Here’s what stumps me. Why would you invest in a newer derivative of volatile newish alternative investment?

I have written extensively on bitcoin. I’ve told readers about its soaring run up in price and its less than equally roller coaster rides down. Pointed out it reaching $3,000 and the $500 drop in the span of 18 minutes soon after.

Also questioned the exchanges that seem to have outages as prices begin to fall.

However when I wrote of the other cryptocurrencies that have popped up in response to bitcoin, such as litecoin and ethereum I was a bit more skeptical. Some of these digital currencies are not currencies at all and are based off bitcoin pricing, but not 100% correlated.

You can see this in their pricing over the last 10 days, while bitcoin is in a range between 2,550 and $2,700, these alt coins are falling faster on a percentage basis.

I still have a somewhat conventional investing philosophy, stay in the best-known entity in the space. While bitcoin’s pedigree is somewhat questionable, it still has a far longer track record of trading than any of these other instruments.

Oh, and one other thing, ethereum has an instrument attached to it called “gas”, which you can purchase with the crypto to enhance your ethereum investment. Gas is something that vaporizes quickly and that may be what happens to your investment in these other digital instruments.