- Investing in cryptocurrencies can turn rags into riches — or riches into rags.
- Craig Kirsner, the president of a wealth-advisory firm, is a longtime crypto investor and bull.
- Here are seven altcoins Kirsner said he’s bullish on as cryptos head for new highs in 2022.
Craig Kirsner isn’t your typical retirement planner.
The president of Stuart Estate Planning Wealth Advisors in Florida has an affinity for cryptocurrencies — even though he can’t recommend them to his mostly septuagenarian and octogenarian clients. While Kirsner’s clients could, in theory, multiply their money with a bit of luck, they could also see their hard-earned nest eggs disappear if cryptos come crashing down.
“There’s a lot of speculation,” Kirsner told Insider in a recent interview. “I mean, frankly, people are buying to make money, and there’s people making a ton of money in this stuff. It’s also speculation, just like any higher-risk assets, with higher upside and higher downside.”
Crypto may be taboo at Kirsner’s job, but that doesn’t keep him from investing in it on his own. The wealth adviser said he kept 5% of his net worth in cryptocurrencies, even though he knows it could go to zero.
Despite the risks, Kirsner is proud to HODL — “hold on for dear life” — to bitcoin, which he says he’s owned “for the past four or five years,” through every twist, turn, and bear market the world’s largest cryptocurrency has recently experienced.
Like other bitcoin bulls, Kirsner was convinced the token would approach $100,000 in 2021, in part because of concerns about a weaker dollar as the
Federal Reserve
rapidly printed money. He told Insider in September that he believed bitcoin would hit $90,000 in the year’s final four months, but that prediction never came true. Bitcoin topped out at $68,990 in early November.
Kirsner said his bitcoin price target fell flat because of the Fed’s response to rapidly rising inflation. The US central bank began to hint that it would need to hike interest rates sooner than expected; those hit risky assets like high-flying stocks and cryptos hardest.
“Now more and more, crypto has been following the ups and downs of the stock market, and the stock market has been following for years the ups and downs of the Federal Reserve’s policies,” Kirsner said.
Kirsner continued: “Just like the market has taken a hit over the last couple of weeks as it digests news of a non-accommodative Fed and rising interest rates, bitcoin is reacting as well, along with all highly appreciated assets. Everything’s taken a pullback.”
In theory, digital assets like bitcoin should be a hedge against inflation — in reality, that appears not to be the case. Bitcoin is down 36% since October inflation data came out on November 10. But that’s because bitcoin is less of a hedge against inflation and more like a hedge against the US dollar, Kirsner said, adding that the nation is approaching $30 trillion in debt.
“Obviously there’s a growing amount of people that are not happy with what’s happening in politics and everything,” Kirsner said. “So maybe they’re reaching for something that’s out of that control.”
Kirsner is confident that investors will increasingly turn to bitcoin as adoption rates climb, leading to higher highs for the cryptocurrency. As investing stalwarts like MassMutual enter the crypto market, Kirsner believes it’s only a matter of time before a wider variety of investors warm to digital coins, he said.
Altcoins to watch as crypto grows
The multibillion-dollar question: If crypto really is the future, which tokens will fare best?
Predicting which altcoins — commonly defined as non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies — will be around in a decade is like guessing in 2000 which technology firms would survive the tech bubble. Though prognosticating with a high degree of certainty is impossible, Kirsner is willing to try.
Below are seven altcoins Kirsner said he was bullish on in 2022, along with their symbols, their market capitalizations, their use cases, and his thesis for each. Kirsner said he owned three of them — ethereum, cardano, and litecoin — and may soon build positions in the other four.