's also another way of seeing it. If you put your money in a number of high risk contracts the total risk-gain ratio remains the same. For instance if we assume that one altcoin has 50% chance of success and you split your money (1USD) between 2 of them, your chances of earning money decreases along with the chances of going broke.
Normally it would be 50% that you make $2 from your $1 and 0 if it fails. Now you will need both of them to succeed to reach your desired $2, but also for both of them to fail to be completely broke.

I agree that all in on long run is very risky, million things can happen in time of waiting, and that puts investor in very bad situation for him. Going all in is strategy that almost no one recommends, but I saw (and others I`m sure) people that had balls to risk and some of them made profit. We all have a chance to do something in this life, how much someone is smart to notice opportunity and brave to grab it with all in can be rewarded with some very high reward. Of course bankruptcy is always a possibility when someone is going all in, that is the thing, if its easy everyone would do it.

The only one reason not to be all in on any single investment for long is just because "It is risky". As Warren Buffet says that "Never depend on single income. Make investment to create a second source." in that saying, we can really realize that even the one of the most riches person in the world believe that it is best to have a second source of income rather than sticking to just one investment because we all know that it is not good because if an investment will go down then you don't have any escape from that and you will suffer from loss, so it is better to just spread your money in different investments.

that is true, and maybe it is just me but whenever i am talking about investment or say all in, diversify, all eggs in one basket,... i am automatically talking about the investment money and investment money is not all your worth.

you have a life, some money as your "rainy day" funds and then have some extra money that you don't need and you make the investment with that money. and as far as i can tell this is what majority of people in the world are doing. so it doesn't need mentioning. all in means investing all that money which i say can be a good thing.

I agree but that doesn't apply to mining though, because mining is a risky investment and an investment non the less, when you want to go invest in mining you are buying either GPUs or ASICs and that will take time for your ROI, unless you have a better idea and something more profitable than Bitcoin to mine or how does it work if you'd wanted to diversify your investment in mining hardware?

Trading is also either you buy to hold for long term=like mining=risky. or day trading which you can eliminate any possible extra risk in matter of hours or even minutes.
Did you know ETH will pump from sub $7 up to $40? but guess who could've guessed it? someone already holding %40 of the supply and then investing $200m to start buying the tokens starting from $7 easily up to $30 and by that time other investors were entering because of FOMO and actually were buying his %50+ of total supply now.

Right now if someone puts $500m into buying LTC starting from $10 can successfully pump the price to $20 and by that time others will put more than $500m because of FOMO and they in turn will further pump the price up to $30 and so on until big whales and big holders wake up and see the opportunity then the dump starts.

Unlike Bitcoin which it's growth over time is very natural and not artificial like alts and there is a real demand for it, so I don't see any reason why not going all in with Bitcoin.

Diversify obviously is a good idea, my brother told me he was forced to sell his ICN because he was ran out money in the first days of this coin distribution, He sold all his ICN at 0.00014600 today the price of 1 ICN is worth 0.00034873,  that's why I'm always trying do diversify In my investments. Currently, I'm holding ETH and DASH and I'll wait until forever if I don't see the price rising.

Yes, putting all of your money in one basket is a dangerous thing, like we know there is a risk in investment, so we can't expect everything can work like we wanted, so it will be wise to only invest your extra money and put your investment in different investment, so you won't lose too much if one of your investment failed

I'm not usually investing on one thing with all my money i usually split it atleast into three and after a month of observation I can know where am i gaining more profit and after that im gonna pull out my investment in the other two and put it all in in the other one that gaining profit really well but also remember investing is a very risk part of us because there's no assurance that you could gain profit monthly it's all about the performance of the one you've invested.

What you suggest is basically a martingale in disguise

And you didn't specify what are the chances of success with your second coin. You only said that "one altcoin has 50% chance of success", so what about the other coin? If you assume that it has the same risks, it is essentially six of one and half a dozen of the other. Thus your chances of both winning and losing remain the same and equal to 50%. It would be the same if you had just one coin but only invested in it half as much

The reason we should not go "All In" in any promising investment plan is to cushion any loss

or should be taken as a contingency plan to allow us to divert funds into other projects we feel can reward with a good return and avoid losing everything in one bad investment project.  .

