Generally, ICO pools are not profitable.
The way the math works out, you are basically getting a percentage of a percentage of a profit.
And as pools go, there will almost always be one or two whales in the pool who get the best percentage discount.

If you want to join a pool because you can't invest (for example, us citizens are restricted).
It is better to jsut wait until it is listed in an exchange.

Almost always, you can get it at around ico price or even cheaper.
Also, you can watch it's progress and see if it is actually worth it.
Some icos have so much hype but fail to deliver after everything is said and done.
You don't want to be stuck with a worthless coin.

Sorry, but $1000 is not enough, especially if you want to run a master node.

Any masternode worth running you are looking at 7k to 10k.
As far as staking goes, you will need at least 5k in a single coin.
On top of that, you have to factor in electricity and operating costs because you basically have to have your computer running 24/7.

Getting in after a coin has established is typically not worth it (if you are thinking about the PoS game).
That's why, most node operators look for newer projects to jump in from the start.
Putting up a required 10k of a coin when it is worth .20 cents is way better than when the coin is worth $2.

But, with that being said, there are some projects out there that have been out for awhile that can still be profitable.
One of the most popular is Ark, check it out.

Um, I'm sorry, but you are delusional.
There is no way that your $20 will turn to 100k.

Have you done the math?
Did you look at how much max supply and circulating supply there is and then calculated how much each coin has to be worth to have your $20 turn to 100k?
It's literally impossible.

This is where people make the biggest mistake when they get into crypto.
They think that it has unlimited growth.
You will soon find that this is never the case.

The way real life economics works is that you need to invest money to make money.
You need to build capital and then make trades to increase that.
Start with basic market economics before you dream of being rich.

Well, we are coming close to the last quarter of 2018, and very specific types of coins have done better than others.
Almost all have dropped in value, but some have been very resilient and show strong signs of growth.

Mainly, smart contract platform projects have done great.
Interestingly, everyone was talking about how privacy coins would do good but they have done pretty terribly except for monero.

Out of all of the smart contract platform projects, I personally like polymath the best.
It's the only real viable solution for securities to penetrate the crypto market.
Securities are the natural progression of crypto, it is perfectly suited for it.

But regulations are lagging really far behind.
Polymath provides the way for any project to go from startup to fully regulated and listed.

Yes, almost everyone's portfolio value is down, especially if you got in right around the peak last jan.

But, have you been doing what you can to minimize your losses?
Prices have been incredibly cheap for quite a while now.
Anyone could have easily gone in and bought up more of whatever they are holding to decrease your overall cost per token.

For example, if you had bought iota back when it was $4.00.
Just look at the price now, its .55 cents!
Buy up more and the average price of your iota will go down.

Then, when the next bull run happens it is much easier to sell for a profit.
Or, you can exit as soon as you break even if you would like.

Well, my question is, why not invest in both?

The earlier you start and the more diversified your portfolio is, the better off you will be.
There's no better way to build capital than by branching out into different investment options.
This all builds off of each other and your value rises exponentially as you can then invest in even more options.

I personally started out with crypto, but have since branched out to precious metals and most recently, real estate.
I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but here in America, getting a good mortgage for first time home buyers is pretty simple.
You typically only need to put 15 to 20% down.
then, you just rent it out and use the rent to pay off your monthly mortgage payments.

So are you a paid shill?

The reason I ask is BCH has a well documented history of coordinated attacks on btc to "take it down" and to pump bch.
These are almost always starting with posts and "news" getting circulated around that bch can replace btc.
Usually escalating to those prediciting that btc is done and BCH is the "Real" bitcoin.

Then, what happens?
BCH stakeholders mass sell their btc to drop the price of btc.
Oh! Those predictions must be correct! Then the masses flock to bch.

The only problem is, it never lasts.  People see right through it and just as fast as it pumps, it also crashes.
BCH, along with Ripple, are the two that I will never ever invest in.

