We’re back with what we think will be a fun post. We’re issuing a challenge – and we’ll track our own hypothetical results on this site. Think you can beat us? Share your ideas and comments below.

The $1000, 5-Coin Challenge

We’ve been doing a TON of research here – yes, we’re launching a couple products, so stay tuned for those – and we’re learning a whole bunch about some…let’s say…”emerging” coins. Below-the-radar picks that could take off – or could completely fizzle.

And, with all the attention given to ICOs and token launches, we bet that, once the dust settles, people will go back to “established” coins (post-ICO, or ones that launched a few years ago, or ones that have just been languishing a little) to try to give their portfolio a “pop.”

To participate in the challenge – which you can do with play money or real money, totally up to you – you must select one coin from each of the following categories:

CATEGORY A: 5-digit market cap (as measured by CoinMarketCap.com, we’ll use June 22 figures, but you can use them the day you start)
CATEGORY B: 6-digit market cap
CATEGORY C: 7-digit market cap
CATEGORY D: 8-digit market cap
CATEGORY E: 9-digit market cap – BUT must be UNDER $200,000,000.

You’ll “invest” or actually invest $200 in each.

See what we’re doing here? Trying to get out of our own comfort zone – and also trying to go after speculative and/or distressed assets.

Ready for our picks?

Category A: ERY – Eryllium

We told you we’ve learned a lot over the past few weeks – and Eryllium was a new one for us. TINY market cap – $75,000-ish – and it’s only trading at 700 or so Satoshis. They claim faster transactions, global capabilities, security, and lower fees.

The coin hasn’t cratered this year – it dropped from 1500 or so Satoshis at the beginning of the year, but it’s not in the double-digit Satoshi “danger zone” so that’s a good thing – and they have eight different wallets available. Trades on Cryptopia, among others.

Category B: TOR – Torcoin

Yes, that sounds like Tor the private browser platform thing…but it’s not technically affiliated with Tor the private browser platform thing. However, all the features of Torcoin sound like all the features of Tor the browser.

Market cap of somewhere around $115,000. It’s a bargain in the grand scheme – but, as with everything on this list, if you’re investing with real money, don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

In other words, for us this is probably the most speculative of the five coins we’ll use in this challenge. Even more so than Eryllium. But there’s a chance that a renewed interest in privacy could cause this one to pop.

Trades on Cryptopia, among others.

Category C: CRB – Creditbit (or Credit 2.0)

Rebuilt on Ethereum at the beginning of the year, Creditbit has, in our view, real potential. 30,000 Satoshis is the recent price, trading at 1/5 of its level a couple months ago.

It’s a DAO – Decentralized Autonomous Organization – and there’s a bunch of interest in that concept, too – not just from the ETC/ETH split, but also from the success of Dash.

You can trade it on Bittrex and Livecoin – we have yet to use Livecoin, though, so can’t vouch for it yet.

Category D: GOLOS – Golos

I knew NOTHING about this – NOTHING – until I went to the Golos website.

We translated it from Russian – Thanks, Google! – but, we gotta tell ya…

Golos is the Russian Steemit.

Most of its volume is on Bittrex and it’s trading at about 4000 Satoshis. Russians appear to be adopting blockchain platforms rather quickly when compared to the rest of the world, so this one is worth a shot.

Category E: NXT – Nxt

We’ve owned Nxt before, and now we’ll get into it again. We think it looks enough like XRP that we’re jumping in at this level – even though it’s higher than where it was when we first bought it. Today, around 6700 Satoshis; but we owned it at 3000 (then sold because it wasn’t going anywhere).

Trades on all the major exchanges, including Poloniex.

And Here’s The Recap…

We welcome your feedback, and we’ll track this – warts and all – in the weeks and months to come.

Let us know in the comments what you think.