That's true! diversification is the key to healthy investment and it's far more safer that any other form of investment no matter where you are investing. It is always better to have a healthy mix of good assets if you are planning to invest all your invest-able surplus funds. So that if one asset price goes down, the other assets can compensate the losses.

Using this diversification method, the mutual fund companies are working worldwide. I also keep a healthy mix of bitcoin and bank deposits as my investment. So even if bitcoin price goes down, I will not have to worry about my savings. 

If you think your investments can wait, then thats ok. But what if the train is leaving? For some situations it would be better to take the risk now than doing nothing. Life is short and much of it shouldnt be spent waiting around in order to be safe. If the risk is only money, go for it.

It actually depends what is the amount of "only money".
If it is 10$ it is obvious that nobody will be afraid of the risk, but in the moment you risk 100,000$ it is totally different thing.

That is why diversification is a very important factor to consider when making any investment.
If your bankroll is 10,000$ total, it is a wise idea to invest 500$ in some currency pair, while having about 5000$ in some steady income investment, which will at least cover up the losses from the 500$ investment.

But it is not a very good idea to get into too many assets, especially as a new trader.
Try to keep everything as simple as possible, and hop in only when you are sure about your decision.

Well said. Never put all the money in one instrument type. Always diversify your portfolio as even all the fund managers in the world do the same. Though the exposure in each asset class could vary depending upon the risk associated and your interests.

my strategy rely on diversification but only for very cheap coins and in any case not a big amount(33%), that can return a great investment, the remaining amount, is with the strongest coins, and usually only 3 at best no more

too much diversification can lead to more danger and loss of capitalizzation than actual more possible profit, especially in crypto where only 1 out of 100 coins is lucky enough to give you a good return of investment

I pretty much agree with the last sentence, it's better to have some cash on hand always. But I have in mind a scenario which probably could put into question the logic of all the above.

Say you've invested in two things, gold and Bitcoin. And now you urgently need money. How can you know for sure which of them to sell?  Say this happened in April 2013 when Bitcoin hit all times high $250 at the moment, and gold just dropped from 1,780 USD/oz in October 2012 to 1,430 USD/oz in April 2013. Wouldn't you think then that it's better to sell Bitcoin while it's on its peak and hold gold because it has been seeing better times? But as we all know gold has dropped since to 1,287 USD/oz, and Bitcoin has risen big time.

3 Diversification would be the best range and more than enough on that number would really be hard already unless if you do still have some spare cash or money to invest on then its sky on the limit but better to focus on few things so that you wont able to confuse your mind later on regarding on your investments.Going all in is not really advisable even you do know that you are sure on your decisions because going all in is very risky not only on trading but all other stuffs.

There are a lot of factors at play here

First, it depends on the liquidity of the asset, i.e. how fast you can convert it to fiat in case of emergency. Obviously, with Bitcoin it is a matter of a few minutes in most cases, though in some specific cases you can just take your gold and bring it to a pawnshop, thus getting cash that you may need so urgently. Further, the price movements won't be relevant if you are really in an urgent need for money, so you will just act in the direction which is most effective and efficient at reaching your end, but the specifics will obviously vary greatly depending on your situation

It is a proven point statistically and economically that diversification is much safer than all your investment in one thing.

It may seem like you are missing out on the high gain you get from risky investment but in the long run the risky investments do not pay back as often as the safe ones and you end up having less money than if you had all your money in separate investments. Although in the short run you don’t see amazing profits in the long run you earn much more.

Go all in on one if it is Bitcoin. Thats why we are all here on this site, no?

Oh, I thought I would get something fresh in my plate. But you killed my expectations by giving me similar dish with somehow different recipe. :D
Well, yes. It is obvious. Diversification or Portfolio building is first lesson in investment world. This is done to ensure maximum gain from high-yielding securities like Gold as well at the same time to remove contingencies of unexpected losses by investment in debt securities.

deisik and Betwrong are closest to the actual point I originally was trying to make.