Of course I am super selective of the icos and bounties I participate in.

Especially with ICOs, it is my own money I am putting in and I want to make sure I get profits back.
So I go above and beyond, I talk to the devs and ceo, I test out their product, I do background research on the company and staff, everything.
This has made it so that I have never been scammed or lost in an ICO.

When I first started doing bounties, I figured it didn't matter as much since I'm not putting any money in.
But after not getting paid for some or receiving trash coins, I decided to treat bounty campaigns the same way I treat ICOs.

Since then, bounty hunting has been much more rewarding.
That extra time spent researching quality ICOs really pays off.
Especially down the long road.

Last year, from october onwards, btc started it's amazing climb all the way to $15k.
There was this "mental barrier" of sorts where people were wondering all year if btc could ever break $5000.
Once it did, tons cashed out and it crashed a bit, but the big effect was everyone thought that anything is possible.
This peaked towards the end of the year and jan which shot everything to an all time high.

This year, I am not so sure it will follow the same pattern.
There are a lot of fundamental differences.
First, is btc is not trendy anymore, there was a significant amount of hype surrounding btc last year but that has died off.
Second, long term traders are jaded and there isn't any new money coming in.
I think btc will rise yes, but not like what we saw last year.

It's back down to three again, but they are neck and neck for now.

I personally don't believe ripple will take the 2nd place spot permanently.
There have been pumps where it has overtaken eth, but it has always been just for a short time.
Ripple doesn't have much going for it really.
It's constant announcements of big deals and developments are mostly just smoke and mirrors.
On top fo that, the coin itself has no function at all.

Compare that to eth that has an entire ecosystem of crypto companies.
The amount of things you can do with the eth platform absolutely stomps ripple.
You also have active development that is pushing the tech even farther.

Just a couple weeks ago, people were predicting the doom and collapse of eth.
It's the same thing over and over.
A coin crashes in price and people freak out and wonder if it's gonna die.

now, we are looking at eth climbing back up again.
Sure there was that temporary crash, most people see it as failed icos cashing in for a last desperate attempt to make money.
But the eth itself is very much alive and well.

It is important to look past all the fomo and fud.
like any other market, it is best companies that will be along the longest.
So it is worth everyone's time to research the different coins to find the good ones.

Of course, it is good to learn from your mistakes.

I think this whole entire year has been a hard lesson for a lot of us.
After a full 10 months of crash and burn and flatline, I imagine most people have rethought their trading strategies.
For example, I have fully moved on from all of the speculative investments I used to do.
This includes passing on a lot of ICOs.
It was hard because I used to love flipping an ico for quick money but, of course, that has just not been possible this year.

I am also setting up my portfolio to take full advantage of the next bull run that comes along.
I've set up financial goals and timetables and have a solid plan in place.

No more greedy hodling thinking that btc will hit 40k
(actually, I had believed that btc would hit 100k eventually...)

I agree with you.  Regulation is what will make crypto viable in the long run.
I suppose we would like to see these crazy pumps where you can get 100% plus profit, but that's unstable and unreliable.
The best thing is steady long term growth.

Also, I believe the #1 thing holding back crypto right now is that institutional money is hesitant to jump in.
These are the VCs, hedge funds, and brokerage groups that have yet to fully jump into the crypto game.
The main reason is because crypto is so risky.
With regulation, this will allow for these types of investors to start investing and picking up the volume.
Then, we will finally see the market mature and grow in a stable way.
until then, crypto is still the wild wild west.

Well, we had a mini pump the last couple days and it is flatlining again.

So what causes the price to down?
Simple supply and demand, that's it.
Of course there are thousands of factors that affect the supply and demand of something.
But basically, more people are selling than are buying.
When more people are buying than are selling, than the price goes up.

So you should start asking yourself, why are more people selling right now instead of buying?
First off, the general market attitude is low and has been low for quite awhile.
People are losing faith in especially the newer speculative projects.
When things stabalize, they will naturally go to more secure investments, like btc and eth.

