Archives for May 2017

May 19 2017

Bitcoin $2000, Ethereum $120

Quick post here, because most pundits will, IMHO, “Bury the Lead.”

(If you’re not familiar with that concept – “burying the lead” involves talking about everything but the biggest news first. Sorta like…”Hey, how ya doin? Did you hear that it’s supposed to rain today? Yeah, it’s been kinda cold, too. My dog is tired. The kids are okay. By the way, I won the lottery last night and now have a million dollars! Talk to you later.”)

And all the pundits will say “OMG, Bitcoin got up to $2000!” Which is great. A worthy accomplishment.

But, IMHO, the worthier accomplishment – and the “LEAD” in this story, is this: Ethereum is up to $120.

Ethereum All-Time High: Biggest News of the Week

Why?

Support over $100/coin. This is rather big, since ETH went over that figure overnight, stayed over that figure this morning and into the afternoon, and now leads Poloniex in volume (on the BTC-pairs portion of the exchange; screenshot above).
Ethereum is the business story – maybe moreso than Ripple. Yes, the XRP love was shown this week, and a pullback into the 17000-Satoshi range wasn’t unexpected. But where the action is going to be is not necessarily in payment processing and transactions between banks (which, don’t get me wrong, is vitally important), but in using Ethereum’s “smart contracts” to underpin just about every sort of insurance, banking, legal, and other kind of contract in the world.
That was a bold statement – and it’s one we talked about a little here. The ETH coin underneath the Ethereum technology has the potential to be more earth-shattering than Bitcoin itself, and more earth-shattering than Ripple’s XRP for sure.

And an ETH Investment YTD…

Here’s this afternoon’s BRED Portfolio chart. Sure, it’s no XRP, but your ETH investment would be would be A-OK.

OMG.

Happy trading!

BTW, if you haven’t gotten started with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin yet, use this AFFILIATE link to check out Coinbase. You’ll get a $10 bonus (well, $10 worth of BTC) with your $100 purchase of any of the three coins. And we’ll get a $10 bonus for referring you.

May 17 2017

The Ripple Effect

OMG, Ripple! OMG, XRP!

Ripple, the company, and XRP, the coin, are both on a serious tear. How serious? Let’s give you a few points about this, ahem, Ripple Effect. (I’m here all week.)

1. It’s made us question various portfolios.

Yeah, yeah, we talk about the #BRED Portfolio quite a bit here. In fact, we were gonna write about this very subject on Sunday morning, before we got sidetracked. Here’s the Excel chart we were going to share.

And here’s that same chart, but updated with today’s numbers (pulled around 8 p.m. CDT, May 17, from Poloniex, USDT trades).

$10,000 in our basket of Bitcoin, Ripple (XRP), Ethereum, and Dash would yield more than $206,323.19 today. IN FACT, a $2,500 investment in RIPPLE on January 1 would be worth $154,270.04 today.

How much portfolio weighting and shifting should one do after an exercise such as this? Remember, we entered this HYPOTHETICAL portfolio on January 1 with four coins that were each equally weighted.

So we did the math: re-weighting the portfolio on April 1 would have given you 115,000+ coins/tokens of XRP. That, using the above math – VOLATILITY, BABY; the numbers keep shifting as we type – would give you more than $46,000. In XRP alone. (Whole portfolio? Went from $10K to $57,000.)

2. It’s made us wonder…why it’s so special?

I had to – literally – “STOP THE PRESSES” when I saw this article from Logan Kugler on the Huffington Post website. It’s awesome; there’s no sense in my trying to explain what he explains so well. Here’s a link:

Ripple and XRP Are More Stable Than You Think.

To wit: they’re going to take out SWIFT. Next year? No. Ten years from now? Maybe.

AND the article does a great job of walking us through the differences between Ripple (company) and XRP (the coin).

3. It’s made us look for…the next Ripple.

The thought of having any asset that goes from half a cent to 40 cents makes any trader drool.

We had been working on a post we were calling “The Next XRP?” and then we had to stop writing the post because, well, the next XRP is actually XRP.

That’s not a fair answer to the question, though. Is there another company with technology like Ripple AND a coin like XRP? We don’t think so. (Re-read Logan’s article for the down low.)

However, is there another coin that could go from less than a penny to 40 cents, or beyond? Sure. (Don’t worry, we’re working on that blog post.)

