It’s been a crazy weekend on the cryptocurrency front. If you checked in on the markets on Poloniex, as we did earlier today (around 11:30 a.m. Central Time in the US), you would have seen something that looked like this:

This snapshot (from the BTC “pairs,” so the prices of, say, XRP are calculated in BTC) tells us that you could have done well on a 24-hour period taking the list of 25 of the top “altcoins” and throwing a dart at their names, buying some and then selling 24 hours later. (The obscured 93.76% gain was from STR – “Stellar,” and the 100% gain near the arrow in the picture is BCN – “Bytecoin.”)

But What About…A More “Strategic” Approach?

Oh, that. The BRED Portfolio. The one we seem to be prattle on and on about. The one that involves a $10,000 investment, spread equally between four of the biggest coins – Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash – and invested on January 1, 2017.

That one.

How is it doing?

Sweet Mother of Zeus!

$10,000 invested in the BRED Portfolio on January 1, 2017 would have grown to $106,909.51 on May 7, 2017.

Okay, so there’s some hyperbole involved here. Actually, quite a bit of hyperbole: this is a hypothetical case. If anyone out there actually did this AND wants to talk about it, the floor is yours.

Because, let’s face it, investments come with inherent risks, and with that thing called “human nature.”

Story Time

I remember back in the first dot-com boom, and specifically a stock that I owned in my IRA that was poised to change the world. For a while, it did – acquiring others in its nascent space, growing like the proverbial weed. My memory is deliberately a little fuzzy on the exact numbers, and I have since shredded all records of my transactions.

But suffice it to say I may have bought into this stock at around 3 bucks a share, and it went to around 78 a share.

And I held – “HODL” is the acronym that could have best described what I was doing with this one – until the last possible moment.

PSINet was the company. Yeah, that was a learning experience for me.

It Comes Down to ONE WORD:

Fundamentals.

You can certainly believe that Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash all have the potential to change the world. It is quite possible that they could. It is quite possible that we’ll watch them grow by another order of magnitude. It is quite possible that they’ll continue growing like this, and the ramifications for the global economy could, indeed, be huge.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that we’re watching a bubble that’s about to pop. That Bitcoin is as overpriced as some say, or that there’s too much XRP being circulated.

Our advice: check the fundamentals. Spread your investments around – which is why we say “BRED Portfolio” and not just Bitcoin. Consider the Hedge Fund approach we talk about here.

Due your due diligence, too. Seek advice from places beyond just this site – you’re doing that, right? – and talk to investment advisors and professionals.

Could the trend continue? Could these coins come back to earth? We’ll all find out soon enough.