Here is my personal experience and insight with all three:

Day Trading: EXTREMELY stressful! Especially if you are trying to juggle it with a normal job.  Pumps happen so fast on exchanges you really need to be constantly checking it throughout the day.  Since you are spending so much time watching the market, you don't have much time to go through and research the coins you are trading.  Also, dumps happen quickly and you have to be really careful to not buy a coin at too high a price, or one that is on its way out.  But, if you time it right (ideally, during a bull run like the last two weeks), you can substantially increase the amount of btc you have.  To me, day trading is the highest risk and highest reward.

ICO: I made a substantial return off of Electroneum and Wabi.  However, it was after many, MANY hours of dilligent research and crunching numbers.  I would say that the biggest risk in ICOs is not being scammed, if you do even a little amount of research you can spot scams a mile away.  The biggest risk is investing in an ICO that has NOTHING TO OFFER.  What that means is there is no platform, no product, no use for blockchain at all.  Or they are just copying another well established project's ideas.  These kinds I have seen people lose money or not get that much returns.

Altcoin investment: This one has been the least profitable for me, but also the easiest.  I had put a large sum into IOTA and Monero back when they were 60 cents and 80usd respectively so I am happy with them now.  I am still holding on to them and expect larger returns.  However, when I started calculating the rise of those two in comparison with the rise of btc, I realized that my gains weren't really that much in the end.  If I would have just left in btc, I would have just about the same amount of money today.  I can see how many people want to find a "hidden gem" but, in my opinion, it isn't worth the time.  Of course, there are many people who have made substantial gains through altcoins so, go figure.

The last three weeks have been really interesting in crypto, and I managed to make a large sum of money.  I think my experience is pretty interesting so here it is:

Over here in America, it was like bitcoin was almost a viral phenomenon.  I was seeing the most random people buying up btc and posting about it and asking me if I had heard about it.  We're talking all age ranges and backgrounds.  Even some of my students!

So, I saw an opportunity.  I combined my own experiences starting off trading, knowledge I've gained about market economics, and straight up psychology.
I guessed that a lot of this new money would gravitate towards alts as people start to think that btc is too expensive and they missed their chance.
I figured they would start buying in to other "cheaper" coins that were readily available, like eth, bch and ripple.
Then, I started noticing that really cheap coins were being pumped pretty hard.

Then I saw the crazy Verge pump and realized a huge amount of new money was desperately gravitating towards "the next big thing" regardless of whether or not that coin or token was even good.

I made an extended series of short term trades over a two week period and managed to quadrupal the amount of btc I own.
I then quickly sold it using local bitcoins for cash, then reinvested it back into btc when it went under 14k usd.
all total and taking into account the current price of btc, I was able to make a around a whopping 18000usd in two weeks.
I have NEVER been that successful before haha.  Also, this was a unique case where timing was key.

But it goes to show, that hardcore research, experience, and intelligent educated predictions do go a long way.

On a final note, I have this weird sad feeling that the world of crypto has become just a huge get rich quick mentality world.
Does anyone care about a decentralized monetary future anymore?

Investing entire portfolio in altcoins...

is a terrible idea!

Here are the problems:

#1) The altcoin you invested in has to outperform bitcoin, thinking that every coin that has a low market cap can rise 50 to 100x is sheer stupidity

#2) you will most likely spread yourself too thin, if you invest 10k usd and spread it accross 7 to 10 different coins your profit margins won't be as high

#3) it will prevent you from making short to medium term trades that can substantially increase your capital

There's a reason why those who know the market well suggest put 50% of your investments in bitcoin and then in two or three alts.
Just putting it all into alts in hope that you find the "next big thing" is gambling rather than investment.
It is easy to look at those who got rich off of a coin and think, "I can do it too" but if you don't take the steps to become an active investor, most likely you will best case scenario, make a couple hundred, or worst case, lose it all.

Brothers and sisters: Buy BTC!

Alts prices are NOT low right now!
They are what, 5 - 10% lower than a week ago when there was a massive bull run?
But actually most of them are still stable and some even rising still.
It would be a terrible time to buy alts.

