In a recent blog, the famed Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song says the traditional investing strategy of diversification does not apply to cryptocurrency.
“The one cryptocurrency that is sensible to invest in is Bitcoin, because it’s been qualified through its unique birth and continued maintenance through its 10 year existence. Diversification of a portfolio by adding Bitcoin really can add upside, reduce risk and reduce volatility (if it’s counter-cyclical). Adding unresearched altcoins does not and hence makes no sense.”
He thinks that a lot of people in the cryptocurrency space get delusions of becoming a millionaire overnight. And most of these investors cannot differentiate between sound coding and the weak attempts some startups make.
“The reality of a cryptocurrency and related investments is in the code which, unfortunately, is very dense, hard to read and impossible to understand for a large number of people.”
Song’s main argument against altcoins is that they are mostly marketing hype that brings little to no technical value to the table. He says investors need to stay away from these feeble projects.
“An abundance of marketing material about various cryptocurrency projects and marketing strategies for cryptocurrencies involves writing fancy white papers that purport to show the details of the actual system, but are not rigorously defined like the code is.”
Song says “most coins in the industry have very high-risk profiles.” And along with the risk comes a low probability of an actual useful product being built. Ultimately, in Song’s opinion, diversifying into high-risk investments makes no sense.
“Most of them have no hope of achieving what they purport in their marketing story. Most have no track record of delivery and can be fairly characterized as unresearched. If these were stocks, they’d be sent to the pink-sheet and have a very low price due to the risk premium. Diversifying into unresearched pink sheet stocks doesn’t reduce risk, nullifying the point of diversifying.”
Song also recently ripped Ethereum specifically for their lack of progress in a tweet.
ETH, promising innovation for over 5 years. Funny how the innovation is always a few years away. Like many “ideas” people, Vitalik thinks that execution is just a matter of implementing what’s been researched.
Here’s some news for you: execution is the hard part. https://t.co/9tPlsh8xfc
— Jimmy Song (송재준) (@jimmysong) May 22, 2019
Although Song has disparaging words for altcoins, many in the cryptocurrency space believe a bullish alt season will be here soon.
