The Altcoin craze: What coin should I hold on to?

Altcoins have been the rave over the last 5 days since Litecoin's prices surged past $10. Now that Litecoin has found a resistance at $50, and support at $25, what's next?

As predicted, Litecoin was a bubble in the making, and made a mini crash which began on the 28th November from $50/LTC to about $25.56 4 hours ago. Prices look like that have begun to climb back up again, and I won't be surprised to see LTC at $50 again within a week. Unfortunately, even though I predicted the impending "mini bubble" of LTC, I didn't manage to trade them out into BTC at the peak. In fact, I actually bought some more Litecoins at 0.05 (LTC/BTC). Not the best move, but I'm still happy with my Litecoins.

So if you haven't bought into Litecoins, or have sold your LTC at the peak, it's a REALLY good time to buy in right now; especially if you're thinking of doubling your money's worth in a week or two. If you're interested to get started, but need some help, email me at alvinlee133@gmail.com or leave a comment below and we'll see how we can work something out! =)

More interestingly, Litecoin's price surge was tailed by all other major alternative crypocurrencies during this rise, especially those available for trading on Btc-e. In my post back in October when I first found out about Altcoins, I featured a snipshot of the top 6 Cryptocurrencies on coinmarketcap.com, and it looked something like this:

And then 1 month later, on the 28th of October, it looked something like this:

Over the course of 1 month, Litecoin market capitalization increased over 2000%. The rest of the top alt coins also saw large increases in market cap with Peercoin (PPC) gaining 1100%, with Namecoin (NMC) and Primecoin (XPM) following behind with a 1700% and 850% gain respectively. During the month of November, almost all major altcoins outperformed Bitcoin's 600% increase in market capitalization during the same period.

And just TWO DAYS later, at the time of posting, it looked like this:

For your viewing pleasure, I have set them up in a nice, borderless table for a comparison of market cap gains over the last 2 days. I'm sorry to you NovaCoin fans for leaving NVC out of the equation, but I read about some pre-mining & other issues with the development team somewhere, so I'm staying away.

[Market Cap]	BTC	LTC	PPC	NMC	XPM	FTC
% Gain	14%	0%	131%	30%	47%	148%

With a quick look at http://altcoins.com/, we can see the two greatest gainers were PPC and FTC, which have nothing in common in terms of the algorithm. Alternative Coin prices are purely based on speculation right now, as can be seen by the huge rally quickly following behind Litecoin's rise to fame.

If you're planning to dabble in some alt coins besides Litecoin, and have a high risk propensity, this may be the best time to risk your money for the possibility of massive gains. By massive, I'm talking about a minimum of a 5 fold increase in USD value (or even Bitcoin value if you're lucky enough).

I'm not really a person for predictions, but this situation calls for one. As mentioned, I (personally) believe that alt coin prices are following behind LTC prices, ever so slightly. You can get to see the latest price movements with my favourite Bitcoin chart to date: Bitcoinwisdom.com. On Bitcoinwisdom, use the 1m chart to see the prices as they trade live, and you can even choose between different markets from the bar at the top making it much easier to compare prices across different exchanges. If you're new to chart reading, please check out their help page @ http://bitcoinwisdom.com/help/charts. If you need a better explaination, comment below and I'll be more than happy to help.

Use Bitcoinwisdom's chart to see when Litecoin prices are going up (which I think is happening now, with a resistance of $50 and a support at $25), and invest in your trusted alt coins when you think it is happening! If I had to name one, I'd go with NMC! If you prefer something with a higher risk, try FTC & XPM.

Trade with your heart, not with your mind. Trade safe, and HUAT AH!

I have my next post in mind about panic selling/buying and how you can avoid it, and a little bit about bull/bear traps. But before I go into that, let me just end off with a piece of advice for beginners. DON'T trade (unless your taking a profit) during a price spike! More likely that not, a huge up/downswing (as seen on one candle in BTC-e's charts) will end up close to it's original position, before moving off in the same direction. To get a better understanding, look at the example below:

On the left, we have 2 candles pointed out by the blue arrows which illustrates my point. First arrow shows a candle with a huge dip downwards, and price retracts to close to the top within a minute or so. After which, prices will start to bleed downwards. This is the same for the 2nd blue arrow, but in the opposite direction (upward trending).

On another note, I just wanted to also point out the candle pointed out by the red arrow. Such a significant (in size) and opposite trending candle, following a "peak" as shown by the previous 3 arrows, usually means that a downtrend is coming. Or at least that's what I've learnt from my 2 month experience analyzing Cryptocurrency charts.

I also found a very interesting theory that is applicable to the crytpo markets. If you are interested in trading your Bitcoins, be sure to read up on Elliott Wave Theory.