In the mean time, btc is proportionately much lower.
Basically, noobs bought bitcoin the last couple weeks, thought, "Oh Noesss! It's too expensive!" and moved it all into alts.
This won't last forever.
Actually, it probably won't even last another two weeks.
The market will correct, alts will go down, and btc will rise again.

It's been said time and time again: when everyone buys alts, sell them.  When everyone sells btc, buy it.

As far as speculation goes, the undervalued privacy coins have the most potential, like cloakcoin or zerocoin.

But when you compare them all up to each other, Monero wins hands down.
It's got the best tech and the widest support.
It has active development with actual community approved forks that have improved the system.
It is also the currency mostly used on the darknet. it's just the best.

As crypto inevitably gets more controlled and regulations start flooding in, privacy coins will become much more valuable.
In the end, the ones with the best usage and tech will win over because with privacy coins, how you are able to use them really does matters.

With that in mind, dash, verge, and spectrecoin don't have much of a long term future.
Especially verge, that thing is so ridiculous.  Mcafee tweets about it and the value rises?
Talk about pathetic.

While I also think XRP sucks, I am not as extreme as yeou.

The truth is, crypto has all become about making money now.
The amount of people who want crypto to have a future for decentralized finances are so small compared to the millions of people just wanting to get rich.
It's been like this for a year now, hence the astronomical rise of almost all coins in 2017.

What makes it worse, is that there has been a lot of new money pumping into crypto the last couple weeks and they are all joining in on hype and get rich quick mentality
That is what caused ripple to bubble, not because it's a great token that has practical use.

These people don't care that it is conrolled and manipulated by big banks.
They don't care that it is centralized.
They just want money.

But, I accept that.  I don't see it as a disgrace, I just see it as how things are.

Now, ripple is here to stay, even if it goes against everything btc was trying to accomplish

Why are people calling this a random fork?

This was actually a huge topic of debate amongst miners and btc communities since last summer.
Consensus was reached with people backing out at the last minute which made segwit not go through.

Now, they implemented it to very little fanfair because people are tired of the entire fork drama.

But the thing is, btc does need to be fixed.
We do need a fork that the vast majority of the community can agree on because btc is becoming unusable.
Who on earth wants to pay a $20 fee and wait an hour for it to be confirmed?

The major problem is, miners make TONS of money by bitcoin being unscalable.
They throw out things like, "Oh! We want to keep the original tech decentralized!"
Well, btc is not decentralized as long as miners can manipulate the community into not accepting a fork that will benefit btc in the long run.

Now, it is a lost opportunity cause no one will accept segwit, even if it can help btc's scaling issues.

Wow, did you really quit your job?

You are also incredibly lucky, while verge is a good privacy coin, there are tons of undervalued privacy coins out there.
It just so happened that McAffee tweeted about it and showed the crypto world just how stupid the new money that is coming in is.

I had a period of time when I put some into small, relatively unknown projects with good tech and team.
I would wait for my huge returns that never came.
I ended up switching to short to medium term trading and have found it to be a lot more rewarding.

I did have a substantial amount of iota back when it was .30 cents, I ended up selling them off and look where IOTA is now.
But, in that time, I ended up making more by actively trading rather than just holding.

Well, to each his own I guess.

Of course, everyone will just shill the project they are investing in, so I might as well do mine.

Titanium
ANN thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2542292.0
Website: https://tbis.io/

They are building entire IT solutions right on the blockchain, from cloud based storage to tools for startups.
What is most impressive about them is the team.  It comes from the CEO of EHI (tech and it company) that has been around since the 90s and has serviced big name companies like Disney and McDonalds.
They are on track to releasing the first part of their platform in Q1 of 2018.

The CEO is very open and transparent and has actually taken the time to personally respond to my inquiries.
They release a weekly update and are already set for some impressive media coverage.
Another rare thing that is great, is they are already accredited by the Better Business Bureau.

I don't really like throwing referall codes around, so if you are interested in a referral code, just msg me or if you have any questions generally.

