Ask HN: Which is the best cryptocurrency to invest in right now, and why?

To invest in any crypto you have to understand what separates each of them in terms of security from their counterparts. There is a significant amount of buzz that has no relationship to the value proposition of a given alt. I can think of only three (perhaps four explain later) cryptos that have any real ecosystem that isn't 100% controlled by the founders. That is bitcoin, litecoin, and ethereum. Every other crypto is really just a crypto in name only.

In order to be a crypto in anything except name only you have to be able to validate transactions as they are attached to the blockchain of the crypto. Without doing this, all you have is an expensive distributed database, and when I say distributed, that's exactly the problem. Bitcoin is distributed. Every node holds a copy of the blockchain, and it is fantastically difficult to get each of these nodes to adopt consensus rules changes, especially changes that reduce the network security. That feature makes bitcoin more valuable than all other crypto currencies combined, because even if the most competent crypto open source development team, i.e. bitcoin core, chose to put forward a proposal that the node owners thought would reduce security, it would be rejected. No other crypto has this level of separation from the maintainers of the system, and the developers of the system.

In my opinion, unless you are a sophisticated trader, there is only one crypto worth investing in. If you are sophisticated trader, there will always be pump and dump schemes for new cryptos, and I expect there is a lot of money to be made. But that seems little more than gambling.

It is possible that the offshoots of some of these cryptos might gain traction. Bitcoin cash provides no real security because its node decentralization is almost non-existent, and it is controlled by a small group of miners, perhaps only even one. They can change the rules at any time. Same goes for Ethereum really. Vitalik Buderim might just to modify the consensus rules, and there's very little anyone could do about it. People will blindly follow him. But with bitcoin cash, it is possible that the chinese government will capture bitcoin cash, given it would only need to capture one company that exists in its country, and dictate that that is the crypto that must be used. Maybe that will make it more valuable? Maybe it won't? Can't say. It seems a big risk to me though.

So unless you really understand or believe in the value proposition of a crypto, and understand how it can be protected from capture, it's best to steer clear of all of them. There is only one crypto, bitcoin, that you can reasonably download and run a node, and ensure that your crypto is secure, at least in the short to medium term.

Sorry, a bit trollish but am I wrong? In theory Ethereum does promise a lot but in practice, we're yet to see much in terms of useful smart contracts. And as we can see from the DAO debacle, they've broken their claims of "Ethereum is a decentralized platform for applications that run exactly as programmed without any chance of fraud, censorship or third-party interference."