My Bitcoin and Crypto Portfolio: the 5th issue

Things just get crazier, don't they? Here's my April performance against benchmarks:

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Bitcoin had a great month, but ETH, DASH, and XEM in particular did better, which led to continued outperformance. But crypto investing really is a day to day kinda thing.

Currently these assets are more than 1% of my portfolio:

• BTC: 50%
• ETH: 19%
• XEM: 11%
• DASH: 3%
• ZCL: 3%
• PEPECASH: 2%
• XMR: 2%
• XRP: 1%
• BTS: 1%

I like to review my investment theses and see what needs an update. The success of Ripple is the biggest outlier. It's currently #2 on CMC and has gone up 10x in just the last month. Whether a pump or playing catchup, XRP's performance makes me question two price drivers I used to deem important:

1. Token supply mechanics (percent of supply issued, predictability of the issuance rate, current and expected inflation)

2. Degree of decentralization (with respect to the team, to its sources of funding, to its transparency in everything from source code to operations). Perhaps in these times of continued Bitcoin scaling uncertainty, the market is moving to centralized assets (in addition to XRP, other examples include XEM, DASH, assets like FACTOM and STEEM)

Then again the Ripple bubble could soon burst and upend these observations.

Recommended reads:

• My Medium essay on how Pepe the frog became a very interesting cryptocurrency and trading card community [link]
• Token sales / ICOs and their pros and cons [link]
• The Siacoin team explains why the cryptocurrency market cap indicator is misleading [link]. Jimmy Song shares a related perspective on Bitcoin's dominance index [link]
• One person's thoughtful and balanced story of how they got into cryptocurrency investing and lessons learned [link]
  Thanks for reading!

Kevin (@kgao)
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3 branches of BTC "governance":
--Full Nodes (can veto miners & devs)
--Miners (can veto devs)
--Devs (can help others bypass some vetoes)
-Jameson Lopp (@lopp)