I started investing in Bitcoin in 2011. In the past 6 years, I have met so many people hailing that Bitcoin will be dethroned by an altcoin.

Today you hear eth activists say eth has reached new heights with a market cap of more than $17,85 billion, about 50% of that of bitcoin and it will soon overreach bitcoin. Tomorrow you hear litecoiners claim that as segwit is activated, litecoin will shoot for the moon and bitcoin will die in the long-dragging debate. I didn’t mean to sound critical, but I personally invested a lot of altcoins and got disappointed again and again. As of today, I don’t see any altcoins have the potential to surpass bitcoin.

Today, in the hustling city of Shanghai, looking at all the faces around me, I don’t know how, but suddenly all the old memory popped into my head. I can’t believe it has been six years and a lot of things have changed. Maybe it’s time to write down some of my stories with altcoins.

Ripple

When Jed created ripple, he hoped to make banking services available to those who cannot find a bank in their neighborhood. And at the very beginning, anyone could get free ripples by posting their emails on bitcoin talk. At that time, I was deeply touched by Jed’s vision and decided to popularize ripple in China. And it was me who translated Ripple and XRP into Chinese. Plus, later I wrote something like a guidebook From a Ripple Rookie to an Expert to help Chinese learn more about ripple. It can be said without exaggeration that I am one of the very first ripple pioneers in China.

But what happened later was pretty disheartening. Venture capitalists and bankers got involved and they wanted to raise money, earn revenues and go public, but Jed wanted to change the world. And thus the team failed to reach a consensus. Jed left the team and ripple became the personal property of the company ripple and Jed.

My first investment in an altcoin turned out to be a failure.

Nxt

Nxt is a success that can’t be copied, an overnight success realized by ICO. Nxt was designed by an anonymous software developer BCNext. BCNext, about 35 years old, is an active user on bitcoin talk. When Nxt launched its ICO, 73 contributors invested 21 bitcoins in total and they earned at least 10,000% rate of return on investment.

Actually, I was about to invest in this project, but there was something wrong with my bitcoin wallet and I missed it.

In the first several months since the inception of Nxt, it grew into the most popular altcoin on bitcoin talk. There were 1000 posts with 20,000 replies about it. And later when the Nxt community was established, BCNext left the community saying FBI was investigating him and he disappeared just like Satoshi.

Nxt is a second generation open source cryptocurrency that uses proof-of-stake to reach consensus for transactions . It is anonymous design plus crowd fundraising plus strong technology. So I hold a large amount of Nxt. But Nxt was such a low key, it did not do things to advertise it. And later when more altcoins were born, Nxt ranked outside the top 10 cryptocurrencies, which indicated that tech is not the only criterion when investing in an altcoin.

Bitshares

Actually, I used to support Bitshares. I read its whitepaper for several times and I was impressed by the concept of DAC(Distributed Autonomous Corporation). Bitshares was a great second generation cryptocurrency, but its creator was kind of whimsical. He increased the total supply of Nxt when all users were against it. As a result, BM was forced to leave the Bitshares and the price of Bitshares dropped drastically.

Ethereum

When it comes to assess the value of cryptocurrency, I think revolutionary technology is an important standard. And Ethereum, undoubtedly, is well-positioned to take the lead.

I am very familiar about the Ethereum project. In 2013, I started a bitcoin project with my friends in Shanghai and Vitalik came to visit us a lot. We would take him to visit blockchain investors all over China. When we visited btc38 in Shenzhen, CEO Huang Tianwei invited us for dinner. He said a lot of nice things about the project and promised to add it when it be launched. Btc38 didn’t launch it, not ever today. But that is another story, so I’d just stop here.

Vitalik is a genius. He is a quick learner and he is able to speak and write Chinese fluently. I see big future in him and I believe he will change the world just like BCNext and Satoshi. But now I advise investors to short Ethereum. Why is that? It’s all about the foundation. I think it is corruption that they would hard fork a chain to save a fraction of their investment. That’s really, really wrong. And The Dao is just a beginning. Anyway, I advocate that a decentralized decision-making mechanism is much important than any technological innovation.

The world of cryptocurrency is filled with wrong investment concepts and bad intentions. A great part of people got misled by many so-called experts when they began to invest in cryptocurrencies. If you take the investment seriously, then spend more time learning and most importantly, have your own judgement.