My cryptocurrency investment picks for June 2017

Disclaimer :: None of this is intended as advice, these are merely my thoughts!
- I'll update my entry prices throughout the month when I have time, will be intermittent -

Following up from my previous introductory post, as promised here are my picks for cryptocurrency’s I am looking to invest in during the month of June. As mentioned previously, I am not a day trader I only believe in buy and hold and each month I will evaluate the crypto space and buy accordingly.

I have had a bit of a rethink on my rating system, essentially simplifying my ratings by consolidating certain categories. I will be allocating a score of 1-10 in various categories that I will detail shortly. For now, there will be no weightings to each category, but with time I will introduce weightings based on observation and lessons learned.

These are the categories :

1. Tech and potential - This includes the entire technical ecosystem and development. From the blockchain itself, to available wallets and any other applications belonging to the platform. It also includes development that may be in progress and I will wherever possible weigh in on what I can learn about the development team. So much can be learned by observing commit activity on github and examining development updates and so forth. Also I weigh in on how useful its application and use case is in terms of its potential.
2. Community - General community sentiment and involvement in the platform. Is the community excited about the platform or are they only in it for short-term gains ? Hard to tell for sure, but given enough sources I can get a general idea. Generally I will look towards steemit, reddit, youtube and twitter.
3. Marketing - A critical component to any successful business venture is strong marketing and the cryptocurrency space is no different. This is not the linux movement where we only care about the tech. Incidentally, yes I love linux and it is my OS of choice.
4. Exchange listings - Has the coin been listed on many exchanges ? Can the currency be bought directly for fiat ?
5. Events - Lately it seems upcoming events have a huge influence in terms of hype cycles which has a large bearing on price. Typically I will look towards the next 6 months and how much we do know about those upcoming events. A higher score here means there is a higher frequency of upcoming events to be expected.

Separate from this, I will also discuss price and entry points. Bear in mind I am trying to strike a balance between missing the boat entirely and buying as low as I can. Also note this changes day by day as the crypto space is so volatile. What I will be doing is to score a currency in the metrics mentioned above and follow that with a brief summary. However, this month, I will be using one currency - Ethereum - to provide an explanation as to how I derive these scores.

On to my picks for the month of June (in no particular order) :

First, my two “safe” picks. As mentioned previously a larger portion of my investments go to these currencies :

Safe pick #1 : Ethereum

Category	Score	Explanation
Tech and potential	8.5	Smart contract functionality is not unique to Ethereum although it is the most widely used implementation we have with by far the most developer involvement. It is fair to say it has created its own niche and the dapp ecosystem is growing month by month and the potential is simply immense. As for the core ethereum development team they do seem to be more than capable and have a proven trackrecord when it comes to solving issues whenever they may arise - think back to the DoS issues that plagued ethereum late last year. Wallet support is fantastic, with numerous options across multiple platforms. The only negative here for me is the development tools available to the developer are still somewhat immature and the detail of proof-of-stake implementation still seems to be a large unknown.
Community	6.5	There certainly is some controversy with some of the ICO’s not actually offering anything in the ways of a working product or even prototype, so at least some of the hype is fake. I am concerned by the community not questioning and scrutinising each ICO as they probably should be. I feel that it is the task of the community to be more critical and not as accepting of every single ICO out there. So I deducted points mostly because of this. However, this is offset by some well founded hype lately in terms of new Enterprise Ethereum partners, promising dApps that are actually looking to be coming to fruition and more recently its listing on major Chinese exchanges. Most importantly though, a glance at the ethereum subreddit will tell you the community is generally very positive and are very active in discussing the future of the platform.
Marketing	6.5	I don’t like the announcements of announcements we sometimes get and riding too much on the hype train, however in general the marketing of ethereum does seem to be doing a decent enough job.
Exchange listings	8	Ethereum seems to be listed on almost every crypto exchange these days, and more recently it was added to 2 of the big 3 chinese exchanges… Many countries though can still not purchase ether directly for fiat.
Events	8	In 2-3 months we should be getting another major Ethereum release in Metropolis. There are at least 3 major conferences coming in June/July : June 22 (Blockchain & Bitcoin conference, Petersburg, Russia) June 26-28 (Money 20/20 Europe, Denmark) July 17-20 (The Blockchain event 2017, Las Vegas) Further on the horizon we also have potentially the largest event of the year, Devcon 3 on November 1-4 in Mexico. In summary, there is alot to look forward to.
Total	37.5

4 day snapshot, 4 hour candlesticks:

Usually I use poloniex's 4 day view when looking to do my once-monthly buys... To be completely honest with you, with the recent chinese exchange listings things have gotten a little crazy. So this will change day by day. For the time being ethereum is going through a bit of a correction and I'll set up a price alert at the 0.086 price point mark and watch it more closely from there.

Safe pick #2 : Bitcoin

Category	Score
Tech and potential	6
Community	4
Marketing	9
Exchange listings	10
Events	5
Total	34

I’ve given what some may say is a fairly generous valuation on bitcoin’s tech considering it is facing gigantic scaling problems… I mean it’s use case is just one thing - currency. However, that is an incredibly valuable use case and one that bitcoin is still the leader in. It is also the first, and that counts for plenty.

The big news undoubtedly came from Consensys 2017 in terms of a scaling “agreement”, see : . My view on this is that it isn’t entirely a done deal whatsoever when you have a glance over at any bitcoin community discussion. The bitcoin community seems quite divided to me hence the low score on that front. Also, bitcoin has potentially the biggest event of the year come September when the “agreed” upon hardfork occurs. It is a big event but it can go either way - positive or negative. It is a gigantic unknown and one that will make many folk uneasy when the time comes - so upcoming events got given a lower score.

