Charlie Shrem, the American serial entrepreneur, and Bitcoin advocate has said that people should not be afraid of the volatility that we see in the digital asset class. People should choose tokens near the top and invest for the long-term.

Charlie Shrem is one of the early figures when it comes to cryptocurrencies and is among other things famous for starting BitInstant and even managed to buy Bitcoins for 75 cents.

A few days ago, in a conversation with Yahoo finance, Shrem explained that people only should invest what they can afford to lose and be ready to hold for a few years. He also mentioned that we are waiting for an ETF to be released but that the market is not ready for it. He puts his bets on 2019.

Talking to Yahoo finance, Shrem says that even though we are in a bear market, the investors should not care about the volatility but rather invest a small amount that they can lose and learn how the market works. He explains that investors should be ready to hold for five years since bull- and bear markets usually occur in two-year cycles.

According to Coinmarketcap.com, there are currently 1910 different cryptocurrencies. Charlie says that you should be careful where you put your money since the nature of cryptocurrencies is very unpredictable. That being said, as long as you have a small amount of money you should enjoy the volatility and have fun investing in the asset class. Sadly enough many investors put a lot of money in during the bull-run only to lose the bigger part of their investments.

“You’re putting your wealth in these things, and they break. Things happen. The values go down 90%; then the values go up 100%. I always tell people if they want to get into crypto, ‘How much money if you lost it right now, would you be OK with?’ ‘$500,’ they tell me. So invest $500 in a basket of crypto, and then have fun with it. Just enjoy it, learn. There’s a lot of good ones: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Litecoin. Just learn what makes them different.”

Despite the ups and downs of the market, Charlie remains bullish on mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies. The SEC has resisted cryptocurrencies over the last year by rejecting several ETFs with the comment that prices would be to easy to manipulate. Shrem says that SEC eventually will accept an ETF sometime next year. He argues that it is important that nothing “bad” happens once the ETF is accepted because we might not get a second chance.

“I want it,” Shrem concedes. “I also want it to be where people don’t get screwed. We only have a ‘first shot’ at it. If we have an ETF, something happens, we get screwed. They shut it down. You know hard it’s going to be to have an ETF again? An ETF will happen. I would almost put it certainly in 2019.”

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