Topic: Newby - looking for a 3 to 5 year investment (Read 3753 times)

BTC and ETH are both good choices. I'll suggest you add more like Ripple and Nem. These other two are also are legit projects. They are cheap and just waiting to be awaken just like a sleeping giant. Don't miss the chance to invest on those hidden gems.

Just my 2C on this.  I have a particular philosophy: long term.  For me its easy to win long term because you don't have to worry about short term noise.  When BTC dropped to 1800 I didn't even notice.  I have been following it for a long time and it is normal for BTC to fluctuate significantly.  There are many reasons for this, but lately there are rumors that private hedge funds are putting money into bitcoin.  If a hedge fund manager can get 20% PER YEAR RETURN then he is a superstar.  So if he buys some bitcoin and its worth 20% more in two weeks, he has to sell.  It is just the game.  Keep in mind that the entire market cap of bitcoin is comparable, more or less, to a SINGLE mid cap USA company.  BTC market cap: ~65B, Apple: ~805B,  DJIA 6T, S&P 500 ~22T.  This is Just the USA, most people in the world don't live here.  So in other words BTC is still pretty small potatoes.           A single hedge fund can be worth 100B, and the largest mutual fund is over 200B.  So if one of these guys wants to lock in some returns, it WILL affect the price significantly.  Also there will likely be a derivative fund sooner or later which will cause a massive price upswing.  This is besides other things like the segwit controversy that can also impact price significantly.  The point is that no matter your buy in price you will almost certainly see price swings far in excess of what you may be used to.  Just ignore them and hold for the long term.  Especially if you buy and then see a 30% decrease.  Don't sweat it just go about your day.  There are significant risks though, so don't put all your eggs into the crypto basket because anything can happen, and it can happen fast.


Wallets:

Just get a trusted one like electrum or whatever.  You don't really need to understand the technology behind it.  Each address should only be used once and then a new one should be generated.  Most wallets will handle this automatically.  You may want to divide your coins between different addresses on the wallet.  You can also get a hardware wallet like Ledger for increased security, but for such a small investment it may not be worth the cost.


2) You don't have to use a paper wallet IMO.  Your security key can be on paper.  A burglar is not likely to look for this, just keep it somewhere hidden and safe.  And don't tell too many strangers that you own crypto.

3) IMO its better to let the wallet generate the key, they do so in such a way that makes it far harder to brute force.

4) Does my wallet address ever change? --> Use a different address each time, most wallets do this automatically.  But the address storing the coins stays the same.

5) How do I create a wallet? Is the address allocated to me?  --> Its pretty easy, don't stress it most wallets are very user friendly.

5) Living in the UK, where can I get my coins from in the first instance? I've heard bad things about Coinbase. What is this localbitcoins.com website? Is it safe to buy this way?  -->localbitcoins can be dangerous, its not that user friendly but not that hard to figure out.  I don't know whats wrong with coinbase, I have used them before, they are perfectly fine but you will likely find lower fees elsewhere.  Good luck!

For a 3-5 year investment bitcoin is not a horrible option, but you have to realize that there is a lot of risk involved. 5 years is more than half of the amount of time that bitcoin has even existed, and for most of that time it was so small that nobody knew about it. However, Bitcoin is in a strange spot right now, due to the plunge, and it may make for a great entry point.

Good luck and make your own decisions! 

3 to 5 years in coming time will be like break or hit scenario after China decision still things may be little unclear now as might be different countries would go in with China. If this happen market is set to fall again or else if it continue to rise then coins like BTC, ETH, Monero, Dimcoin and invest in good couple of ICO coins which will make you a good gains after 3 to 5 years.

Investing your money to the ethereum coin is the best thing to do as of now because the price is stable. I think that this coin has a potential to increase periodically, Since the price today is decreased then it was the right time for you to invest because probably it will rise again like what happened at the previous months.

Ethereum is just an altcoin and i think bitcoin will be still a good choice to invest.. bitcoin is gaining more popularity and growing normally the price should be increase because the price is relaying in demand and supply so more business with bitcoin more investment and merchant are accepting bitcoin as payment ..  so if you are a long term investors you will never experience of loses because the movement of the price of bitcoin is increasing year by year.. that i think you can gain more profit if you invest a lot..  and ignore what the price dump happen in bitcoin instead buy more bitcoin if you see the price dump that can increase your profit more if you buy with cheapest price..  you can be lose in bitcoin if you are not wise and smart if you heard a panic sell out there get the benefits of the price dump buy more bitcoins and gain more profit in few months or year because i believe that it can recover the price back and it can increase more. .

was it Golem that found a way that ETH had a weakness meaning it could just be stolen from certain exchanges (last Nov)? then there was a fix suggested by someone pretty high up in the community - but that backfired and meant that tokens got stuck in multisig wallets. Then there was a problem with Parity wallet last week - that's Gavin Woods project - not even a hack but basically left the door open for an exploit and Edgeless Casino lost $30 million along with a bunch of other people.

