The other day, I looked at what the crypto market was like back in 2013. It was amazing to realize that in December 2013, there were only 42 crypto assets on the Coinmarketcap website. At that point, Ethereum wasn’t even a project; nor had it done its ICO.

During those times, if you were a newbie, all you had to do was spend a week reading everything you could find. Out of those 42 tokens, there were only 10 assets truly worth looking at. Over the last eight years, asset types and numbers exploded. Currently, there are over 10,000 assets, with new ones launching almost daily.

You would be forgiven, therefore, if you truly felt lost and unsure of where to start. To make the choices, my advice would be to start by understanding the types of crypto assets. Here are a few:

Payment currencies The whole industry was launched by Bitcoin, once it was found to solve the double spending problem. Bitcoin, therefore got a moniker as digital gold, also for its scarcity. Others along this vein are Decred, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Dash.

Blockchain Smart Contract Based Platforms The launch of Ethereum led to an explosion of digital tokens built on it. It also opened the world to what many now term as programmable value. Since then, hundreds of platforms have launched with the goal of building out their own ecosystem. Examples in this space are Solana, Celo, Maker, and Serum.

Decentralized Finance — DeFi DeFi has been made possible through smart contracts and smart tokenomics. A lot of them will compete with real-world financial organizations as they scale. Examples include Uniswap, Sushiswap, Maker, and Serum.

Non-Fungible Tokens, NFTs and Collectibles NFTs are unique tokens that are irreplicable. They are often artistic in nature and examples include Lootproject, Punks, and the Bored Ape club.

Meme Coins and Tokens For those that have been around crypto long enough, you would be aware that crypto has its funny side. Often, these tokens are highly speculative, released as jokes with a community pushing hard for them. Examples include Shiba Inu and Dogecoin.

In investing, it often pays to diversify your portfolio, even in a relatively young industry like crypto, as different assets have performed well at different times.