I have long written positively about the benefits of diversification.

The "One Reason..." (thread title) is with holding just one asset that fluctuates in price, you expose yourself to a BIG RISK, an involuntary liquidation of the asset if two things go wrong:

-- You have an unexpected emergency, for example, where you need to raise LOTS of cash (medical emergency, bailing your brother-in-law out of jail, etc.), cash that you do not have lying around because ALL of your money is just in gold (or Bitcoin).

and

-- Your asset may indeed likely will go very high in price in the future (which I believe will happen with both BTC and gold), but their prices can have big swings down too.  And if a sharp price drop happens AND the unexpected emergency comes up, you would be forced to liquidate some (or more) of your investment at that low price...  Only to watch that price shoot for the moon later on...

"Protect the precious"  <=== Keep some cash around because you never know.  No one knows what will happen.  NO ONE.

*  *  *

deisik has a useful comment that I bolded above in red, if you have two or more assets to cash in.

Please check the post history. The conversation came to be because I said that its possible that not all have enough money saved to make diversified investments. Meaning its limited and small.

"Only money" would depend on your financial situation. But the idea is an amount that can be easily replaceable by you in case you lose all of it.

Well I think the only way to get rich is to be all in in an investment since the beginning. For example, imagine if you were all not even in bitcoin but in an altcoin like DASH, XMR, PIVX... you would be rich already.

The problem is all those alts are now past 1 dollar.

How do we find the next coin to hold long term that pumps big and makes us rich?

The main reason not to put your money in one investment Is to prevent the loss of your  money once. When you lose of it in one investment only it will hard for you to recover it back not like you have other kind of investment you still have more chances to get it back.

No one are want to get lose for his amount, I think you've kidding me dude. In order to avoid lose and they should be decided the right analyzation before but what do you mean about investment can wait?

One of the best financial tips I ever received from my parents was that you should always have extra on hand for emergencies, and never take any opportunity as something to go all-in with. This applied to everything they did, and they managed to do well so I guess their strategy worked out for them.

I've never gone all-in on an investment and I probably never will, and chances are I'll be better off because of it.

Diversification is an old and well-tested strategy when one is into investing money or assets. There are now many assets where we can invest in and that, of course, include the digital asset we know as Bitcoin as well as hundreds of altcoins if you care. Diversify, diversify and diversify. It is all a matter how you diversify or what are the assets that should be included in your basket. It is not good to only go for Bitcoin, of course. In the end, cash will always be the king as it is the most liquid of them all.

Then you too are kidding me if you intend to make real money from a small amount and want to go slow because you are afraid to lose it. If you dont have access to enough money to wait out an investment then you are not in a position to make enough money to make it worthwhile.

Investing all in on any single investment for long is a very risks thing to do. It might close in the long run and you will lose your money that you invest with. We have saying that dont put all your eggs in one basket, we cant predict what will happen in the next. So might join in other investment not just once.

Emergency funds is not a type of Investment for your information. As in the word itself it is some kind of fund that is use for emergency purposes, also it does not grow overtime like any other investments do. Also you really don't diversify anuthing if you are allocating money from one investment and an emergency fund because you just minimize your money for the investment you have.

Diversifying the funds into different investment schemes is good than risking in the name of a single investment. Reason is that when diversified, if we experience loss in one form of investment we can make modifications in the next to compensate the loss happened. This is not possible with a single investment, because lost is lost.

But most of the people here dont have more than BTC1 to their name. How would it be a good idea to diversify the little funds you have for investing? Its like youre investing not to lose. What you should be doing is to take the higher risk/reward investment since the small funds you have is easily expendable.

yes you are absolutely right that we should not go for all inn in a single investment.there are so much risk that we may loose all the money in  a single go,well on the other side we can say that we can say if you earn money through bitcoins,then i would say that you will never be in loss as it only about profit.

