I have 12 Bitcoins. I am not a whale. I started about 6 months ago with 0.01 Bitcoins and $1000. I turned it into 12 Bitcoins so far and am pretty proud to say the least.
My question is, what do I do now?
As far as I can see, I have 4 options;
1) Hold the Bitcoin
2) Invest in altcoins and leave a little in Bitcoin
3) Fund a project and start my own cryptocurrency that solves a problem that current currencies face (scalability, Tx fees etc.). With the funds, I would be able to assemble a team, start a marketing campaign, get listed on exchanges etc. I am also a programmer which helps.
4) Convert it to fiat (probably the dumbest idea)
Edit: I should also add, I dropped out of school and have all the time in the world so can fully commit to any idea. I will earn my living of cryptocurrencies.
A few people have asked how I made my money so, if you are interested, here is a short summary:
Initially, I put it all into Bitcoin during the massive FUD of the fork around June when Bitcoin dipped to $1,900. Then I put half my money into NEO before all of the hype at around $12 and cashed out at $40. Then I invested in a couple ICO's and turned a pretty good profit of off the hype. After that, I got back in on NEO as soon as China announced the regulations regarding ICO's and rode the wave back from around $20 to $40 (I can't quite remember). Then, I rode the hype of Ethereum Dark, eBitcoin and a few other airdrop scams. Finally, I got in on Wincoin before it got to coinmarketcap and turned a 20x profit.
Nice to read about the opportunities you were able to catch. Congratulations! So now to your question. I saw some responses, which I can actually also support. But looking at your current situation, if you are really a developer (and perhaps a gifted one :-)), AND you have a real good idea, how to solve scalability and transaction costs, than I would see only one way. Do your homework and make the best protocol ever to solve this problem. With the crypto kittie example with Ethereum we can see, how vulnerable the crypto world is. And a socalled "POW" is not really happend for a lot of the projects. It will be time, that the purpose of protocols get a lot more clarified in the market, beside of trying to get huge money through ICOs/growdfunding.The world starts to get ready to shift real usecases for the blockchain. It is time, that those can be supported accordingly. It is insane, that e.g. crypto kitties is within a few days/weeks occupying about 20% of the transaction volume of Ethereum and most probably will bring it to fall, if this is continuing.