I first heard of Ethereum sometime in 2017, after finding out about Bitcoin. One doesn't find out about another cryptocurrency before Bitcoin typically and such was the case for me. After discovering that I could cash out via different cryptocurrencies on this survey site I used to make a few extra bucks here & there, I started cashing out mainly into Ethereum. Everyone was saying diversify your portfolio, as you would in any other type of market, so I was stacking ETH & LTC along the way. Really the gains were what attracted me, missing the huge gains that ETH saw in early 2017, but hoping for some sort of similar action in the future. But then I was convinced otherwise because I didn't know much about crypto back then & was easily swayed by my peers.

Someone mentioned that ETH wasn't as much of a commodity of sorts. I didn't understand why they said that but in hindsight, I believe it was them trying to say that there is technically no ceiling on the supply. I don't always see this as a downside though as I view it for scaling purposes. More supply could be mined if necessary. But this is why Bitcoin is the king & it is the store of value crypto- because there will only ever be 21M coins in existence, with the last coin being mined in 2140. That's a long ways off. Anyway back to ETH.

The supply is currently right above 100M coins at 110M, which in my opinion isn't really that many, considering they aren't worth as much, so once price appreciation happens, the market cap could shoot up very quickly. It almost touched BTC's market cap for a split second if I remember correctly, back in the summer of 2017, when BTC dominance dipped below 40% & ETH dominance climbed above 30%. Look here, those were crazy times & I think everyone was calling it "the flippening" or some catchy phrase. I knew it wouldn't happen though but ETH always has a spot in this market, probably as the #2 cryptocurrency, because of the robust ecosystem that is already built on top of it, and that continues to be built out daily with things like ERC20 tokens, ICOs (not a fan btw), NFTs (ERC721), and the list goes on.

Since then BTC dominance seems to be slowly gaining more traction to where it once was, at over 80%, but now currently above 60%, and yet I can't help but think this could all change again during the next bull run. Back then people barely knew about Bitcoin, not many other cryptocurrencies had any point at all, just stick whatever name on a crypto, make money on it, and run type deal, whereas now it seems the infrastructure is being built on, new use cases & needs are being realized & fulfilled, which gives rise to new cryptocurrencies (altcoins or sometimes sh*tcoins) or allows old ones who remained in BTCs dust to finally catch up a bit. Either way I think the market has place for a lot of coins although over 5,000 seems excessive (according to CoinMarketCap.com)

Who knows which coins will thrive & which coins will inevitably die out, not having the volume, devs, use cases, etc that other larger projects have. But I think it's safe to say that Ethereum has cemented itself as a viable project that fills many needs with smart contracts & I think the whole idea of smart contracts isn't even fully realized by the general tech sector quite yet. It will be in time. I think part of the beauty of ETH is the simplicity- simplicity brings users. Many ppl aren't tech savvy & wouldn't be able to figure out how to use certain aspects of crypto. ETH makes it super easy because you can simply download metamask & store your crypto seemingly right on your internet browser, & send ETH & tokens anywhere in the world in an instant. I think that's really cool. I think the future, as "futuristic" as it may seem, will give way to many easy to use technologies, not necessarily harder to use technologies. The masses want ease of use at the end of the day & whichever cryptocurrency provides this, will be the one that is most utilized. We'll see what it is!

Overall I think a healthy portfolio could be 70% BTC, 10% ETH, 5% LTC, 5% Tops alts like $LINK, $XTZ, $ZEC, $DASH, and then the remainder in $USDT or a stablecoin, if you either choose to buy minor pullbacks, would like to trade leverage with (sign up here for free $100 USDT trading credit ---> https://invite.bingbon.pro/invite/module/invite.html?lang=en&code=DYK81P) or you need money in a pinch & can't bring yourself to sell any actual cryptocurrency holdings. Not a financial advisor but this portfolio has been working for me, along with some trades along the way!