I totally agree with OP about not going All In when it comes to investment, no one knows what may happen next in this world, Even with a insanely lucrative investment opportunity its never a good idea, Emergencies happens when you may need money, are you going to borrow and cover the expenses, really not advisable at all.

When you put all your money into one investment, you are completely depending on the success of that single company.
To me it makes more sense if you spread the risk. Different companies, different economy fields, maybe even different currencies.
I think it is very important that every investor has some kind of safe backup plan from the start, in case something goes not as expected.

Investment is risky what more having a single investment and funding all your money it may broke your life if something bad happens in your investment.

That is why you must not invest your money all in, and you are getting worried if something will happen to your investment? invesment will not ensure you profit, you are putting your money on risk, it will not always result a good one. And if you invest all of your money, it will be really making your life worst, you will be ending up a man without money at hand. How will you able to survive a week without money in your hands, you will be borrowing a lot when that happens.

As the saying goes, you mileage may vary

It basically comes down to how familiar you are with a certain company. For example, if you work for it (and not as a cleaner), you may know its financial status and future prospects. If these are bright, why would you want to buy anything else if you are 100% sure of its success? Let's say you work as a leading scientist for some start-up biotech company and you discovered a cure for cancer that would bring the company billions of dollars. You would most certainly put all your savings into the stocks of this company while they are still cheap as dirt. It is essentially the same with investments in general. You may have 2-3 investments, though you could be perfectly fine with them and certainly better off than someone else mindlessly and blindly dispersing his funds

Investing in a scam is another thing,it happens only if you are not careful enough to understand their hollowness ,most scams have a good outer sphere but if you look carefully you can understand what their future holds and since crypto currencies does not have any regulation or jurisdiction you will see more scams here,when it comes to the term all in definitely does not imply that you have to invest all your hard cash into a particular stock and when you are not good in managing your portfolio you face these sort of issues.Being an investor mean you have to forecast everything if you are really looking to make a profit rather than investing blindly.

Very true OP! As commonly said, never put all your eggs in one basket. Can't emphasize enough how important this is.

To much diversification is not good too.  To tell you, the reason why it is not good to make too much diversification is the monitoring and focus.  When you have to much in hand, lots of it spill.  You cannot hold all market out there.  Just keep on  diversifying  if you feel like you can handle all of them.  If not, then better to have a few holdings that you can fully monitor and watch than lots of diversification that you cannot monitor.  It will lead to more lost than gain.

We will not know what happens in the future so make it a habit not to All-in to invest for vigilance in case of sudden trouble. if you keep choosing All-in you must be prepared with all the risk that will come because what will happen in the future may not be what we want.

I'll ask everyone.

Take the situation of more than 70% of the unique users of this forum, how much of them do you think have more than BTC1 in their wallets? Among those who have less than BTC1 of users in this thread alone which theres a lot, they keep saying that diversifying is good. Thats ridiculous its like managing 1 dollar and hope that it will become a million.

The question. Do you think they should diversify or go invest in 1 altcoin?

Diversification is always a good strategy if you are after preserving your assets while at the same time spreading the risks and making your money work in different ways. By putting your assets in different risk-reward ratio of investments, that minimizes the  risk of losing everything all at once. More like playing it safe and being wise.

I would advise everyone to stay from altcoins altogether

Unless you certainly know what you are doing since "risk comes from not knowing what you are doing". Regarding 1 bitcoin specifically, you may stay with just bitcoins and dollars (if we talk about trading, obviously), but that doesn't mean that diversification ends with moving your funds into different assets. In fact, it only starts here. You should "diversify" your bitcoin to a few reliable exchanges (2-3) since any exchange can be hacked (or scam like what Cryptsy did), and this is the systemic risk which you simply can't get rid of if you intend to trade more or less regularly

As a wise person you will surely think up on this thing first since you do know already the risk involved on any investment and diversification would really lessen the risk because its been partitioned already which means if one of them fails then recovery wont be too hard compared on putting up on one investment.

