Kissing Frogs

Maybe retire was too strong a word.

To stave off boredom I started reading 4 books (Burroughs Naked Lunch, Tahir Shah’s The Caliphs House, Pinker’s new book The Better Angels of our Nature, and a travel book on Morrocco), making a needlepoint dog, and have signed up for cooking and stand up paddleboard classes. I made caramel apples, sous vide porkchops and yogurt, and churned my own butter. Then I cleaned the oven, the car, and did all the laundry, even those clothes the family was wearing.

So, now that I am 4 hours into retirement, I figured I would start considering why and what cryptocurrencies should make up the crypto portfolio of my dreams. I figured I would share my findings in the blog-o-sphere to convince the hubs that I am responsible enough for my own blog, so don’t make me look bad….

There are lots of cryptocurrencies out there and I don’t pretend to know much of one from another. We have been comparing the process of sorting through all the hype to the fairytale princess searching for her Prince Charming by kissing frogs. Here are the current list of kissable amphibians in no particular order….

---

BTC

Bitcoin is my first frog. BTC stole my heart when it went from less than one hundred dollars when I bought my first one to astronomical amounts lately. I kissed this frog and then sucked it dry like a discarded husk after the Lost Boys had frolicked through Santa Carla. We were some of the first customers to use it to buy a house and many hours were spent explaining the whole cryptocurrency concept to a skeptical Wells Fargo mortgage broker. It was cashed in to put kids through college, bail, and rehab. In hindsight we should have let our kids live in jail, never bought a house, and lived in a BART garage and hoarded our bitcoin. You were right Vinny.

---

XRP

I would totally F#*k this frog. Duh. Super undervalued, awesome coin.

---

Salt

I kissed a frog and I liked it. Salt has a business model based on holding cryptocurrency as security for loans. Eric Vorhees would probably have been much more understanding than that guy at Wells Fargo….

---

Bancor

This platform provides liquidity for other tokens. Automation, the Ethereum blockchain and Tim Draper round out the trinity.

---

Doc.ai

I would tongue kiss this frog, and then when I got some weird amphibian disease, machine learning + the blockchain for healthcare would make it all better. See Jeremy Howard’s TED talks.

---

Blocktix

This is an Ethereum based distribution platform for ticket sales. But what really sells it for me is the team’s cool hair. Seriously hipster hair. Check the web site. Also, Marshal of the good hair is involved with Metal, below.

---

EOS

Entrepreneurial Operating System is scalable and decentralized and lots of other buzzwords. Scalable Ethereum token anyone?

---

Flash

You can do the same stuff with XRP right? Did someone think they were crowdfunding “The” Flash?

---

Polymath

Great origami bull logo. This is a securities token platform and one stop shop for protocols, apps, legal and exchange. 4 frogs in one.  Also, they were smart enough to put Mike Novogratz quotes on the website, so I am in!

---

Rustbits

Didn’t we collectively learn our lesson about things named Pirate? We like games though, we just do.

---

Storm

The puns just keep coming…. Storm looks to cut out that 35%+ overhead from those pesky App stores. Fight the man, frog! Or the fruit in this case. Is Google animal, vegetable, or mineral?

---

Tezos

This frog pisses me off. I personally don’t like to kiss any frog whose white paper contains the history of Bitcoin or the mention of Satoshi in the first paragraph. Also, there is a hint of the Ross Perot (God I am old) and current administration problem solving strategy at work here…. Lots of problems are mentioned, and the solutions all seem to be to hire the best people to come up with the best solutions… Ribet, Ribet.  I am left with the taste in my mouth that we should all just use XRP.

---

BAT

FOMO (fear of missing out) Frog, but they are hoping to incentivize development with a dedicated token. Brandon Eich, I’d follow you and your Brave Browser anywhere.

---

STOX

Prediction market layered on Bancor. A little frog on frog action.

---

Metal

Marshall Hayner of the good hair, Oscar Munoz and Bram Cohen – solid metal team.

---

Football coin

Oh God, it’s soccer. And why can’t we just use BTC to play if so desired? I see more development in the game rather than the token itself. Who put this frog on my desk?

---

ETH

FOMO after the solar panel incident of 2016. I’ll tell you later.