I'm going to state right away that this is not an advice or suggestion by any means, I'm simply going to discuss some ideas that I've thought of and would be glad if some of you could shoot holes in them.
I approach markets (crypto currencies or any other) as ultimately irrational processes whose behaviour cannot be modeled through objective scientific methodologies, there are always emotional factors involved which make the trends practically impossible to predict.
The most popular, best crypto currencies (bitcoin, ethereum, ripple etc), despite their volatility, have only been going up on an average since day one, and there's no reason to assume the trend will be any different in the future.
Even though the current price of 1 BTC is staggeringly high (~$2600 at the time of writing), there is no reason to assume it has reached its "limit" or if there even exists such a limit , there is always a potential for growth in the future, another surge in popularity (and hence, adoption) might send its price to $10,000, few more surges might push it to $100,000. Of course, these events take decades to realize. Like Satoshi said, " there are only 21 million coins for 6.8 billion people, just get a few ".
IMHO, most of the alt coins offer nothing special that cannot be achieved with bitcoin's technology, and have no reason to exist. It's just transactions on the blockchain and a confirmation for a transaction takes about ~10 seconds which is hardly a problem, one must not fall for the idea that because new technology is "faster" , it will gain popularity. It's simply not an issue, credit cards take more time than 10 seconds.
If you go to poloniex exchange page you will see there are tens of currencies being traded where almost 80% of the those coins have almost no chance of succeeding as a real currency that has value and secures liberty for people. Of course there are others, like Ethereum, which has "smart contracts" , blockchain for developers, Ripple, with cool banking applications, and steemit, blockchain for social media, which can "coexist" with bitcoin.
A widely popular currency that has been existing for over a decade cannot be challenged by newcomers who offer slightly "better" technologies and massively exaggerate minor "flaws" in bitcoin to promote their currencies. Most important features of a currency are trust and popularity, being widely accepted as a "currency" across communities beats lower transaction fees and "faster" speeds any day of the week.
Why would anyone even have faith in a currency that is 60-80% pre-mined by the devs ? They will not. Most of these other coins will fade away, when their owners would cash out and crash the market, which is unavoidable when a huge fraction of the coin is with the owners and the initial investors, and they are only in the crypto-market for your sweet fiat, not to "revolutionize" the future of transactions.
Knowing this, what can one do to maximize profits?
If you're like me and cannot invest in bitcoin because it's too expensive, and there isn't as much volatility to exploit, as is seen in the alt coins, you could consider investing in alt coins.
Capitalize on the hype to make a quick buck from trading back and forth until you think you have enough, then convert back to BTC and hoard them. Analysing historical trends, we can see that buying coins in their initial stages can make you the maximum profit relative to investment, fairly quickly too.
Bitcoin went from $1 to $1000 in 3 years, 1 ethereum was quarter of a dollar back when it was launched, now it's about $240. Ripple was initially $0.0006. Now it's $0.29 . (at the time of writing). These are hundred and thousand fold increments, in very short periods of time (1-3 years). We may not see such surges again.
We need to invest in the "next" ripple or ethereum, but there is an impossibility to predict which coin that would be, waiting for its first "boost".
One can eliminate most other coins that have little scope of succeeding. We'll be then still left with a few (stratis, digibyte, siacoin, steem, lisk and a few others , perhaps, that I haven't researched into).
All of these coins have a fair degree of hype attached with them, collaborations with tech giants, well known investors and celebrity promotions. So all of these have a decent chance of succeeding and becoming the next ripple or ethereum.
Make a list of such coins, that preferably still cost a few cents, and buy several hundreds of them. You'd be spending a few hundred dollars for several hundreds of coins of each of these prospective alt coins, even if one of them explodes, you will have massive returns in the coming years. If all of them fade away and become worthless, you'll only have lost a few hundred dollars. At least you're giving yourself a high probability of making healthy returns by diversifying and investing early. There won't be a regret of "missing out", or perhaps there may still be a regret about not investing more in this particular coin. That is something one has to get around.
Knowing when to to stop. How ?
Well, IMO this part is actually easier than most "experts" make it seem, greed is your only enemy here. If you start out with a particular figure in mind, $10k or $100k or $1 million or whatever, you must make it a point to absolutely stop at this point and cash out, not worrying about missing out on more. Having some flexibility with the "goal" is also essential, 10, 100 or 1000 are not some kind of special milestones but just numbers, do not fixate on these "milestones" , instead use them as vague approximations of "how much I need". What I mean to say is sell around your "goal" figures, not strive to reach them, or surpass them. One can always come back and invest more from fractions of their earnings, but one first has to make sure to not forget the initial goal.
I personally would save all my earnings in BTC when I'm not trading, as it is the least volatile.
