So guys, if somebody has a few expandable bucks to gamble at this thing, what do you suggest?
BTC because it's the big name in the game?
Some others because they have more room to grow and aren't as wildly volatile?

Well I don't plan to just outright lose it, but I did choose my words in saying "few", "expandable" and "gamble"

I was exposed to BTC many years ago as a coworker was raving about them and we all made fun of him. The thing is that he really believed in them for all the right reasons, and good for him it made him tons of money.
Now I want to get in late on the bandwagon for all the wrong reasons. I'm fully conscious of it and I want to put a couple of bucks on 00 and see what happens.

Oh and we made fun of him because he was worried about the singularity and an AI takeover too.

It's not like we would shame him and do it in a mean way. He was just super interested in the whole thing, we didn't get it and didn't give it enough thought to decide whether we thought it would ever fly or not and we'd kid about it.

I'm not even beating myself over the head for not buying in at that time, my point being that the very early adopters weren't necessarily speculating as much as they had a deep understanding of it and they believed it was a good thing going forward. In the case of that guy, he kind of stumbled into the riches but that clearly wasn't the primary goal at that time.

Edit: Oh sorry I hadn't read that you were talking about the AI part. There's a thread somewhere on Pinside about it and I do believe in it now as much as anybody else. But same reason, we didn't give it much thought. I now fully believe in it but don't worry about it much as I feel it's totally inevitable and I can't do anything about it.
I don't want to derail the thread, here's the AI thread in case you're interested https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/human-ai-will-we-see-it-in-our-life .

I just joined the party! Any punch left? What time is it? 1AM? 4AM? Is the sun about to come up? Am I late??

So I bought a few fractions of BTC through Quadriga here in Canada which is very limited in its offering (BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, BTG).
Now that I hold some BTC I guess I can just go through some other exchange that doesn't require the full validation thing in any country to access other coins?
How does that work?

Thank you. I just opened a Binance account. Why do I need Coinbase then Gdax though?
Can't I get my BTC or ETH out of Quadriga and "upload" directly to Binance?

Ok thank you.

Alright, further down the speculation rabbit hole, I got some ChainLink now because some guy here I don't know said it was a good idea.
Wish me luck!
Wow that is so much more fun than all my other reasonable investments (except the time I lent a few K to a friend of mine who was starting a hot sauce business).

I'm a newbie to all this and maybe my understanding is limited, but given that nothing prevents anybody from creating their own currency, and that most of its value is based on the confidence people have towards it (on the speculation end of things, it's rather that somebody else will be willing to pay more for it, but let's forget about that part for now), what happens if or when Google or Apple announce their own crypto?

I'm guessing it's going to shoot to the very top of the heap instantly and all others will crash, unless one or some of them are a "gateway" currency to get the Google or Apple coin, such as BTC or XRP?
Isn't it a bit preposterous to think that one of the small alt-coins will somehow "win" the crypto-battle and that those giants will sit by and watch it all go? Unless I'm missing something I'd think that Google is secretly working on their own crypto to make sure it's 100% fullproof and as perfect as they can make it, they put it out there and keep a 10% to create billions of dollars from thin air?

...and I'd think they're waiting for that sweet spot where it gets big enough and has gained some legitimacy and mainstream acceptance and then they can just jump in and swoop the whole thing while the other early coins did the dirty work, instead of coming in too early and tarnishing their name for less profit than if they time it right.

They still could put out a decentralized coin yet keep the first 10% coin or so, couldn't they?
Also, how do centralized coins work? Is it still triple-entry accounting? Is the whole list of transactions still visible to the entire world? Are coins without mining de-facto centralized since it's one central company doing the processing as opposed to mining to process transactions for the decentralized ones?

So what's the deal with that Tron?

Who's Justin?

So when's that announcement coming? 1PM EST?

So how much of this is
1-pure speculation
2-actually buying currency thinking it may become the currency of the future
3-buying various coins as if it were stock in one of the many applications of blockchain? Let's say one of these application really takes off, how does that reflect on the value of the coin itself - can a parallel be made with actual stock in a company?

I got in at #1/2 and am mostly gambling on it, but with all these different, very specific applications (DentaCoin, po.et, etc.) it's starting to look more like #3 than #2.

My main issue with the whole AltCoin market is that a lot of companies seem to come out with clever and potentially useful uses of the blockchain. But then the coin associated with it isn't actual stock, you're not owning a part of that company nor would you ever see a part of their actual profit. The only way for that coin to translate into something meaningful is that it becomes an actual currency that's used in the real world.
I do see crypto currency being widespread in the future, but I think one of the major players will come out with something (keeping it decentralized in concept but steering it so that they keep a large part of the initial coin base and integrate it through all their chain so that it is de facto under their control).

So, as someone who does believe that some of these alt-companies show some promising ideas, I like the idea of investing in the actual company through these holdings better than buying their coin.

That's how I see it but there may be a part I'm not understanding.

Edit: Actually I looked a bit more into these holdings and so far they're more like tech index funds with large cap companies than indexes of direct alt-coin startups...

<Double post>

Yeah, but the part I really have a hard time wrapping my head around is how finding interesting alt-blockchain application startups translates to buying the associated coin, regardless of volatility.
I'm not looking to "debunk" the whole thing, I'm trying to understand it. I do hold some coins and shuffle them around a bit as I try to understand the whole thing.
I do see some very clever stuff out there, but I can't do the same math I do with stock.

Promising company worth x -> buy a small share of the company ( y% * x ) -> hope the company gains value ( f(x) > x ) -> make a profit ( f( y% * x ) > y% * x
Promising alt-startup worth x -> buy their crypto coin (arbitrary value A ) -> ... -> ??

Basically, again, I believe in the whole technology, I'm trying to find a vehicle that is not entirely speculative to invest in it.
I do think these ETFs are close to that, but volatility is not the issue for me, it's trying to anchor the money towards something that is not 100% speculative.

I like what some of these startups are doing so I'd like to own a share of them. That's not 100% speculative because I think they have solid and useful application of blockchain technology and they may be viable companies down the line.
However, I don't believe their coins are ever going to be accepted as currency, so if I buy those it's 100% speculatively, if that makes any sense.

That's the distinction I make:
-owning coins from crypto companies: volatile and speculative
-owning shares of crypto companies: volatile and somewhat less speculative

Did anybody read "Attack of the 50 foot blockchain"? I just have. The author is strongly biased against cryptocurrency and I think he goes out of his way to paint anybody involved negatively, but it seems like a well researched analysis and goes way beyond the "tulips" argument.
I'm not sure how accurate the numbers he gives are though.
I'd be interested to hear somebody else's opinion because if you follow his logic it's hard not to come to the same conclusions he does.