While we’ve focussed on Bitcoin up till now, there are literally hundreds of alt-coins available to buy – and today we’ll look at the animal ones.
Not going to lie, Elon Musk is pissing me off right now (his recent Twitter post on whether to sell of 10% of his stock sent shivers through the spines of Tesla shareholders everywhere). He seems to be able to manipulate crypto prices with a tweet. He’s been an on again off again fan of Dogecoin, so we’ll look at it first.
All Hail Lorde Edge (Elon’s new twitter name). If you’re into signs – apparently Lorde Edge is an anagram of Elder Doge – oooh! Is it going to spike? Only time will tell!
Dogecoin
Dogecoin is an open source peer-to-peer digital currency, favored by Shiba Inus worldwide. That’s according to Dogecoin.com – none of the shiba inus that I’ve spoken to seem to have a preferred crypto.
Dogecoin was originally invented as a joke. It was a play on the crazy crypto speculation of 2013 (when Bitcoin was between $15-1,100 – oh for a time machine!). I hate the idea of spending good money on a joke, but here we are. And let’s face it, many a true word are spoken in jest.
Dogecoin.com promotes the currency as the “fun and friendly Internet currency”.
It’s not as well utilised as as it’s bigger brothers Bitcoin or Ethereum, and while it started as a joke, it can be used for purchases and is built on some solid tech.
Some think it’s just a Ponzi scheme, where early adopters are just trying to get more people to buy it, but it’s a bit better than that. Inflation is a possible problem, because there are 5B new Dogecoin created and entering circulation each year.
Still, it uses the cute Shiba Inu as it’s logo, so it’s got that going for it.
Shiba inu
Not at all confusing, but there’s also a coin called Shiba Inu. It’s completely separate to Dogecoin, but for whatever reason, out of the hundreds of dog breeds, it’s the Shiba that people align with crypto.
You’ve got to love a Wikipedia entry that includes ‘Doge meme’, ‘meme coin’, ‘pump and dump scheme’ and ‘FOMO’ in the first paragraph of an investment you’re considering 🙂
That said, a lot of people might be making money during the pumps??! It’s still much less than one cent per Shiba, so $10 at the moment can get you approximately 126,000 of them.
Will your original $10 be worth more than $10 in 2 years? Who knows? But it’s kinda cool to have 100,000 anything, I think!
Badger DAO
Moving away from doggos for a minute, Badger DAO (BADGER) is a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) focused on bringing Bitcoin to Decentralised Finance (DeFi).
From what I can tell, it’s a coin to enable Bitcoin on more platforms. On Coinspot it’s price hasn’t made it back up to the levels from when it launched in May 21, so time will tell if it’s worth it. It doesn’t have my vote, but it’s made it onto CoinSpot, so it must be doing something right.
And honey badgers are fierce so it might win in the end?!?
Dragonchain
Im not going to lie – this is one that I let my then-little son choose because it had a cool name and picture. It launched in 2018 at around $3, and has hovered around 10c-25c since. I bought somewhere in the middle. It was too late for the GoT crowd, clearly.
It was originally developed at Disney Seattle offices, and I love Disney so that helped me drop a whole $10 on it!!
According to their website, Dragonchain is The Most Secure and Flexible Blockchain Platform on Earth. I don’t want to burst any bubbles here, but I’ve heard that things on the internet aren’t always true (gasp!).
Are alt-coins worth it?
Eh… they really are – if you pick the right one. BUT picking the right one is hard. Really hard. Choosing your favourite grain of rice in a stir fry hard.
You also need to have a strong constitution… you’re basically throwing money into the wind, and hoping that it makes a friend and comes back to you.
Some of them are going to win, and others will lose. The advice to not spend anything on crypto that you can’t afford to lose is probably the best thing anyone can say.
Alt-coins are a risk – and I think some of them will make it… but as Bitcoin reaches another ATH today of $94,000 AUD it’s difficult to know which horse to bet on.
Cryptocracy 