Archives for March 2020

Mar 27 2020

3 Coins You Can Buy on Crypto.com

Following a little on the theme from a couple days back — and you can see it here where we talk about the investor dude’s 5 Coins to 5 Million project — we’ve decided to start analyzing coins you can actually purchase (if you’re an American) on Crypto.com. (THAT IS AN AFFILIATE LINK; we may be compensated if you open up an account there.)

A couple reasons for going this route:

If you’re new to crypto — as many are — you might not be ready to go through a laundry list of steps to access the coins that *could* pop;
You’re not getting into this to “flip” coins or day trade (95% of the visitors to THIS SITE, at least, are ones who are less interested in trying to get in and out of coins and more interested in long-term strategies like the ones you can read in last year’s popular post: Playing the Long Game);
You DON’T WANT TO MESS WITH THE LAW.

That third piece is really important: you do not want to get into the business of investing in a foreign-domiciled altcoin that could be hunted down by the US SEC. You want to use companies that have been blessed in the US and have projects in their platforms that are okay with American regulators.

Only two ways to do this: Crypto.com (AFFILIATE LINK AGAIN) and Coinbase (ALSO AN AFFILIATE LINK).

We’ve decided to study this in a few parts; today, we present a deeper dive into three of the coins that you could, conceivably, buy right now.

1. Fetch — $FET — Possible Low Market Cap Gem

Fetch sounds really compelling, especially in light of everything that is happening in the world. One of the use cases is the type of thing that we’ll hear about as manufacturing either shifts toward making ventilators, or ramps back up when the auto and aircraft manufacturers start making their products again:

In the video (which you can watch below) the CEO talks about a consortium of steel mills that are already using the platform. More discussion is on the “Use Case” page of the Fetch website.

Fetch CEO Humayun Sheikh

The market stats for Fetch are definitely in line with what the 5-coin guru says: low market cap, really good use case, could take off.

Tease this out as a potential unicorn for a second: if its market cap goes from here to $1B, that is a possible 96x from here. AGAIN, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.

2. Celer Network — $CELR — eSports Platform on a Blockchain

Actually, that subhead to describe Celer probably could be a cocktail napkin pitch. “Hey, let’s power eSports, but do it on a blockchain!”

If eSports turns into a larger industry than it currently is — and, in 2020, with people not leaving their homes, the odds are it very well might do just that — CELR is on the cusp of something huge.

Applying the stupid-simple “Potential Unicorn Math Process” (also known as “PUMP” because you need to be wary that any of these could explode AND then dump just as quickly), you could potentially go 169x with your money.

(Also time for us to repost our DYOR sign: Do Your Own Research.)

3. Origin Protocol — $OGN — “The Blockchain Platform for Building Decentralized Marketplaces”

If the future will be decentralized, a bet on Origin could turn out to be a smart one.

Origin is betting that (1) people will start (or continue) hating on existing peer-to-peer platforms like Uber and Airbnb and (2) the growth of peer-to-peer marketplaces will be decentralized.

This looks like it could be a really wise bet.

Using the PUMP metric, you could go 155x your money if this project goes Unicorn from here.

More Caveats

We’re not telling you to run out and spend hard-earned cash on these projects. You need to Do Your Own Research (there’s that acronym again) and don’t get in over your head.

But, to the extent that you want to take a chance on a coin that could pop, or you have extra cash sitting in a drawer that could be put to use, an investment in any one of these could — again COULD — potentially pay off.

Good luck.

Mar 24 2020

5 Coins to 5 Million? Ha!

We’ve been following one of the industry soothsayers semi-closely. We won’t mention his name here — you can certainly find it out through a couple quick Google searches — but we’re as skeptical as the next guy.

In short, this pundit claims that something is happening — a “phenomenon” — and that could make you rather rich. As long as you follow a couple of pieces of his advice:

Buy his newsletter.
Invest in these coins at the exact time he tells you to.
Lather, rinse, repeat for maximum profits.

Okay…we’re not going to take issue with his attempt to make a living. In fact, with all this Coronavirus craziness happening out there, quite a few people of a bunch of different stripes are all wondering how they, too, can make a living.

But we will take issue with his Joel Osteen-esque peddling of false hope; as if 5 coins were all it would take to get you out of whatever financial hole you might be in and turn your situation around.