For now, y’all…sit back, relax, and enjoy the Ripple (effect).

May 16 2017

Calm Down, Everyone…

Are we in a Bull Market for cryptocurrencies? Is your latest “Pick of the Day” going to the MOON? Are you witnessing a pump-and-dump?

Is Ripple really going to be bigger than Bitcoin in the next month?

Will Bitcoin go to $5,000 a piece?

Calm Down, Everyone…

Really, while some of the froth in the market might be scary, there are a few questions you should ask yourself before entering into any investment or asset class; this is what you should do if you’re buying stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pork bellies, platinum futures or, yes, Bitcoin, altcoins, or any crypto-asset.

1. Is this fundamentally a good pick?

Let’s talk about Ripple – XRP is the ticker, and the token/asset/coin attached to the technology. While it appears that 389 gazillion XRP are in existence, you can get off the company’s back for a half-second. It’s not THAT many – 38.3 billion to be exact – AND the company announced today that they are escrowing 55 billion tokens.

So the froth around XRP – which is now #2 in the rankings, ahead of ETH and still well behind BTC – probably comes from the fact that the technology behind the token is actually being used, and that Ripple is actually taking on SWIFT. And, it appears, in some cases, winning.

Fundamentally: XRP is more than likely a long-term player, and its technology will likely make a whole host of behind-the-scenes bank transactions easier. Thus, it’s a good call.

But you should be asking yourself if there’s something to it that you can grasp, a concept that makes sense, and the people and technology that gives it a chance of being successful.

2. Will this be around in a few years?

I remember, back when electric cars were becoming a thing – but hadn’t yet become a thing in the US – and there was a company called “Think” that was bringing Finnish (?) automotive technology to the US.

It was a great concept, and it was poorly executed, and there wasn’t a vision behind it, and it fizzled.

Contrast that to Elon Musk and Tesla. Who cares that Elon himself didn’t invent electricity; you wouldn’t know it if you saw one of his press conferences. The guy can sell air conditioning to the proverbial Eskimo – he’s probably already contracted with Eskimos everywhere to put solar panels on igloos.

Why do I bring that up? Ages ago, for another site I have worked on, I made what I thought was a bold prediction: Tesla is the Next Apple. I doubted my own prediction last year, but now I’m starting to look like maybe I was on to something.

The Tesla vision is pretty simple: electricity, coming off your roof, coursing through your home’s veins, powering your auto.

Contrast that with…well, pick a coin, any coin. Ethereum: Smart Contracts, powering a whole host of transactions in a wide variety of industries, in as transparent a fashion as possible. I’ll take that.

3. Can I afford this? And…Can I afford this going to zero?

That’s right, another part of the sniff test: what if your investment hits rock bottom.

You should get professional advice, your should do your own research, and you should talk to a whole bunch of different folks about any investment. But, especially with a really REALLY emerging and crazy space like cryptocurrencies, you should “bet with your head, not over it.”

It’s possible you could end up a “bag holder” – someone who buys in at the top, then watches the asset drop like cray-cray, then finds themselves with 100,000 tokens that are worth .00000001 each. (In crypto parlance, that would be “1 Satoshi.” At today’s prices, $1.78, give or take.)

Happy Trading. Now…Everybody Calm Down.

May 10 2017

Why Bitcoin Gets a Gold Star Today…

Good boy, Bitcoin. Good boy.

This morning, when we checked the numbers, we saw that Bitcoin was nearing all time highs. And, lo and behold, that nice round figure – $1800 (US) – was achieved.

Seriously, if you need another reminder that the Bitcoin revolution is NOT going away, look no further than this morning’s price chart on Poloniex. We captured a screen shot at just the right moment, and now, as we write, it appears BTC/USDT is right at that level (give or take five bucks).

It’s actually rather staggering – we use that word a lot here, maybe we should be saying “breathtaking” instead – how quickly Bitcoin has gone from some crazy idea to a revolution.

It seems like ages ago – it was just March 10, so two months ago today – that the SEC said no to the ETF. Had you bought at the height (uh…we did) of that frenzy, you would have been in at $1300 a coin.

Then you could have watched BTC drop into the $900s (we bought again, but that’s because we’re in this for the long haul).

Ignore that second buy at $900 for a moment. The $1300-per-coin rate would have seen a 38.46% rise.

Bitcoin is the on-ramp

We’ve talked about this concept a few times: Bitcoin is, in effect, the on-ramp for cryptocurrency investment, and for cryptocurrency access.

