Much Better Gains than Bitcoin
Wow! What a week! Even before we released our first Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings last Wednesday, our website got hit by a massive cyberattack from Asia.
(See CNBC’s story about that here.)
Then, as soon as we posted our first list of 74 cryptos, it drew a barrage of criticism. And our crypto team went into hyperdrive to respond.
So I trust you’ll understand why this is our first real opportunity to say …
Here’s the deal: We tell it like it is — the good, the bad, the ugly.
When our ratings model crunches the data and kicks out a low rating for a currency, we issue the low rating.
When it kicks out a high rating, we issue the high rating.
We don’t play favorites. We have no vested interest, no ax to grind.
What if crypto folks say some of our ratings seem “weird”?
That doesn’t bother us one iota; we’re used to those kinds of reactions. In fact, we had a similar experience years ago when we gave bad grades to the likes of Executive Life, Mutual Benefit Life and, later, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and many others — well before they failed.
Today’s reaction from the crypto world is similar, except for two big differences: The crypto crowd, despite any initial outrage about our crypto ratings, is friendlier than the Wall Street crowd was years ago. And overall, we like crypto investments.
No matter what, we’re here to help you, the investor, whether you’re new or experienced.
When we see a danger in the market, we won’t sugarcoat it.
If we feel we’ve made a mistake of some kind, we’ll be the first to say so.
Most important, if we see a major profit opportunity, our subscribers will be among the first to know.
And that’s where I think this conversation needs to begin: with PROFITS.
Yeah, sure, we can engage in debate, explaining the reasons why our model gives this or that crypto a grade that some folks think is too low or too high. We’ll gladly do that all the time. (See, for example, “Why Some of our Ratings Look Weird” and “Thank you for your feedback!“)
But today let’s talk about …
The Bottom-line Performance for Investors
If you bought and held in Bitcoin in 2017, you could have multiplied your money 10 times over.
That superlative gain helps explain why so many investors love Bitcoin and will defend it till kingdom come. With megaprofits like that, who can blame them?
But our model demonstrates that anyone owning Bitcoin alone would have left a great fortune on the table. Much better gains could have been made simply by following the approach of the Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings.
Quite to the contrary …Here’s the key: Whether you’re looking back at 2017 or looking forward to 2018 for new profit opportunities, our studies confirm that Bitcoin is not where investors have found — or are most likely to find — the largest rewards.
The best risk/reward combination has shifted from Bitcoin to other, newer coins.
Therein lies some of the disconnect between our view of Bitcoin and the perspective of the majority of crypto investors.
They still see Bitcoin as king. We don’t.
They still recommend that you greatly overweight Bitcoin in your crypto portfolio. We don’t.
They say that based on its market dominance alone, Bitcoin merits the highest grade. We disagree.
We also look at its dominance. But we do not base our ratings on dominance alone. We base them on hard data from four major areas — Risk, Reward, Technology and Fundamentals, which includes market dominance.
We crunch that data with a model built from 46 years of ratings experience and robust input from experts who have been in the crypto space since 2012.
And when we put all of this together, it leads straight to a Weiss Bitcoin grade of C+.
For us, that means it’s in the upper range of “fair.”
For anyone familiar with school grades, it’s clearly two notches above a passing grade of C-.
And for investors, it means hold.
So if you’re a loyal Bitcoin “hodler,” we have no argument with you; and you should have none with us.
What will it take for Bitcoin to move up one notch from C+ to B-?
Not a heck of a lot.
You could get a one-notch upgrade because prices stabilize and begin to recover.
You could get it because the Lightning project gets rolled out to a broader user base.
Or it could happen due to some combination of factors.
As we said from the outset, “the metrics used to evaluate cryptocurrencies can change more rapidly than those of other investments. Therefore, when using Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings, investors should expect frequent upgrades and downgrades.”
In fact, since we first released our Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings last week, we’ve already seen ratings changes overall.
The ratings are volatile because the market is volatile — not only in terms of big price swings, but also thanks to rapid-fire software upgrades, ongoing changes in usage and transaction speeds/costs, and much more.
That means last week’s list of Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings is already outdated. If you want to stay up to speed … or aim for the kind of outperformance that our ratings make possible, one day’s snapshot in time won’t cut it.
Best wishes,
Martin and Juan