Putting all our money for just one investment will make our future bleak, many economists advise us to invest in some sort of choice

Other than recovery, the performances of various investments will be always different hence to make sure that we are not missing out any rapid paying investment opportunity,we must look for more number of opportunities rather than sticking with one as no one could foresee future so that pick the only high performing investment opportunity.

Yeah, I would go along with that, unless you really know what you're doing, stay away from alts.

deisik, I would mildly disagree with one of your points in an above post.  Even if you are at a fairly high-level at a company that you might work for, they can still perpetrate fraud with very few knowing.  Example: Enron.  Diversification can be done, actually advisable because of this "single company risk", which still exists even if you think you "know" the company well.

I've done this once and not a very clever move to do. Investing your money in only one crypto could lead to loss once it crashed. You should spread your investment. Not only on one but more crypto. Atleast it will cover your losses once one of your alt crashes. It also the depends on the alt you choose. Make sure you choose a good alt. Me i bought XRP, ETH and Dash. So far, it gives me good profit.

You should really read the OP more since this thread does not tell that going all in on a single investment is good but rather it states a reason, one good reason to why one should not go all in and having some cash left to spend for our lives while waiting for our investment to profit is a wise choice. I hope I don't offend you buy the way you replied I think you didn't read the OP well.

Hmm if you said it like that it sound's true, if you somehow all in in one thing and need money when your investment is down, then preapare to suffer a huge loss. But it's his fault in the first place if he invest all his money. He should left some in the first place for emergency purpose. Putting all your money in one basket is very risky, if it success then you go big, fail and you lose your asset.

He other way to do it is to keep all your BTC in cold storage and away from the risk of being stolen if you decide to go all in on BTC. Some altcoins are ok only if you are aware that they dont hold any real utility. If someone is still holding ETH bought from the ICO he would he rich by now.

It should be considered as another recover, I mean if another investment gets a loss and other can be covered the loss caused by his profits. Don't put all of the things in a basket.
I was considering that as a play on the safe zone.
The market is unpredictable. So, we need backup by another side.

That is the thing, most people see other get successful from a certain way like investing or trading and want to copy them and they jump in trying to get profit without any kind of knowledge and that leads them to losing all their money to scam when they are losing it for the lack of experience, and like said since cryptocurrency have no regulation we cannot really distinguish scams from not.

I don't know much about Enron

Apart from the part that they doctored their financial reports and accounting. But if you don't work in some backward office at the other side of the world, such things (as rumors) quickly spread between company employees. Indeed, a typical clerk may not be the first to liquidate his portfolio, but he will certainly not be the last. In other words, we don't know anything for certain in this regard. In this case, we can only ask the former staff how it actually felt before the shit hit the fan

It is a no brainer to not touch our money for our daily needs, infact if you invest, you make sure that it is a "free" money.  Either from accumulated savings or loaned money for that purpose.  You will never touch the money that is allocated to your daily, monthly and recreational budget.  If you do that you will really get into trouble financially.

That is why our money needs to be separated in different categories that way you can have a medical fund to cover some of your expenses if the need arises also that money serves as a buffer even if you need to sell something valuable to you you can take your time and take the best price on the market.

But what if theres an altcoin good enough to go all in on? LTC was looking good to go all in on weeks ago only if you have an amount thats easily replaceable depending on your financial status. If youre a young student making BTC by joining signature campaigns then around BTC0.3 is good enough for you because you can replace it with your signature campaign.

If you invested in LTC weeks ago you might have doubled or tripled it already and more.

Having back-up on anything specially on investments is really advisable and yes market is really unpredictable which means it can crash anytime which causes for us to lose money and as you said the earning or profits of other investments will patch up the lose which means you are not totally broke and can recover not like on a single shut down of investment where did you put all your money they it maybe the last investment you would make because you will be afraid to to it again.

Exactly, the risk of losing your money is high if you focus in just one thing. diversifying your investments is really important although you cant take away the risk no matter how diversified your plan but somehow minimize it. its important also to have a cash on hand incase there is a sudden or emergency situation so you wont be empty handed if that happens.

