ICO investing has been very volatile: one can gain enormous profits in as quick as a few hours, but for the same reason can lose everything, just as fast. Traditional investing has been historically more stable and has not experienced the same magnitude of stock value spikes and plunges as cryptocurrencies have. If you have no clue about what you are doing, you should definitely avoid investing in ICOs.
There are anyway a couple of crucial points to be discussed before one can drive a conclusion on this topic. Private investment is often not accessible to common people. You either need to be a qualified investor, or a huge amount of money to begin with. And typically both of them. Investor capital is often locked up and investors must wait until the fund is liquidated or for specific and restricted time windows to get in and out. ICOs, despite some recent government regulations and interventions, are instead still quite accessible to anybody. Since tokens are owned by investors and can be traded on exchanges, there are no investment restrictions, neither in terms of initial capital, nor in terms of operative time windows.
It is not all good, unfortunately. Cryptocurrencies value is often dependent on speculation and perception with no real-world assets backing them. They are easy to manipulate through media influence and pump and dump schemes, often very hard to be detected (hidden behind expensive marketing campaigns). Unforeseeable events like hacks, crimes and scams involving blockchains and cryptocurrencies, can easily knock them down as well. Whales (big holders and investors) can also affect these values simply by cashing out or trading to a different token. All these variables can make a token’s value very unstable.
What should we do then? First of all, we need to educate ourselves. I personally truly believe in the blockchain technology. That's the reason I'm already investing in it. If you know nothing about the technology, about the project and the team, about the roadmap, and you want to pick a token just to realize a quick profit, then just do yourself a favor and stay away from this form of investment (it is not suitable for you). Assuming you are instead a careful crypto investor, although a casual one, there are still at least another couple of rules you should follow.
1 - Be ready to lose all the money. That implies that you should only invest an amount that not only you can afford to lose, but you can also do that comfortably (no stress, no anxiety).
2 - No matters how good you have been in carefully picking a project and no matters how good it seemed to be, always spread your money across multiple ICOs.
3 - You must have a strategy before you commit your money. You must be prepared. If the token price is going up, what are you going to do? Holding it, selling it totally, selling it partially? What if it is going down? You also need to have at least a rough time horizon for your investment. Long term, mid term, realizing a profit right once the token is listed. If you have no plan, you are already doing a mistake, because your next action will be dictated by the emotions of the moment instead of by a rational plan.
Ok, so what is my final answer? If you have no idea about what we are talking about, most likely neither of them is good for you. If you are a classic investor, that likes to have things well under control, with little to no clue about blockchains, I would rather go for a private equity.
If you are instead like me, now that's an easy one, ICOs win hands down.
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