When stock investors want to measure the amount of fear in the market, they look to the CBOE Volatility Index (INDEX:CBOE), which lately has been trading at multi-year lows, below 11.Another way to look at fear is to check the U.S.This chart should also gratify those who like peace — the dollar is doing well against other currencies.But what about currencies themselves?How do you trade against the fear that money is about to become worthless?For that, look at “crypto-currencies,” based on blockchain technology and control over encryption keys.The best-known of these is bitcoin (CURRENCY:BTC), which controls 59% of the market, but Coincap lists 822 of them.The price graphs for many cryptocurrencies right now look like hockey sticks.Bitcoin itself is one of these.Its price has doubled just since January, with people paying $1,852 for one coin on May 11.Bitcoin advocate Erik Voorhees, who has called the U.S.Federal Reserve System “fraudulent,” thinks a single bitcoin will be worth more than $10,000 in 2021.

This assumes bitcoin maintains its share of the cryptocurrency market.When you buy a dollar, you trust the U.S.When you buy a cryptocoin, you are trusting a private party and the processes they establish.That’s why there are so many cryptocurrencies.I trust me, but I don’t trust you.Ethereum, the second-leading cryptocurrency, is based in Switzerland.Other cryptocurrencies have specific purposes, like Ripple, which deals in international settlements, or Dash, designed as spending money.wer nimmt bitcoinBitcoin pretends to be a reserve cryptocurrency, like the U.S.bitcoin postepaydollar, and represents 60% of the market.bitcoin lohnt es sichThere is ample reason to distrust some governments with the concept of money.bitcoin tracking fund

Many recent purchasers of Ethereum, it appears, were from Venezuela.If I were Venezuelan, I might be buying some Ethereum too.In theory, you can start your own cryptocurrency with a blockchain and an encryption key.It’s a throwback to the 18th century when money, in the form of gold and jewels, was worth only what the money changers said it was worth.Are you going to trust the guys in that room or (for better or worse) a government entity?bitcoin miner software windows 8What can happen when you just trust the guys in a room is illustrated by the story of Tokencard, an Ethereum-based debit card that recently raised $12.7 million in 30 minutes to connect the virtual currency with real debit networks like that of Visa Inc (NYSE:V) which trade in government-created money.bitcoin exchange san franciscoThe funding itself was tokenized, and a dispute quickly arose over why cryptocurrency from SNGLS, which also uses the Ethereum algorithm, was valued more highly than coins from the Ethereum market itself.

The issue matters because the whole point of TokenCard is to handle conversions between real currencies and virtual ones.Who controls the pricing on that?The guys in the room do, the moneychangers.There’s a reason Jesus Christ reportedly only got angry once — at moneychangers in a temple.Pockit, which wants to give the unbanked in England a virtual bank through a prepaid debit card, recently raised $3.8 million in start-up capital.The higher valuation on the new round gives the early investors a nice profit.None other than Sir Alex Ferguson, former manager of Manchester United, the soccer team.(Think of him as a British Bill Bellichick.)Everyone, it seems, is getting into fintech.Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist.He is the author of the political polemic Saving Trumpistan, Restoring Democracy, available now at the Amazon Kindle store. or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn.As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

After my Ethereum investment grew 45x (as per Sep 21, 2016), I decided to do a similar research on alternative cryptocurrencies.Since an advice without skin in the game should not be taken seriously, I invest a significant amount of personal money into all the projects listed here.I think of pouring money into cryptocurrencies as an accessible scheme of a venture investment.regulations prohibit an investor from purchasing ownership interests in companies that are not publicly listed on a stock exchange — unless he / she has at least $200K of a yearly income.This is very unfortunate and closes those great instruments from the general population.Cryptocurrency investment, on the other hand, is not currently regulated by SEC — or similar agencies.Keeping this in mind, investing in Ethereum development in middle-2014 has been extremely similar to a venture investment.And, well, it played out — allowing ETH team to grow rapidly.Any investment may grow by a huge factor.Or, it may become worth nothing.

It’s your take whether to follow the advice, or to ignore it.There are many cryptos out there which are just sophisticated ponzi schemes decided to enrich their creators.Similarly, currencies which do not bring any innovations to the table have been excluded from the list.The simplified listEthereum: Had 40x growth rate over the last two years.Allows to build fully-functional applications on blockchain without middlemen.Extremely promising currency, solid team (take a look at what Vitalik Buterin is doing right now).#2 crypto right now — but still 1/10 of the Bitcoin value.So even while being conservative, thinking that any crypto would not grow higher than BTC, it may grow 10x.Still 10x is a small amount — compared to other solutions on the market.So, not extremely yummy for a long game.Monero: Anonymous / private Bitcoin.Now, you may think, “What are you talking about, the BTC is anonymous already?” — which is a very unfortunate albeit popular misconception.All BTC transactions can be seen by the public.

For example, by giving out your wallet address to someone, the person is able to see all the payments you’ve received and sent.The black market (drug dealers and weapon manufacturers) created a solution for this: basically a software that mixes your coins with other coins.Nevertheless, the software needs to be trusted and may not work correctly.This is pretty bad when your freedom depends on it.Monero has the mixing system built-in — which makes it very delicious for any kind of black market.This is how the currency got its first big growth boost — basically a popular darknet market adopted it.Moreover, the transaction privacy is a necessity for any kind of widely adopted currency, which makes me think it may even overtake BTC.The market capitalization of Monero is currently 1/100 of BTC, which makes it a better investment in my opinion.This is where I put most my of my investment in.Factom: A blockchain-based system that’s optimized to store millions of realtime records with a single hash.

Useful for all kinds of business apps.Runs on top of Bitcoin.Counterparty: A simple description of it may sound like an “Ethereum competitor backed by Bitcoin blockchain”.Siacoin: Distributed data storage.An alternative to Box, Google Drive.The big corporations would not have any access to your data in this point.Lisk: A JavaScript-based Ethereum competitor that aims to make the deployment and development easy.Interesting solution for an internet of things device from a simplicity perspective.Ripple: A protocol which basically allows to reduce financial transaction fees by a huge amount (to a couple cents) — and makes the settlement almost instant.Already backed by some VCs and used inside big banks.The currency itself though is different from others: it’s premined and centralized.STEEM: A decentralized platform which allows to reward content creators easily.Zcash: crypto, which aims to solve the same problem Monero does.Some venture capital is pouring in.I am unconvinced — a simple backdoor at this point can compromise the whole system in the future.