Here’s How to Invest in the Weird and Wonderful World of Crypto

There are more than 9,000 cryptocurrencies in existence today, and more than 2,000 cryptocurrencies have a market capitalisation of over $1m. While Bitcoin is the oldest and most well-known cryptocurrency, an ecosystem of developers, traders, investors, miners, and entrepreneurs have entered the crypto space. 

At this date, all these have brought the existence of thousands of new cryptocurrencies. Some compete with Bitcoin, while others do something completely different. Some are wildly successful, while others are duds. This spectrum exists in crypto too.

Some cryptocurrencies aim to offer cash-like anonymity, while others aim to tackle a specific industry, like supply chain management, cloud computing, file sharing, advertising, and the list goes on.

Bitcoin has opened Pandora's box with all the new crypto assets that have emerged. Now that the box is open, there’s no going back, and as cliche as it sounds — the future is here...

Over time these cryptocurrencies have been challenging Bitcoin’s market capitalisation. Bitcoin’s dominance, which is how valuable Bitcoin is relative to the rest of the cryptocurrency market, has dropped to 42% from 90% just 5-years ago. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market capitilisation has grown over 100x over the same period to over $1.5Tr value.

The following chart is an example of the cryptocurrencies that have succeeded within the last 12 months, and as we can see, the growth is real.

What Does It Mean for Us as Investors?

It means there may be multiple success stories in the crypto space. On the other hand, it also means there’s a possibility that a cryptocurrency that looks good today soon can be overtaken or surpassed by another.

Picking Long-Term Winners Is Challenging.

If all these cryptocurrencies have different use cases and performance, why not just invest in the best few names?

Sean Sanders, the CEO and founder of JSE backed investment platform Altify, explains that “It’s almost impossible to predict which cryptocurrencies will be the success stories of tomorrow.”

“In January 2015, Bitcoin had a market cap near $4Bn, and Ethereum hadn’t even launched yet. If you’d asked anyone in the crypto space whether they thought Ethereum would be worth 4x Bitcoin’s current market cap in just two years, they would have laughed at you. But that’s exactly what happened.”

Over the past 12 months Ethereum is up over 5x versus Bitcoin’s returns. Sanders continues, “It’s not that Ethereum is the new best crypto to own. The point is that, while it’s easy to identify the current winners, it’s hard to predict the future.”

So what cryptocurrencies will be the top performers next week? In three years time, how many crypto winners will there be?

Sanders explains, “No one knows. And fortunately, you don’t have to as our Crypto-Bundles aim to deliver on one promise: to make sure that customers own the top cryptocurrencies, whatever they may be.”

How Do I Invest?

Picking one cryptocurrency to back — even if it is Bitcoin — can be risky because you may have chosen the wrong horse to back regardless of your best analysis.

Even the professionals only get it right half the time. Many professional investors prefer a diversified approach, so you’re ‘not putting all your eggs in one basket’. Instead, you’re buying a basket of cryptocurrencies.

Sanders continues, “Crypto investing can be complicated, time-consuming and quite intimidating, so we created an ultra-simple investment platform that allows you to own a diversified Bundle of the top cryptocurrencies for as little as R500. 

And what’s great is that you can sell out of your Bundle and withdraw your funds at any time.”

Altify’s Bundles are ready-made investments that provide you with direct exposure to the underlying cryptocurrencies within each Bundle. This means that you don’t have to guess which cryptocurrencies to own.

Investing is as easy as signing up and buying a Bundle.

The greatest component of Altify’s Crypto Bundles is their ‘invest and leave it’ functionality. Their Crypto-Bundles automatically update your holdings every month so that you always stay up to date with the fast-paced crypto market.

“Our Crypto-Bundles let the most successful cryptocurrencies come to you, and this puts your whole investing experience on autopilot — making your money work harder for you”, explains Sanders.

Altify offers 3 crypto Bundles on its platform, all of which track the crypto market and are known as passive investments as there isn’t a fund manager picking which cryptocurrencies anyone should own. Instead, Altify’s Bundles provide investors exposure to the largest and most established cryptocurrencies.

The Top 10 Equal Bundle is like the JSE Top 40 or S&P 500 for crypto and provides equally weighted exposure to the top 10 cryptocurrencies making up more than 85% of the crypto market.

The Payment Bundle provides equally weighted exposure to the top 5 payment focused cryptocurrencies looking to make payments cheaper, faster and more global. These cryptos include the likes of Bitcoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Stellar and Litecoin.

The Ecosystem Bundle provides equally weighted exposure to the top 5 smart contract focused cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Solana or Cardano that enable developers to build applications on top of their blockchains, similar to how Apple builds apps on top of its OS operating system.

Altify’s Bundles have outperformed an investment in Bitcoin alone over a 1, 3 and 5-year time periods.

Sanders explains, “The alternative cryptocurrencies, called altcoins, have outperformed Bitcoin, and this is why our Bundles have performed so well — as we equally weight each of the cryptocurrencies within the Bundles, which diversifies your crypto portfolio.”