Just don't buy any of the newer cryptocurrencies. There's much less risk involved in the older cryptocurrencies. That being said bitcoin seems intent on tearing it's self apart at the moment.
If you want to choose a cryptocurrency as a hedge I'd go for litecoin, it's fairly old and under active development. It's far past the point where it's riding on a couple pump and dumps and unlike bitcoin isn't talking about 2-3 chain splits in one year.
It's very hard to tell which of the new cryptocurrencies are legit, and even if you identify ones that look good, that's no guarantee the price will actually go up.
Why should anyone buy the older cryptocurrencies for a pricer higher than the early adopters?
Surely cryptocoin software is more than a pump and dump system right? Hodl until you can pass off to the later bag holders?
What happens when the old networks are obsolete?
In economics, the Gini coefficient is the standard measure
of how inequitable a society is. This is tricky to
determine for Bitcoin, as it's not quiet a "society" in
the Gini sense, one person may have multiple addresses and
many addresses have been used only once or a few times.
(The commonly-cited figure of 0.88 is based on one small
exchange in 2011.) However, a Citigroup analysis from
early 2014 notes: "47 individuals hold about 30 percent,
another 900 a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 about
25% and another million about 20%"; and distribution
"looks much like the distribution of wealth in North Korea
and makes China's and even the US' wealth distribution
look like that of a workers' paradise
Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir found in a 2012 study that only
22% of then-existing Bitcoins were in circulation at all,
there were a total of 75 active users or businesses with
any kind of volume, one (unidentified) user owned a
quarter of all Bitcoins in existence, and one large owner
was trying to hide their pile by moving it around in
thousands of smaller transactions. (Shamir is one of the
most renowned cryptographers in the world and the "S" in
"RSA encryption")"
Cryptocoin minting algorithms distribute the supply based on what the developer typed in. Almost always, this is exploited by the developer to create the most amount of coins for the least amount of effort to the smallest group of users at the start of the project. Then they just wait in hopes other users speculate on the "limited" supply and they dump their holdings which cost less to produce then current coins are being produced for.
Trading cards, beanie babies, and database-coin entries have production costs, which users don't always realize are significantly lower than the price they're charged for in retail.
If you want to choose a cryptocurrency as a hedge I'd go for litecoin, it's fairly old and under active development. It's far past the point where it's riding on a couple pump and dumps and unlike bitcoin isn't talking about 2-3 chain splits in one year.
It's very hard to tell which of the new cryptocurrencies are legit, and even if you identify ones that look good, that's no guarantee the price will actually go up.