Archives for October 2017

Oct 17 2017

99 Days of Bitconnect

UPDATED ON NOVEMBER 2 – Bitconnect is still cool, but we’re striking through all the text about Bitpetite, which is a scam.

Here on the site, we’ve talked quite a bit about the concept of “Passive Income,” and, specifically, Passive Income Platforms (PIPs) where you can invest your coins or tokens and watch them make money for you.

We’ve also tried to be as upfront and transparent as possible. This approach, we think, lets us share with you a “warts and all” look at these PIPs and whether or not they might be worth your hard-earned Bitcoins.

We started our journey with Bitconnect (AFFILIATE LINK), and we’ve also tried a couple duds – “scams” is actually more accurate – like Bithaul (the image over there is what they SAY we have in our account right now, though we haven’t been able to withdraw for almost a month), or Control Finance (another dead site), or Ambis (SCAM).

(The only other platform that we’ve tried and can still vouch for is Bitpetite (AFFILIATE LINK), which continues to have a great track record for us. And we promise to try more of these in the days to come, with a report on them as we proceed.) Bitpetite is a SCAM.

Bitconnect remains the leader for us because of a couple of factors:

It is backed by an actual coin;
That coin has a large market cap;
There is a wide distribution, throughout the world, of Bitconnect users;
The track record of payouts is pretty strong (see chart below).

99 Days In…

Okay, the image we’re about to share will take a little scrolling on your part. It’s a screenshot of our Excel spreadsheet that tracks the amount of interest paid each day we’ve been part of the Bitconnect system. SO it’s 99 days of history, going back to July 10, when we got started. Let’s take a look:

Before we psychoanalyze this spreadsheet, we should probably give you a refresher on the basics.

For instance, you need to invest a minimum of $100 to get started. You need to convert Bitcoin into BCC, their coin, and then invest a round number in an increment of $10. We landed on $110 to get started because of exchange rates and whatnot on the day we invested.
$10 is a pretty important number for the site, too, because you can only reinvest in multiples of $10.
You are given the option to cash out your interest whenever; but we have chosen to reinvest it at each step of the way.
Since we’re not “whales” on the site – at least not yet – our investments and reinvestments are locked down for 299 days; to get your money back sooner, you will need to invest a minimum of $1010.

We’ve tried to manage this spreadsheet so that it’s obvious to us when we reach a milestone: the “Reinvest” column is highlighted when we reinvest into the system. Another key milestone for us was September 14: that’s the date we took some affiliate commissions from Bitpetite (AFFILIATE LINK; you, too, can sign up and get affiliates on the site and get commissions should you so choose) and invested them into Bitconnect. (That’s why the upper right corner, where it says “initial investments,” reads “$310.”) (ALSO, ignore the “Today’s Total” figure; we’ll fix once the coffee consumption is at normal levels.)

Pluses and Minuses

One thing you’ll need to consider here: are you better off parking some of your coins somewhere (like Bitconnect) or just keeping them in Bitcoins and doing nothing.

This is a legitimate question – we look at our own approach as “risk management” and we aren’t planning on putting all of our eggs in any one basket. Still…

This chart shows the Bitcoin price on July 10 – the day we got started on Bitconnect – and tells us that we would have also done well had we just taken $110 worth of Bitcoin and parked it in Bitcoin. At today’s price of around $5640, that’s more than a 132% return.

BUT, if you see look at our Excel chart above, you’ll see that we did just as well, in a shorter time frame, with our original investment; $110 had turned into $260 on Sept 13, the day before we dropped another $200 into the platform.

In addition to the other concerns that you should have with any Bitcoin-related investment – that you could lose your entire principal, that the site could disappear on you, that you’ll invest your time and money in something you’re better off avoiding – another concern is whether you are better off with the core coins (like our BRED Portfolio) as opposed to these passive income platforms.

This is a legitimate question – might end up being a “minus” in the grand scheme – if you take some of those Bitcoin estimates that are floating around and tease them out. For instance, one prognosticator we found on the internet made a semi-legitimate case for Bitcoin to hit $27,000 at some point in early 2018. By then, our original Bitconnect investment would be worth around $1500, but would pale in comparison to the same amount just parked in Bitcoin (which would quintuple in Q1 2018).

