Bitcoin was trading at pennies back in 2013

Currently worth $5900 per coin.

Trading at $956 on Jan 1 2017 - Crazy one year growth of magic internet money.

Long term and simple, open a Coinbase.com account. They only sell 3 of the top 5 currencies, Bitcoin Ethereum and Litecoin. These will survive and Coinbase being the largest (by far) exchange/wallet service out there does intense scrutiny before adding a coin to their network. Buy some and hold it for 5 years. Actually trading currencies is more complex, you need an exchange account like Poloniex, Bitfinex or many others. You would need to fund your trading account with Bitcoin that you purchase through Coinbase or other service.

We're all looking for that next one that sits at $.20 cents and ready to move to $1, $10, 100 ....Thats where the hours and hours of research come in. I do like a couple cheap ones that have potential based on what they are trying to solve and only thrown a little $$ at them. Aragon, Civic, EOS, Golem, SALT, SC, BTS - then the big 4, Ripple, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Litecoin.....Litecoin is in my opinion the best bet for the money. It's cheap and physiologically for the average person, it affordable to get into...Bitcoin is ~$6,000 per coin - Litecoin is $55 per coin

Adding one more thing.....There is a hard fork for Bitcoin on November 16th. There will be a ton of money flowing into and out of Bitcoin and other cryptos until the dust settles. I expect Litecoin, Ethereum and Ripple to make solid gains post Bitcoin hard Fork to segwit2X.

Im in with a group of people, we dont mine directly but sell our hashing power to NiceHash and do ok with it.