However, all that being said, the big juggernaut that is bitcoin has seen some gigantic gains this year and remains a strong investment choice.

I would look to buy at anything under the $2100 mark

Altcoin pick #1 : Augur

Category	Score
Tech and potential	7
Community	5
Marketing	3
Exchange listings	4
Events	6
Total	25

Augur is one of the more promising dApps out there in my mind. It is coined as a “prediction market” but basically, this means gambling. And gambling is big big business. Throw in the fact that the supply is limited at 11 000 000 tokens now and always and you can see the potential.

I compared this with its direct competitor Gnosis and went for Augur because when I examined how far along the two projects are in terms of development, Augur seems to be further down the path. Their github repo also seems to be far more active in terms of commits which further supports my findings. That said, when I tried out the Augur beta app I wasn’t that impressed with the UI - especially the interface while browsing on mobile… That said, considering they are touting a launch in late summer 2017 (Personally I am thinking more likely August/September) there is time for polish. The important stuff from a development standpoint will be the smart contracts and there is time to polish the UI. On the development front, what I do like are the weekly development update blog posts.

As for marketing, I honestly only found out about augur due to its increasing marketcap and after doing some digging myself in terms of dapp investment options, not because of their own marketing initiatives.

The community subreddit seems fairly active but also quite neutral - couldn’t really say there was that much enthusiasm, but it wasn’t negative either.

I will be setting an alert at the 0.00958 REP/BTC pricepoint and from there on monitor.

Altcoin pick#2 : Stratis

Category	Score
Tech and potential	8
Community	4.5
Marketing	5
Exchange listings	3
Events	7
Total	27.5

So Stratis is essentially doing something very similar to what Ethereum is doing - smart contracts. The primary difference being that the programming language for smart contracts will be C# and .net platform integration. Besides for that a java and javascript API will also become available Q4 this year. Stratis is also PoS and segwit ready. My primary reason for being enthusiastic about the platform is the smart contract language is C# and its legions of developers. The tech sounds fantastic, however what is keeping me back from a higher tech score is the fact that we have not seen much of the development tools or api’s … alot is upcoming. Also, in terms of events there is plenty to be excited about in this year alone :

Exchange listings are only available on three exchanges at the time of writing this : Poloniex, Bittrex and Bittylicious… However this may turn out to be a good thing as it also means the potential is there that it can be listed on many other exchanges going forward which should positively influence the price should it happen.

There are some negatives though, mostly from the community itself - I see more chatter around price speculation than the actual platform which is quite concerning to me.

I will be looking to buy around the 0.003259 pricepoint. It has been consistently bullish lately.

Altcoin pick #3 : Litecoin

Category	Score
Tech and potential	7.5
Community	7.5
Marketing	4
Exchange listings	8
Events	8
Total	35

Litecoin is currently having a bit of a slumber, and my gut feel is that it is a good buy at the pricepoint it currently finds itself in. I also have my own personal theory about what could happen if the bitcoin hard fork goes badly… One of the major benefactors in such a scenario likely would be litecoin - more so than other altcoins. Mostly because litecoin and bitcoin development has always been a parent/sibling sort of relationship. Segwit activation on litecoin was a landmark and partially used as justification for the recent bitcoin segwit announcement. There is also a very strong chance of the lightning network being tested on litecoin first :

https://twitter.com/satoshilite/status/859823267804086272?lang=en
http://lightning.community/release/software/lnd/lightning/2017/05/03/litening/

When this happens, it likely will be greeted with huge enthusiasm and for me as a trader this also means profits.

The community is solid, the exchange presence is huge - including direct fiat -> litecoin options. It is a great ecosystem, my only criticism is from a marketing point of view litecoin seems to be very quiet most of the time. Although perhaps maybe they only open their mouths when they have something cool to show us.

Ideally, I would try to buy below the 0.0106 LTC/BTC pricepoint

Altcoin pick #4: NEM

Category	Score
Tech and potential	8
Community	5
Marketing	3
Exchange listings	6
Events	3
Total	25

Another potential sleeping giant, nem is blessed with some really cool and unique tech. Specifically, it supports multisignature contracts, built in namespace support, messaging support (you can attach a message together with your transactions - think references and so forth) and excellent scalability. Coupled to this you also have a limited supply, the number of tokens right now will not be increasing. A good thing for someone wanting to invest..

On the negatives, there is some confusion in their naming (XEM/NEM … ) The community is pretty neutral as well and there does not appear to be that much excitement in terms of the tech as I think there should be. Marketing seems to be really quiet, you rarely hear anything about NEM and although NEM will be represented at some upcoming blockchain conferences there is no single big event to look forward to that I am aware of this year.

That said, the technology remains solid and the current low price point is an attractive long term option.

Here, I will be exploring buy options below the 8400 satoshi pricepoint.

Altcoin pick #5 : Steemit

Category	Score
Tech and potential	8
Community	8.5
Marketing	3.5
Exchange listings	6
Events	3
Total	29

Steemit, when it first launched, I was highly sceptical of … However over time it has begun to win me over. I feel that the quality of the content can be really quite good. I guess I should not be suprised, after all, being paid for content is a fairly good motivator. The tech isn’t really all that spectacular and it doesn’t need to be in this case, the whole concept of a blockchain based social media network is terrific. They could do more in terms of marketing themselves to the general population and communicate more proactively with the community in terms of their future plans. They also really need to do something about auto-voting steemit bots.

On the whole though, steemit is a decent investment and I will be looking to buy below the 4100 satoshi mark

Honorable mentions (I may still invest in these) :

DGB
PivX
Golem
DASH