As Always, Watch Your Eggs

The multi-basket, disciplined approach is a good one; and there’s also something to be said for the fact that parking your Bitcoins at Bitconnect actually parks them for 299 days. It’s not like there’s a “substantial penalty for early withdrawal,” since there is, more accurately, “no possibility of early withdrawal.”

So we should summarize the same way we summarize all of our discussions of these platforms: Do Your Own Research, don’t invest more than you can afford to lose, manage your risk appropriately, and…good luck.

Oct 11 2017

Getting Started (Redux)

Several weeks ago, we posted a few ideas to get you started with cryptocurrency. You know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and some of the other coins and tokens that we discuss on this here forum.

We thought that we’d spend some time today revisiting that idea: How Do You Get Started?

Our goal today is AN ACTIONABLE LIST. A few things to possibly whet your appetite.

We have a few ideas below – and, since this continues to be an experiment, some of the links are going to be different from the last time we did this. As usual, we’ll include a few AFFILIATE LINKS with this post (so we may be compensated if you take some sort of action, like signing up, buying currency, or investing) and we’ll be as blatant as we possibly can when we share one.

Let’s begin.

An Airdrop and This Will Cost You NOTHING

We talked about this “airdrop” last week and it’s still going on. Here’s a link to the POW Token webpage. Simply put, you sign up with your Facebook credentials and the token creators give you a bunch of tokens (or coins).

We have been asked “Why Are They Doing This?” and the best answer to that is that there’s value in a widely distributed network. While the creators make some…interesting…claims on their web page, there is something to the fact that a network with a million people using its product will be much more valuable in the long term than a network with just 30,000 users (which is where it stands today).

For now, think of this as a Western US land grab, and you’re putting stakes in the ground and hoping that it becomes fertile farmland in the future.

Coinbase – STILL the Fastest Way to Get Started

This one will cost you money, but one of the beautiful things about Coinbase (AFFILIATE LINK) is that, for Americans at least, there’s a decent amount of seamless integration between traditional banking and this new economy. The AFFILIATE LINK gives you a $10 bonus (paid in Bitcoin) if you spend $100 on any combination of the three currencies they offer (Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin). (And once you join in, you’ll get your own link and can invite others yourself and possibly be compensated…which is cool with us.)

Trade Coins on an Exchange

While there are a few established exchanges that we’d suggest – Bittrex, Cryptopia (AFFILIATE LINK) and Poloniex are three that we currently use – you should also consider signing up for one of the newer exchanges, too.

Altcoin Exchange (AFFILIATE LINK) may very well be lucrative for you – we know that other exchanges that started this way (through referrals) compensated their early adopters rather richly. Use our AFFILIATE LINK over there, and then start referring others yourself as you see fit.
WCX (AFFILIATE LINK) is another one, with an ICO coming in a few weeks.
COSS is brand new. Not an affiliate link, but we do like the fact it’s based in Singapore and has developers throughout the world.

Passive Income Platforms

Yes, we have been talking A LOT about Passive Income Platforms, or PIPs, that can help you profit with limited amounts of effort. We currently recommend two of them – that’s not to say there aren’t others that are worth your time and investment, but these are the two that we (1) have experimented with and (2) have not let us down.

DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! Seriously, with any of these, your coins could end up in a black hole of nothing. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Bitconnect (AFFILIATE LINK) is beautiful, we think, because it is backed by an actual coin, one that has a large market cap (as of this writing, around $1 Billion). The odds of it disappearing are small.
Bitpetite (AFFILIATE LINK) acts more like a mining platform, in that your “investment” will not be returned to you. However, we now have a nine-week track record of daily payments from the site; note that payments are larger during weekdays than weekends.

An Actionable List?

That’s our hope. You can spend a couple minutes on the first one and it costs you nothing, then, if you’re ready to invest some real money, you can consider trying the other ones out.

In any event, don’t invest more than you can afford to lose…once you get started in this world, it might get a little addictive.