Um, sorry, but when was it ever good to not have a job?
Human beings have an inner drive to be useful and succeed, so even if you are a hippie "money doesn't matter" idiot you still want some kind of thing to be good at.

If you think that quitting your job and doing crypto full time is a good idea, then you are just crazy.
What if a friend told you that they would quit their job and start trading stocks full time.
But that friend knew very little about market economics, trading techniques, and how to read and interpret data?
Would you still say, "yeah! that's agreat idea!"

Crypto isn't some magical place where anyone can get rich.
And most people jumping in have very little experience with investment or trading.
It is totally reckless to quit your job and jump into something you have no experience with.

Bounty programs have gone down the toilet.
Even with stricter rules it has become impossible to sort through all the fake accounts, scammers, and copy and pasters.

It boggles my mind really.
somehow, people have started seeing bounty hunting as a way to get super rich, even trying to make it replace their job.
Awhile ago, bounty hunting was always supllementary to your real investing and it worked out well.
I highly doubt all these "full time" bounty hunters are making good money.
There is no way that is better than investing in solid projects and making wise trading choices.

On top of that, bounty hunters literally make their own earnings worse.
since they join as many as possible and just spam social media, the projects they are supposed to support end up not taken seriously.
And then when they dump, they literally crash the value of their own currency.

This original post was actually way back in Sept 2018.
Since then, actually ripple was #2 for a short while.
It's crazy to think how much has changed.

Theirs a simple reason why ripple is so popular: people are greedy and stupid.
If you did even a tiny bit of research on the company, you would realize that you should stay far away.
First off, the company, Ripple, is totally centralized.
That means its a traditional corporation that does not have transparency and is designed to marginalize and dominate market sectors (in their case, the banking industry).
Crypto is supposed to be all about open source decentralization; we don't need more Goldman Sachs type businesses.

Also, ripple has always artificially pumped their own coin because they own a vast majority of them.
Money from nothing, yeah, I don't want to associate with that company.

Well, by now you have probably realised that icos are no longer profitable.
I don't know of one ico this year where the coin has not dropped below ico price.
Of course, you could by the ico coins after they are released for super cheap if you still want to do a new startup.

Rather than just going to the top 20 coins, you should be looking at the 50 - 200 range.
Typically, if a coin is ranked 200 and up, it is a legitimate project (well, most of the time).
Also if it is in the 50 - 200 range, there is a higher chance that it would be undervalued and have a lot of room to grow.

For example, eth will always be a safe and sure bet, but there are TONS of new up and coming smart contract platforms.
One of the more popular ones are polymath and zilliqa.
considering how they were released in poor market conditions, you can expect these to moon like there's no tommorrow.

Satoshi Nakamoto created a really ingenius way to work out the whole mining thing.
Every time a block is mined, the next one becomes much more difficult.
It is based on an algorhythm that mathematically becomes much more complex.
since numbers are infinite, the difficulty can exponentially grow.
Currently, there actually isn't technology powerful enough to outpace that algorhythm.

What that means is that in order to reasonably mine btc, you would need a top end asics and join a mining pool that has tremendous hashpower.
but even with all of these mega mining pools, btc will not be finished mining for another estimated 50 years!
Newer blockchains like monero and the like are relatively "easier" but they too will become increasingly more difficult.

There's always been artificial pumps of ripple ever since it was released.
It doesn't change the fact that it is a terrible company.

Do you even know how xrp pumps?
How can a coin that literally has no use rise so high in price?
One of the main reasons is because the vast majority of coins are held by the company itself.

They systematically release "big news" and then proceed to dump their coins on the market.
Basically, they are just making themselves rich and the idiot investors gobble it up.
The xrp platform itself is what banks are using, the coin itself not so much.
At least for eth, you can use it to invest in icos.