Well, the reason why they all look like a scam is because they mostly all are.
Maybe scam is too harsh a word though.  Although there are ico's that will downright steal your money, most of the ico's are just terrible business ideas or lazily copied ideas that will have no future.
So whether or not they intentionally go out to take your money or they lose your money due to incompetence, the result is bye bye to your investments.

But, the thing is, the reason people are still crazy about ico's is because there are some terrifiic startups out there.
If you find the right one, you will earn huge returns on your investment.

What you need to decide, is are you willing to put forth the time and effort to research these companies to find one you can support.

Pro tip: don't waste time here on bitcointalk asking people, ask the devs themselves.
Any reputable startup or ico will have a way to get in touch with the dev team.
I have found that it is the fastest and most reliable way to do research.
Dev team not available? Then pass on it.

Bitcon Cash is not the answer to scalability problems.
The only thing that bch does different is different blocksize.
It has already been proven over and over again that it won't make a dent in the scalability problem if bch sees btc's amount of user base.

On top of that, bch is just flat out scammy as hell.
The main developers are trying their best to strong arm people into seeing bch as the "real" bitcoin.
Using posts such as this one and fud to drive prices up.
Joining powers with whales to make mass manipulations of the marketplace.

In the end, the one that will make decentralized crypto mainstream and usable on a daily basis, will probably not even be bitcoin or any of it's forks at all.
But a next evolution in the blockchain.
Heck, btc's tech is already 10 years old, something better will replace it, and that is not bch.

I've been thinking about this a lot too, and something conclusive I can say is that the market is changing (which doesn't say a lot and is just obvious).
I'm not sure we will see such a dramatic example as verge for awhile.
I think it was a combination of McAfee's tweet, new money that has been pouring in to crypto, and timing.

To me, I think the timing might have been the biggest factor, and I do not think at all that John McSCAMfee was smart enough to orchestrate it to such a grand scale.
With tons of North Americans and Koreans pouring in money starting a month ago, the price of btc was on an insane bull run.
With noobs, they typically start looking at alternatives to BTC to find the "next big thing".
They go to youtube and social media for answers and find John.
He tweets the thing, and throw in the timing of it being right before Christmas, and bam!
A shitcoin becomes a billion dollar company.

Well, in this case, verge isn't that crappy, but there are better and more established privacy coins out there.

A newbie with 0 activity claiming to have a bot that will take advantage of the mcafee pump and dump scams?

Sounds like a scam of a scam.

Been seeing a lot of McAfee posts lately and it just astounds me how stupid people are.
Listen, Pump and dump anythings ARE A SCAM!!!

Especially McAfee's.
Why does he do one once a week?
Why does he only announce a couple minutes before the proposed pump?
Why are they always obscure coins that have low trade volume?

It's quite simple.  Buy up a coin with low trade volume for a week or two at rock bottom prices before you announce the coin, hold them (not listing them for sell).
Announce the coin that is going to be pumped (mind you, the original pumper owns a significant amount of the coins already).
Price starts to pump and you drive it insanely high by listing very small amounts in small increments to give the illusion of demand.
After the price has been driven up 200 to 300% (sometimes even more) then list all of your coins you bought a week before.

Now there is a bot that is supposed to help you "win" against this?
Can it also cure baldness?

I'm tired of posts like this.
Just the title itself will be able to accomplish what it is trying to do: drive hype on some shitcoin ico to get profit.
Is Peculium a scam?
I think so.  Some pretty huge red flags about the project.

The biggest one being: there is no prototype for the public to see.
So what their whole company is about, using ai to guide savings and investment, has no ai to show.
I've seen the thread where they proclaim to be using their "AI" to make predictions on the market, if they do have a a working prototype why isn't it available to the public?

Another reason why this seems to be a scam to me is because it uses the same "business model" that other known scam ai icos have used: most notably Magos.
They proclaim their ai can earn significant returns and that a percentage of that goes back to token holders.

Look, even if this isn't a scam, it is a terrible company to invest in when there is no product to see or test out.
That would be like giving money to some random guy you don't know who says, "Give me a million dollars because I have this great idea!"