I still love ETH but it's not rock solid - blockchain is difficult and new.

Maybe you should research for yourself so that you could see the result and you must be wise aswell as be more observant since there are several downfalls happening on it. And you must join each downfall happen so that you can earn with the pumps happening.

But you shouldn't be calm that there's always profit on bitcoins since particularly many people lose their capitals for not being attaintive to there investment on bitcoins.

If Ethereum has forked and is past that hurdle that has unknown consequences, and Bitcoin hasn't...how does this make Bitcoin a better investment?

I think bitcoin is your "safest" bet, ethereum forked before and all these ICO's are getting way more money than they are really worth.

According to me Bitcoin and Ether are the best investments apart from that you can go through the whitepapers of the new ICO and can analyse them.There are always hidden gems present.

@BartS, you don't understand market capitalization. Market cap is the price of the coin (or investment) multiplied by the total number of coins (or shares) available. The price drives the market cap, which is why the price is so important.

And the comment of yours that I've bolded doesn't follow logic. The size of the market cap doesn't drive or influence buying decisions. Market cap is a consequence, not an influence.

When comparing ETH to BTC, ETH has a greater likilihood of growing 10x than BTC does. And LTC has greater liklihood than ETH, and so on. The OP's question was about whether to invest in BTC or ETH.

Since your investment amount is significant, and since you are planning to hold your coins for long term, I would suggest you to purchase a hardware wallet (such as Trezor). They are available for around $100 per piece. I agree that it sounds a little bit expensive, but trust me, it will give you the peace of mind. A lot of robberies are happening with online wallet right now.

Price is not the most important thing, it is the market cap that matters and now that the market cap of bitcoin and ETH are closer then the logical conclusion is that wit will be very difficult for Ethereum to grow 10 times its current price, if you wanted to win that amount of money with Ethereum you are one year too late.

1. quite correct
2. yes paper wallet is best free solution, there are hardware wallets but they are expensive for amount u want to invest
3. this is called vanity addresses, you choose public address tho not private key numbers/letters
4. no, u can use always same address
5. u can generate it online, in online wallet or in software wallet
6. localbitcoins u buy from person in real life, other exchanges like coinbase, poloniex, bitstamp, gemini, kraken itd. u buy online

np, welcome in bitcoin world

Could you point to all of the "critical holes" that are being discovered in Ethereum every month? I've heard of very few

I would say either diversify between 3-5 different coins or just leave it in Bitcoin. If you leave it in bitcoin in theory your value should raise anywhere from 40-100%+. If you invest and diversify you may make 200%+ but you have to do some good research on a lot of coins and also monitor your investment from time to time

That is  correct, unless you use any extra layer of software (mobile wallet, web wallet, desktop application). I

f there is any middleware between you and bitcoin network, there is a chance such middleware to be compromised. It doesn't mean you should use one for convenience, but that mean you shall assess and consider such risks and pick a wallet provider carefully.


That's a great solution, yet not very convenient or usable. And backups are essential, yet they are bad for the security. You can also put your key in a bank safe deposit cell. But in most situations it is an overkill.


I think, brainwallet has been mentioned already. And my advise is not to go with that option.


No, unless you are voluntarily transferring to a new address.


You can use bitcoin native client. Or any alernative software (like vanitygen). Or web-wallet, or mobile wallet etc.

Coinbase, Bitstamp, Coinomat etc.

That's a bad idea. We can't tell how the market goes. 3-5 years investment i think is dangerous. There's lot of things can happen with that time span. Maybe bitcoin might be dead that time or all altcoins are dead. 1-2 years i think is enough. Maybe that enough to analyze things up and make some changes. Make find an ICO. Not just an ICO. Make sure it's a good and potential crypto in the future. Me, i bought IOTA and i will keep it for 2 years.

As you are looking for opinions, I will give you mine:

$1300 isn't too much, but you could make this amount grow by investing in Crypto casinos. 3-5 casinos would be enough to split this amount, $433-$260 on each (there are casinos accepting ETH investment too). The money grows well and you don't lose Crypto-Currency price increasement along the time. (It's not like to be a gambler, it's to invest in the casino bankroll, you make profit when the casino makes profit).

But it's a bit more risky than let the money in a paper wallet, so don't come back only after 3 years, always check the progress more frequently and if possible, collect the profit often.