These are the gems in the massive pile of altcoins

Right now, it is literally a pile of altcoins out in the wild.

I indicated in an earlier article about the lessons we learned from Digibyte debacle recently and that I am a crypto noob with bend for learning the trends.

I have picked some shitty coins on the way and I bled out hard earned $$. While researching, I have gotten multiple answers and one answer would contradict with another depending on who you are talking to. After going over my own flawed analysis of graphs, charts and observations, I have come up with the list of gems that may still be undervalued and may have potential for other newbies (and veterans).

In coming up with the below list, I have considered these very important aspects:

i) Active community
ii) Active developers
iii) Market potential and the UVP (Unique Value Proposition)

Each of the below coins that I have picked are strong in all the above requirements and score very high on at least one aspect more than other. For instance, Cloak has great developers and its potential to penetrate into the world of anonymous transactions is enormous and with only 5 million in circulation – it may even surpass other currencies in the anonymous transactions wing. So, here we go...

The HODLs (Hold On for Dear Life)

Cloak: No premine, fair distribution, 5 million total supply, add to this one of the loyal community of fans and dogged developers and you discover a sleeping giant. Their persistence seems to be paying off as Cloak has been gathering some momentum recently. It will not be long before this one will find its true worth among the crypto lovers.

Digibyte: Whether Digibyte wins the CitiBank’s T4I or not; whether it will live up to the speculative and sometimes greedy expectations of those who are looking to make a quick buck or not; in my mind, this is one of the gems in the dirt pile of altcoins. Jared Tate is on a mission and I love the way he completely circumvents the naysayers and scorners. He simply presses on to continue on his mission to make DigiByte one of the most reputable crypto currencies. For this dedication alone this qualifies as HODL altcoin.

UBIQ: What Ether hopes to do one day – UBIQ is already doing it, although on top of Ether. What’s lacking in UBIQ is absence of marketing hype. That will not be an issue for long as Crypto world is very big on word of mouth.

NAV Coin: Claiming itself as the unbreakable code, NAV coin has one of the most dedicated developers team out there and I only wished I had known about them earlier.

Bitbay: A grand plan that targets eBay, Alibaba and oDesk markets - all in one shot. Developers are oozing with energy and so are fans who have high hopes for this one for the long haul and are holding this to see through its mission and that is always a good thing for any crypto.

Speculative (buy/sell/buy/sell):

Verge: I do not hold substantial quantity so I am holding these for the long haul but those who can manage to amass substantial quantities can benefit from the way Verge fluctuates.

LBRY Credits: This will either be a massive hit or a spectacular fall, there is no midway for this one. Think of decentralizing YouTube. Exactly. If everything goes according to plan, that is what these guys can disrupt and the team has great potential to actually do it. I kept it in speculative because it is still in beta and has a competitor in SingularDTV.

Outlier in the bunch

Lisk: Lisk may turn out to be an outlier if they manage to pierce through the market as surgically as they plan to. If this evolves as a direct head to head competitor of Ethereum (leveraging Java technology, that could turn out to be genius move) and given that both have similar coin supply - this can emerge to be a multi-bagger, may not be $400 but it could lead somewhere.

Being a newbie and with all the restrictions of converting USD to Bitcoin and then buying them on different exchange has prevented me from investing $1000 each in each of these coins, however, I have been divesting small savings into these alts, one at a time.

I share these insights in the hope that we can all benefit from the information, mutually. Despite my good intentions, please do your own research before deciding to invest your hard earned money into any of these. A disclaimer is warranted here, I have learned about Cloak recently and have only been able to buy about 100, wish I had known about it earlier.

What are your best picks from 100s of altcoins for HODL and speculative investment? Share so we can prosper together!