We ended 2017 with a bang! Bitcoin and other big players in the cryptocurrency game shot up and skimmed the moon, but are these the only players in the game? Seems like it but no way is that the reality. After chasing after mere fractions of Bitcoin for a few hundred bucks at a time (and even locking up my Bitcoin on Bitconnect, ugh that sucks I know), I started hearing stories about how some people a few years back had Bitcoin when it was in its very early stages; and prices. This could've also meant that they held Bitcoin until this past recent strong bullish trend, of up to $20,000 on some exchanges. This made my think... what if I could hold coins that have a smaller value, like people did with Bitcoin and other altcoins awhile back and sold it when the value appreciates?

Image by: Bitcoinpam.com

My first altcoin that a friend recommended to me (of course I did my due diligence of researching the altcoin) was Ripple. In the early half of December, Ripple was holding strong around $0.24. Of course it fluctuated a bit, but $0.24 was the comfort spot. After half an hour of searching Ripple and its importance, I decided to exchange some of my Bitcoin, for some Ripple on Changelly.com and send that to my offline Ripple Wallet. I got around 500 XRP. Not even a month later, people started catching onto Ripple, and its price doubled, tripled and even quadrupled. As I type this in the beginning of 2018, Ripple is at $2.60. Not sure how to do the math, but if someone held onto just 500 XRP from $0.24 to $2.60, they've made $1,180. I know this amount may seem small in scale, however, if you scaled this to let's say 5000XRP, you've made $11,800 in less than a month. Without doing any physical work. Just HODLING.

With that being said, I'm heading into 2018 hodling 3 coins!

My #1 Most Favorite Coin:

Stellar Lumens (XLM)- I believe XLM is a fork off the Ripple blockchain and with that being said, it has potential for a bullish pattern the way Ripple had. As I type this, XLM is at around $0.90 from a mere $0.20 when I bought it! I'm staying optimistic on this coin as it could have the same pattern as its counterpart Ripple. I think it has potential to reach $2 or even higher.

#2 on my Crypto Asset List:
Storm (STORM): I bought STORM on Hitbtc when it came out around Dec. 20, 2017. It was worth around $0.02. On January 3, the coinmarketcap shows this coin around $0.095. Guys, percentage calculation confuses me a bit, but I think that's more than a 300% increase on your money. The fact that you're able to buy tens and hundreds of thousands of these coins allows for huge growth on your money when people catch on. I bought only 10k STORM on Hitbtc and tripled my money the past week. Hodl through!

#3 on my 2018 Cryptolist:
BYTECOIN (BCN): I also bought this on Hitbtc in hopes that it'll appreciate in value over the next few months. I only have a handful of this, just to play around with. I want to see if I can just double my money on BCN as its value is very very small; $0.006, a little more than half a cent. There is a large supply of BCN meaning its price won't be as volatile as Bitcoin or even Ripple, but with cryptocurrency, anything can happen.

TLDR: My top coins are Stellar Lumens (XLM), STORM, BCN (BYTECOIN).
These are small coins that I, personally, want to hodl to see if I can double or even quintuple my money in the next few months in 2018.

Do people hodl altcoins because of their technology or are they just trying to grow their portfolio?!