Besides Steem, what coins do you hold and why?

Hey everyone!

There's so many different currencies out there lately and probably even more to come!

Each one has it's own goals, teams and developers. It's own history, age, success and future ahead of it and all of them share the same goal. To decentralize the world with blockchain technology.

I want to take the time to thank Satoshi Nakamoto for releasing the whitepaper to the mother of all coins: Bitcoin and it starting the whole blockchain revolution. Fun fact: the genesis block of Bitcoin has the following text in the data - "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks". A powerful message and for what the technology was intended, to give the control of the money back to the people.

I remember when there was only Bitcoin and Litecoin and a few other alts were starting to come to life. It was simpler times, you didn't have all too much news and events to follow of what was happening with the currencies. The effects of the first big pump that sent BTC above $1000 and LTC above $40 for the first time caused a chain reaction of new coins coming alive, each with their own goal and solutions, some unnecessary and some that are still strong and going forward to this day.

It has become hard to follow all these currencies over time, even if you work on it full time there just is too much. Each big even that causes a lot of adoption to blockchain makes even more innovation come to life. Here is which coins I follow and hold some of and why.

Ethereum - the currency that brought so many more coding languages to the blockchain and enabled so many new projects to be built upon it. One of the first to rise to 2nd place on marketcap in such a short time but probably not the last. I've loved following this project evolve under the lead of it's genius creator.

Litecoin - although I don't really think this one has any true innovation, I hold some just in case cause new money is often not that smart and only goes for the top currencies or the ones that have been alive the longest.

Ripple - I have really not followed this one in a long time, being the coin that most banks love it's been more of a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" kind of deal and am glad I was able to get me some cheap.

Iota - new innovative technology that differs from many of the other blockchains - has had some nice partnerships over the short time it has been live and holding it just in case.

Monero - one of the real contenders to true anonymous transactions and wallets, this one I will hold and stack away somewhere without touching for a long time and still believe it is undervalued even though I've recommended buying it at ~$50 in the Alt-News posts I used to write. Worth looking into.

EOS - another brilliant creator who brought us Bitshares and Steem, holding some of this as speculation and to see what happens with it when it goes live.

NEO - the chinese version of Ethereum. China often likes to have their own version of currencies and this may be a reason why they've been banning Bitcoin back and forth. The same way how they have all of their own products pre-blockchain I believe they will go that route with this innovation as well.

Yoyow - same reason as NEO, this will be more in style to Steem. Not really planning on being an active voter on that platform when it's live but holding some since I got them cheap on binance just in case.

Bitconnect - lol, just kidding. Didn't touch that when it was $1 and won't touch it even if someone were to sell it for $1 to me now. Only a matter of time til it collapses and makes so many new and unknowing investors lose a lot of money.

Sia and Storj - both focusing on storage solutions and have great dev teams. I see them doing well in the future and definitely holding these long term.

One of my latest interests has been Enjin coin - this one focuses on making ingame items simply tradable with their coin among people and has some great solutions to offer to not congesting the ethereum network as much as the cryptokitties have done. With a solid team behind it and a company that have been alive for many years prior, they recently had their ICO and have been selling under ICO price for some time before they got back up. Looking to hold this one long term as well.

As an altcoin enthusiast there are a bunch of other coins I've stashed away but thought I wouldn't mention all of them and leave more room for discussion among other Steemians in this post.
Which coins do you hold and why, Steemians?