Ignore for a second the fact that Coinbase (ADVERTISEMENT: YOU SHOULD TOTALLY USE THIS LINK TO GET YOUR BITCOIN THROUGH COINBASE) now has three coins/tokens that you can buy, sell, and put in your wallet (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin). Bitcoin is still the Kleenex of cryptocurrency – it’s the first thing the masses think of. “Can you hand me a Kleenex?” “Do you accept Bitcoin?”

If an altcoin is going to be traded somewhere like Poloniex it’s most likely going to start trading as a pair with BTC first. Others might be added later.

And if you’re going to do some active trading, you are probably going to park your unused money in BTC while you figure out which pump-and-dump to chase next.

What does this mean???

A couple things. First of all, with a “market capitalization” of $28 Billion, Bitcoin (or, more accurately, its ecosystem, or network value) is one-half the market cap of a company like Tesla. While you could say Tesla is over-hyped, you also could say that the company is not going anywhere.

Same for Bitcoin – it’s a movement, ecosystem, network, whatever you want to call it.

So don’t bet against it.

What do I do now?

Two things, in our view. One: get some Bitcoin. Even at this valuation. Use the Coinbase link and we’ll get a little – but you’ll get a little, too, with a qualifying purchase.

Two: store that Bitcoin somewhere safe. We’ve joined the TREZOR Affiliate Program, and this is the best deal we’ve seen on TREZOR. It’s a storage solution we’d recommend even if we weren’t working with them – and you’ll be hearing more about that from us in the days to come.

Also, Hold On for Dear Life. This Bitcoin stuff could get really interesting.

May 07 2017

A Five-Month Buy-and-Hold Strategy to 10x Your Money

It’s been a crazy weekend on the cryptocurrency front. If you checked in on the markets on Poloniex, as we did earlier today (around 11:30 a.m. Central Time in the US), you would have seen something that looked like this:

This snapshot (from the BTC “pairs,” so the prices of, say, XRP are calculated in BTC) tells us that you could have done well on a 24-hour period taking the list of 25 of the top “altcoins” and throwing a dart at their names, buying some and then selling 24 hours later. (The obscured 93.76% gain was from STR – “Stellar,” and the 100% gain near the arrow in the picture is BCN – “Bytecoin.”)

But What About…A More “Strategic” Approach?

Oh, that. The BRED Portfolio. The one we seem to be prattle on and on about. The one that involves a $10,000 investment, spread equally between four of the biggest coins – Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash – and invested on January 1, 2017.

That one.

How is it doing?

Sweet Mother of Zeus!

$10,000 invested in the BRED Portfolio on January 1, 2017 would have grown to $106,909.51 on May 7, 2017.

Okay, so there’s some hyperbole involved here. Actually, quite a bit of hyperbole: this is a hypothetical case. If anyone out there actually did this AND wants to talk about it, the floor is yours.

Because, let’s face it, investments come with inherent risks, and with that thing called “human nature.”

Story Time

I remember back in the first dot-com boom, and specifically a stock that I owned in my IRA that was poised to change the world. For a while, it did – acquiring others in its nascent space, growing like the proverbial weed. My memory is deliberately a little fuzzy on the exact numbers, and I have since shredded all records of my transactions.

But suffice it to say I may have bought into this stock at around 3 bucks a share, and it went to around 78 a share.

And I held – “HODL” is the acronym that could have best described what I was doing with this one – until the last possible moment.

PSINet was the company. Yeah, that was a learning experience for me.

It Comes Down to ONE WORD:

Fundamentals.

You can certainly believe that Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash all have the potential to change the world. It is quite possible that they could. It is quite possible that we’ll watch them grow by another order of magnitude. It is quite possible that they’ll continue growing like this, and the ramifications for the global economy could, indeed, be huge.

On the other hand, it is quite possible that we’re watching a bubble that’s about to pop. That Bitcoin is as overpriced as some say, or that there’s too much XRP being circulated.

Our advice: check the fundamentals. Spread your investments around – which is why we say “BRED Portfolio” and not just Bitcoin. Consider the Hedge Fund approach we talk about here.

Due your due diligence, too. Seek advice from places beyond just this site – you’re doing that, right? – and talk to investment advisors and professionals.

Could the trend continue? Could these coins come back to earth? We’ll all find out soon enough.