Oct 09 2017

It’s October, and Time to Check In on BRED

Followers of this site know that we talk about a diverse set of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related topics, and we’ve actually been doing so for seven solid months. (That seems like forever in crypto – in some respects, this hyper-warp-superspeed in the industry is actually unlike anything else we’ve ever seen.) And, while it may appear that we’ve zeroed in on Passive Income of late – we have, to an extent – we don’t want to forget about one of the “innovations” we created in April: the BRED Portfolio.

BRED is Like FANG for Crypto

FANG – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google – gives investors exposure to the internet, social, digital, and the web, acting as a quasi-index fund for those who invest in that group. BRED aims to do the same: take a group of four cryptocurrencies that give broad exposure to the market, but each does its own thing:

B is for Bitcoin (the “well, duh!” piece of the portfolio)
R is for Ripple, which aims to upend SWIFT as the industry standard for interbank transfers, globally
E is for Ethereum and OMG it seems like every ICO is using Ethereum’s smart contracts as their backing
D is for Dash, whose consumer focus and community caught our eye from the get-go.

We started with a simple premise: a non-weighted fund that bought $2,500 of each of the four currencies and left it alone.

So, how is our hypothetical $10,000 doing?

September Was a Down Month

This is good, right? Your YTD growth is 2416%; you would have taken $10,000 and turned it into $250K.

Yes, you would have. But you also would have witnessed a bit of a pullback from the month previous:

But what’s $61,000 among friends?

Really, Though…Quite a Year!

Here’s what your month-by-month looks like:

So, if you want to talk about a “buy and hold” strategy for Bitcoin and its ilk, you may want to consider the BRED Portfolio.

Oct 05 2017

Airdrop? What’s An Airdrop?

One of the tactics that creators of cryptocurrencies use to get people on board is called an “airdrop.” Put simply, they look for wallets (or some other means of ensuring that you are you) and drop coins or tokens into that wallet.

We’ve heard of them before, and we’re really really new to the airdrop world – but…well, this one we stumbled upon sounded like it was worth our while.

So, together, let’s learn how an airdrop works, and watch one in action.

POW Token Airdrop – Still Ongoing!

You, too, can take advantage of this one; while early adopters got on board and got huge amounts of coinage, the token creators here claim that the value of what they’re giving away is still close to $100 US.

This one is really easy to do: all you need is a Facebook account.

Here’s how it works…

Step One: Go to this Link

POW Token is where you can get started. You’ll see a screen that looks like the above, except the number of POW “lite” you’ll receive will be lower than what’s listed here.

(We’ll talk about the math behind this below.)

Step Two: Click on the “Login with Facebook” Button

The key here is that your Facebook must be locked down pretty tightly. If you’re using free Wifi at the mall, you’re probably going to get hacked. And that *could* lead to someone taking your tokens away.

Accept the terms, which are pretty straightforward.

Step Three: Wait Patiently

Now you should have a large amount of POW “lite” tokens. Cool, huh?

But…are they gonna be worth anything?

The Math

If the above chart and graph and nutritional breakdown of POW Token looks a little confusing, here’s what’s going on:

They started the process with a total supply of in excess of 231 BILLION tokens. (Wait, does that mean that your tokens won’t be worth much? Stay tuned…) Then, they used a very simple formula that 10 billion by the place you held in line. The first person in line received 10 BILLION TOKENS. (We tried, they had some technical difficulties, we had to wait 2 and a half hours, and we still were in pretty good shape.) So person 2 received 5 billion tokens, person 10 received 1 billion, and so on.

But they have capped the total supply: no more tokens will be made.

Valuation? Well…

In that chart above, they claim a valuation of .00000325 ETH per POW. At the above prices, that’s pretty generous, as the entire network would then be worth $221 Million. And the person in the front of the line is officially loaded.

Except, in the chart at the very top, they use a different calculation: $0.0001 per token ($91 and change divided by the 950,000 or so tokens).

And What IS This Thing?

Yeah, it’s starting to make a little more sense. They need a system that’s faster than Ethereum, and one that enables mass market adoption and rapid peer-to-peer transactions. POW may end up doing just this. But they can’t get people to use it if people don’t have it, thus the airdrop.

It’s going to take a little time for this all to happen, though – the website tells us December is when we’ll start to see some real activity.

Til Then, Stay Tuned

And go claim your tokens, will ya?