Yeah but most of the forum members who are posting in this thread don have more than BTC1 in their wallets so its better to go all in with one investment. After LTC check the price of ETC. Its now at over BTC.0030. A few weeks ago it was only BTC.001.

That is more suicide move in investment you have no 1btc and then you will go all in .So if you are being scam you will have nothing .a good investor will dont do that move.

It is indeed very risky, to put all the money you have for an investment.
It may be very much a profit that you get if it really works, but no one will guarantee if the investment spot turned into a scam. It might make a big loss, rather than make a profit.

I tend to think of my longer-term savings as investments these days and perhaps I am also beginning to accept that my crypto experiment is a small, small basket of diversification. Some very real life lessons (the sudden 40% loss of value to my local currency, for example) keep repeating themselves to me. Even if you don't "invest" with any attitude to profit, even savings should be diversified into several currencies.

And its good advice we all need to take to avoid losing our investment by putting everything in one basket. Diversification has been also been  prove to be the best way to protect and grow our investments.

That's why medical assurance is a way to diversify investment so it can't ruin other savings whether in gold or bitcoin.
Cash savings is the most needed to prevent losing from other investments as well.
So yes, we need many asset and commodity as much as we could as backup plan just in case something happen.

It is good to carry the band wagon of diversification in the crypto currency world but before doing that you have to understand everything about the team and have to follow all their updates,you really do not want to have a very long list of diverse coins instead select a couple of good coins and follow their development team and you will get an idea when the price will move.

I have talked with many people that has started their investment journeys just too early, they were not prepared and educated well enough.
That has later caused to lose most if not all of their funds because of one simple reason.
They did not secured themselves by using only the part of their funds to get into some particular project, or investment.

This is the golden rule of whole investing mantra, that you should never risk everything on one asset, because it is not worth it considering the risk.

Yeah, before you follow the hype or band wagon you need to make sure that you are following the right hype or path because sometimes those people that are starting to hype is just want to sell their bags to you so you will be the another bag holder, to avoid that it is necessary for you to do research first about the team and if their coin is worth it for long term and not only for short term.

I agree with your attitude

In fact, I had fallen victim to this error myself in the past, though I was wise enough to call it a day just in time. But it is not so much about investing all as such as about staying away from investing more when you start losing. In other words, people are not complete idiots to invest all at once generally, but they are still fools enough to continue investing into a losing bargain when they actually have to withdraw their investments as soon as possible while there is still something to withdraw and their losses haven't yet turned catastrophic

Going all in in one good investment is different from investing blindly. Ask all of the posters here who said that diversifying is good what altcoins are good for them. Im sure a good number of them will have scamcoins in their list of investments.

What now is the good in diversifying, if you diversified them on scamcoins?

i don't know about others but if i ever talk about diversifying, then i am talking about diversifying your "money" and that means for example investing in bitcoin and gold and some other stuff like real estate, stocks ,...

and besides the notion of "scam"coin is a bit weird to me! mostly because people have very different definitions of the word. to me all the altcoins are the same. they are there to be pump and dumped and if we are skilled enough, we can make profit from this scheme. but it is not an investment.

I don't buy this.

I have a stock market fund that basically sits there and does fuck all while others are furiously buying and selling and throwing customer money away. It has doubled in less than four years with lower fees than others and has beaten almost all of the frenzied funds. I won't be doing anything with it for a long time to come.

Similarly with crypto these days if you wait around long enough you'll get another pump. I think the whole thing is about enter a next level of hugeness so there's no way I'd be chopping and changing. I'll be sitting back and reaping the benefits. I'll qualify that by saying I'd only do it with an alt that I truly believed had a serious future of which there are only a handful. All the other ones are fair game and I'll juggle them with impunity. 

You should know what Im talking about because most of the posters here are members of a signature campaign. Like most signature campaigners we dont have enough "money" to invest, much less to diversify. All we have is our small campaign earnings to invest in what? Altcoins.

If your notion of an altcoin is they are there to be pumped and dumped then what does that tell you?