Cardano is a safe bet, in my view, to be a $3 to $4 coin by the end of 2018, and I think I'm being conservative in that estimation.

I'm holding about 8% of my portfolio in Cardano, having got in at $0.13. I'm hoping to see a nice 25x return by the end of 2018.

I hope that it does explode far higher! But with its market cap already at $26b, anything more than a 3x to 4x gain from here to over $100b market cap would just be icing on the cake.

Every market needs winners and losers.

If you want to be a winner, sell XRP and never buy it again.

If you want to be a loser, buy and hodl XRP and get fleeced by the banksters pumping this shitcoin purely to dump it back under $1.

Given so many other great opportunities to buy out there (Cardano, Neo, RaiBlocks, Monero, PowerLedger and Spectre to name just a few) the very fact that folks choose Ripple is baffling to me.

I sincerely hope Coinbase never ever adds Ripple. XRP is such a giant load of bankster-propped centralized shit (which goes against Coinbase's own policy regarding crypto they list) that listing Ripple among titans like Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum would be a huge slap in the face to BTC, LTC and ETH.

Coinbase adding the PumpNDump scheme that Bitcoin Cash is was a questionable decision in and of itself, especially after the way BCH pumped right before listing (insider trading anyone?) But even listing BCH is forgivable. If you're a crypto-enthusiast like I am, Coinbase listing XRP is unforgivable.

Now before I'm run out on a rail here, I will concede that Coinbase just wants to make their super-heavy 1.49% transaction fees. As a capitalist, I get that. But why would a company like Coinbase sell their soul to list XRP when so many other good coins are out there?

ADA, Monero, Neo and many others are far better candidates than Ripple for listing on Coinbase. I hope Coinbase makes the right decision and never lists Ripple, the mother of all shitcoins.

Of course you can become a millionaire from altcoins!

The key is to enter a position with a coin that has a low cap, and you have to trust it. Either HODL it or sell/buy 3x/0.5x pullbacks. For me to do that, that means the alt has to have at a minimum a good dev team you can research, and technology that rivals the big player in that segment. Marketing, airdrops, whitepapers and all that other stuff are optional, and usually don't exist if it is a very low cap coin. Since these are speculative plays for 10x-100x gains, I'm willing to gamble and lose everything.

For example: I found out about Neo (a smart contract coin) back in June. Decided to throw (after research, always important) 10% of my btc into it as I believed it could eventually be a rival to Ethereum. It shot up in August after a convergence of good marketing and solid announcement of ICOs. Sold 25% of the position after the 10/50 ema crossed. Didn't end up buying back in until China swept in and put the banhammer on ICOs and it sank down. Improved my position, and now its rocketing again. Will probably sell off another chunk if it comes down to $90 (or 0.006 btc).

2nd example: I found out about SpectreCoin (a privacy coin) a week before Christmas that has returned some pretty great numbers. Its a bit riskier of a play since it is so new, so I won't sweat it if I lose my investment. Got in at $1.50 tho, and it already climbed up to over $6, before falling back on a nice pullback to around $4. I exited 25% at $5 when a giant wall formed at around 49k satoshis. Nobody was going to breakthru that after a 4x pump over 2 days, so I bailed the 25% out. I just got back in this evening almost 20% heavier than I was previously.

The thing about both of the examples above is that if Neo goes to 50% of its chief rival Ethereum, it'll sit at $500 as of this writing, and I'll have a nice showing for that. As for SpectreCoin, if it even achieves 25% of its chief rival Monero, it'll sit at around $100 as of this writing. I have my fair share of loser picks (Edgeless hasn't really done much, Monaco seems to be garbage, and Golem can't get any traction) but even in spite of those "loser" examples, I defy you to pick 2 50x gainers and NOT become a millionaire off of altcoins.

Diversify, do your own homework, examine, be meticulous and fair, and for the love of Shiva don't be greedy and go all in or all out. Don't trade on emotion. Do make a plan, and stick to it. If you can do that and pick a few winners, you can make a million. Or more.

Or just pick what John McAfee pumps, lol that fukken guy... /sarcasm

I do not trust John McAfee. I believe he has done very well for himself, and kudos to him for that, but I believe he does this solely to make himself money and/or famous. I don't believe he has good intentions for the cryptosphere beyond his own net worth.

I got into a small XVG position when I saw it going bananas on Bittrex. I had no idea it was even available there until I saw it as a top volume coin one day. And since crypto moving upwards parabolically usually results in a nice 5% gain I can hit quickly in and out of, I went ahead and did my usual. But after I did a quick investigation into what was going on, the XVG move had McAfee's fingerprints all over it.

So, while I would say that XVG pumped because of what John McAfee did, I would not say it was only because of him. I think he was a catalyst for sure, but not the only one.

Oh, and just a note from this humble crypto-savvy forum noob. If you see a coin pumping parabolic 2 days in a row, for the love of all that is holy, get out of that position or at the very least don't enter a position. You're only asking for trouble buying in at the top of a pump.

Which privacy coin is most lucrative?

Gotta go with Monero or SpectreCoin.

Monero is the king of privacy coins, so how can you bet against that?

SpectreCoin seems to have the best privacy tech of any lowcap privacy coin, so I'd say it has the highest chance for biggest returns over this year.

Should we sell BTC? Yes, of course we should. We should also buy them, just like we would with any speculative commodity.

I'm playing the long game. Buying in at points I think are low, holding for a while for the price to go up (which has sucked for a long time until recently) and then selling when the profit margin is right to make a fair profit.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The key I've learned since 2013 is to make moves w/o emotions. Make a game plan, execute it, and stick to it.

Can anyone explain that gaping hole?

Thanks for the hook-up on the calculator and the new info on the AntMiner.

I like "as low as possible for as long as possible." When it got to $700 I felt some FOMO kicking in, but wisely didn't buy in then, or at all.

After playing around with the calculators, after the Halvening drops the reward to 12.5, it looks like one could be reasonably satisfied mining 0.5 BTC per month with one of those AntMiners. They're sold out, but w/e, this is all just speculation anyway.

If I was hooked up to a pool and paid a 4% fee, then after paying power costs I'd be looking at around 0.33 BTC per month in profit. That's about 4 BTC per year for one machine. With the cost of a machine ATM being 4.218 BTC, it looks like it'd take about 13 months to ROI into the black. But then that doesn't take into account what happens to the difficulty over time, so...hmm.

My approximation then is that for BTC to be even remotely profitable, my thinking is that BTC's price needs to be higher than $100. Much higher. Even 5x higher. Am I mistaken? Maybe I don't have enough insight.

Any idea how much it costs to mine a coin these days, just before the Halvening?

Curious because I'd like to know what a realistic floor for the price would be based on how much it costs to actually mine a coin.