I would say IOTA.
In some ways, they are actually very similar.
XRP is a centralized platform for banks to communicate with each other.
IOTA is a centralized system for devices to communicate with each other.

There are two huge differences though.
IOTA is only temporarily centralized, once it meets a certain user base the "wheels" will be taken off and it will become decentralized.
IOTA is next gen blockchain tech.  Well, it isn't even a blockchain, it's its own thing.

Because of this, I see IOTA as having far more better future potential than XRP.
Besides, I don't want to buy something that is part of the banking system.  I am one of those that hopes for decentralized economic future.

Of course, they will crash every couple months or so, and it is a wonderful thing.
It is healthy for the market and indicates price correction.

On top of that, you can get more alts at lower prices.
Then, when the inevitable pump comes, you can sell them off for profit.
Or, you can choose good projects to hold long term.

I know it is disheartening to see your portfolio lose it's value, but look at it long term.
Look at monero, for example, last time alts crashed monero was down to 80 - 90 dollars.
Look where it is at now.
The market had a very slight price correction recently and the price of monero dropped but in the long run their is substantial growth.

There was a post that was floating around on bitcointalk a couple months ago that had a snapshot of the top 10 coins on coinmarketcap last Jan 2017 vs. what the prices were Noc. 2017.

The growth was absolutely shocking.

And now, the price from last month to now is also insane.

Yes, holding is definitely the way to go.
But, also, it is important to hold the right coins.
2018 will be very different, the marketplace is flooded with intense competition.  We already have three serious contendors to eth now: neo, cardano, and waves.
How many payment projects? How many ai projects? How many decentralized exchanges?
The competition is great, but I'm guessing a lot of projects will severely fall behind in 2018.
We are entering a stage where it is not enough to just have a great concept and promises.
Coins/tokens that scale, and have a viable working product will absolutely crush the rest.

So yes, hold, but hold the good ones.

I don't know, this isn't really that actually.
I have a feeling that things will crash even further.

There are still quite a number of coins that are pumping, mostly lower priced coins that noobs are buying into.
Last price correction devastated alt prices for a month and a half.
The various forks also sucked money out of alts into bitcoin.
I mean, monero was floating around 80 to 90 dollars for a long time.

Now, for all of those who bought up alts a month ago, they should be incredibly happy.
Since a lot of the coins are still at a good price and btc has gone down, the price per btc should be terriffic now.
It would be a great time to sell them for btc for a profit.

Then when the alts crash, buy them up again and the entire cycle continues!

Well, if that's the case, that makes more sense.

A really easy solution would be to just get a ledger nano and then lock that up in a safe.

Wow, are you serious?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you should be more worried about learning about crypto tech and market economics before worrying yourself with cold storage.

putting that large amount of money into the top 40 seems like an absolutely terrible thing to do.
Also, I am assuming you did it recently?
Here are some things that can really come back to bite you:

#1) The market is incredibly inflated right now, it is actually the worst time to buy coins for long term holding.  Especially the top 40 coins are being ridiculously pumped in prices now.

#2) Coinmarketcap is an incredibly misleading tool to determine a coin's value.  The prices you see are just the going price of the coin in btc, then converted to be displayed in usd based on btc's going rate.  That is way something like, say einsteinium pops up in the top 40 because a pump and dump group drove the btc price of it up, then in one week it will dissapear into the top 200 or 300 coins.

#3) Even with a five figure investment, spreading it accross 40 coins will not give you substantial gains in the long run.  I highly doubt that will even lower your risks.  In order for a crypto investment to actually make money, it has to outperform btc or eth's price (to a certain extent ltc also) increases because those two are the ones you can convert to fiat.  There is no way that all 40 of those will outperfom btc, especially in the long term. That is why most investors want to keep 50 to 70% of their investments in btc.

The good news is that the market is still pumping now (especially for lower priced coins) so you can move them around without too much of a loss or maybe even a little profit.

I would recommend putting 50% in btc, 20% in eth, and the rest in projects that you have really researched about and you believe have a good future (we are talking more than just the next couple months).