Full credit for having the vision and sticking to it through some long dark years.
I bought some AEON today for $2.45. Maybe if I hang onto that for 10 years it will also be worth $8k. It’s a Monero fork, equivalent to Litecoin.
Bitcoin is still your best bet. It's not too late to make a pisspot full of money just by holding Bitcoin.
When I bought in at $68 I felt like I'd already missed the boat. I was disappointed I hadn't learned of it 6 months earlier when I could have bought for less than a tenth of that. I really wished I'd found out about it when it was worth a few pennies.
Luckily, I realized how important Bitcoin was and didn't panic when it dropped to $50 after hitting $266. Instead I bought more.
Same thing during the long bear market following the Gox implosion. I kept buying all the way down and on every dip on the way back up. I amused myself through the tough times by sparring with Bitcoin-hating trolls like Notlambchop and Matthecat.
I shrugged off the loss of 50 coins to MtGox even though it raised the average cost of my other coins up to close to $200. I've kept buying the dips all the way up since then. Now my average cost is over $300 per. I'm still buying, except that now I'm buying a tenth of a coin at a time instead of ten at a time.
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I can see how some people feel it's too late to buy in. They said that at $30, again at $300 and again at $3000. They'll say it again at $30,000 but when John Mcafee avoids fellating himself on national television, people will be envious of those who bought for "only" $30k just as they are now envious of those who only paid triple digits. It's all relative.
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I really don't see any current altcoin having the potential for growth that Bitcoin has. It's open source, its network is the biggest computer force in history, and it has the advantage of being first.
The reason for the early success of Litecoin was that it extended the life of pre-ASIC mining equipment but most people mined it to buy Bitcoins.
Ethereum promised smart contracts but it was basically a scam on Vitalik Buterin's part to weasel other people out of their bitcoins by pre-mining and then holding the first ICO, payable in Bitcoin. Eventually the smart contract function will be added to Bitcoin via sidechains.
While there are some attempts at creating a revolutionary blockchain-based currency (especially in seeking anonymity) most are just lame me-too attempts.
IMHO only Bitcoin holds the potential to keep showing the gains we've seen these last 8-9 years. We may have missed the innovator stage of the adoption curve but we're still in the early-adopter phase. Just wait until we get to the early mainstream stage. It's not too far off.