Altcoins — Scam or Good Investment?

I started out my Blockchain journey focused on the Ethereum network. I was transitioning into a tech role and decided that I wanted to learn software development. Simultaneously I was learning how to invest in stocks and day-trade and had my foot in some cryptocurrency investments. When I heard of the term “Blockchain Developer”, it felt as though all of my interests suddenly came together. It felt like a moment of fate, I felt God in the room and I literally fell to my knees in tears thanking Him for this newfound journey that I was about to embark on. In the matter of two months I landed my first job in a Blockchain company and I am now living out what I’ve been working towards without even knowing!

The concept of investing will forever intrigue me. But the reality in investing and in life is that in order to win, someone has to lose.

Starting a blog has meant me researching day in and day out about Blockchain. I have just reached a realization today that as I’ve been going down the rabbit hole I might have took a wrong turn getting invested into a thing called Altcoins.

Altcoins, or what skeptics on Twitter call “shit-coins”, in definition simply are cryptocurrency coins that are not Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency ever made and was created with a genuine use-case, which backs it up as a legitimate coin. There is not really any question of the legitimacy of Bitcoin and people are saying that Bitcoin are still very much undervalued. But since Bitcoin, many other cryptocurrencies have been created.

I want my readers to understand that just because a cryptocurrency is out there and available to trade, it doesn’t mean that it holds any value. ANYONE can make a cryptocurrency. Even me, if I wanted to make a BlockGirlCoin I could. When I was studying Blockchain Development, the courses I took explained how to build Decentralized Applications, including building your own cryptocurrency. So it is very much so possible for someone who has ill-intentions (or even just no real intentions) to create a coin that has no real use-case and create a new “pump and dump” situation where the price sky-rockets and then plummets as people quickly take their profits for themselves and leave the people who got in too late behind. In hindsight if someone loses in the end, then does it really matter what the intentions of the creator of the coins are?

So you’re probably thinking what does this mean. What is the point in me saying this? Is this all a sham? Is Blockchain just a theory and is investing just an evil scam? Am I no longer calling myself Block Girl Invested?? Am I just a girl???

Before we go as far as that, let me say what I am thinking at this very point in time. Because just last week I was throwing $5 here and $10 there into all of these different altcoins just because I got a signal from one of my investing chats without doing any real research! This is me being real and fully transparent here.

In any and every industry that does well, there will be people who believed in the industry or just got lucky that got in when the price was low and that particular thing was slept on. The CEO was someone’s cousin, they were already in a similar field and heard about this new one first, and they got in low and reaped the benefits when it finally sky-rocketed.

Then there will be people who hop on the bandwagon early because they did the research and refused to be skeptical and they’ll reap some benefits as well. Not as much as those who were in it day one, but still a good amount.

Then there will be people who missed the wave or tried to get in a little too late and didn’t reap much benefit. These are the category of people who are in trouble. Because then there will be people who are looking at all that is happening and decide to create something similar to what is doing well to give those who missed the first wave the opportunity to hop on a new wave. It becomes a dangerous cycle because at some point the craze will stop and a large amount of people will lose. Depending on how much they put in, they could lose everything.

In terms of Cryptocurrency investing, the first wave was Bitcoin. The new wave was Dogecoin. And now as of this week, the next wave is Shibu Inu. I personally had put $10 in Shiba Inu and woke up Monday morning having profited over $250. Imagine if I had put in $1000, I would have made $25,000! After opening Twitter, I learned that many people made a lot of profit off of the coin. Some people became rich. I had put money into the coin because I saw how Doge did and I thought to myself “Look at this coin that’s name after the same dog that’s on Dogecoin. Watch this coin do well just for that little fact.” And I was right. But I see the cycle and I’m stopping myself before I get carried away. Because I don’t want to post about something that could potentially hurt someone. Investing is a risk, it always will be a risk but at the end of the day I don’t want Block Girl Invested to encourage my readers to play in the dangerous game of shitcoin-investing.

Let’s get back to the beginning of this. Let’s get back to the reason of why I chose to get into the Blockchain Industry. At the end of the day, Blockchain isn’t going anywhere. It has real use-cases behind it, not just for increasing your portfolio. I’m invested in stocks and crypto but I’m also invested in terms of my career. And that should be one of the biggest takeaways of my blog — go where the money resides!