YMMV; Or, Past Performance Not Indicative of Future Results

First, let’s talk about the phenomenon he was blabbing about. (We watched his free webinar the other night and bolted right in time for the sales pitch.) Those who follow Bitcoin know that there is a concept called “halving” that takes place in May of this year. (Coindesk explains halving much better than we could over here.) But, our pundit friend cautions us, that alone will not drive the price spikes he sees. NO, that’s just the SUPPLY side of the equation. It’s the DEMAND side that makes for this one-two punch of a phenomenon that *could* — again, if you follow his advice as prescribed in the newsletter — drive the price higher.

And the Demand Is Coming From…

This pundit dude went so far as to ask us to guess his location, then he and his co-host — who we were led to believe were on a private jet; though, oddly, the private jet didn’t seem to encounter any sort of turbulence during this webinar — exited the jet when they arrived at the mystery location. AND THEN, while at the mystery location, they led us to believe that the Swiss banking universe was going to drive all of this price action on Bitcoin.

Where the Argument Goes Off the Rails

We’re to expect that the following happens all at once:

Bitcoin supply is cut in half;
Bitcoin demand, driven by Swiss bankers, ratchets way up;
Other coins benefit;
You can turn $500 in each coin into a $5,000,000 total.

The last two points really make us wonder.

Yes, you could have turned a small guess on something like XRP of Ethereum into a fortune back in the day (2017?) and we even talked about that possibility here when we told you about the jaw-dropping returns of the BRED Portfolio.

But you would have needed to be both lucky and good. And you would have had to HODL until the right time, then sold and not done anything foolish afterwards.

Hold On…Wait A Minute…

He proceeded to punctuate his presentation with testimonials from individuals who turned small stakes into huge fortunes, and then turned their own financial world around. All because they benefited from his advice to buy something like Ethereum when it was 70 cents and selling it when it was $1300.

AND they supposedly paid hundreds of dollars for his newsletter? And he called the market at the exact right time?

Our Point:

Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose;
Do your own research;
A fool and his money are soon parted;
AND be careful listening to webinars with guys who are supposedly on private jets.

Mar 24 2020

Should I Use My Stimulus Check to Buy Bitcoin?

Mar 19 2020

‘Congratulations, You’ve Only Lost 13 percent!’

When the first Financial Crisis hit, we discovered the brilliant Australian satirists Clarke & Dawe. Their take on the European Debt Crisis is worth a watch.

The perspective from Clarke’s character is a propos for today’s post: only losing 13% on a portfolio of crypto assets is, with all that is going on, not too bad.

Choppy Waters — Strap in, #Crypto traders

The Balance Portfolio is Kinda Sorta Hanging in There

We created our Balance Portfolio as an alternative to the BRED Portfolio (more on the 2020 version of that below). We didn’t create it as a panacea to cure market woes from the Coronavirus, though; as we discussed yesterday, we think it may very well get worse before it gets better.

Given all of what is going on, 13 percent isn’t bad, right?

Balance Portfolio as of Today

Down so far…but not as bad as you’d expect

Granted, lots of green numbers appear on the screen today, so had we done this yesterday, it would possibly have looked 5 to 7 percent worse.

(One of my personal faves is VeChain (VET); note that it’s also the worst performer in our portfolio. Still bullish on this one, though.)

But, for a pleasant surprise, check the BRED performance so far this year:

BRED Portfolio as of Today

Better performance; slightly surprising.

DASH is slightly ahead of BSV as the winner here; though, with all of the noise that accompanied BSV and its founder — who claims that he’s Satoshi or something — BSV could drop any second now. Plus, the percentage at stake is tiny when compared to DASH, which started at 25% of the portfolio and is now more than one-third.

What Can We Make of This?

Probably not too much, yet. There’s a chance for more of a pullback, or there’s that possibility that the “flight to safety” will happen, still.

The question that remains: are crypto investors whistling past the graveyard, or — like the guy who did the webinar I watched who thinks he can make you rich; maybe he can, maybe he can’t, we don’t know — are there gems that will still pop (just not immediately)?

If You’re Bullish, Here Are a Couple Picks

We made the bearish case yesterday — just for Bitcoin which, possibly, will drag the rest of the market downward with it — and it’s time to make a bullish case for a couple coins that we’ve picked up recently.

We still like VeChain. In fact, we *think* it was one of the “high market cap/under a penny each” coins that was touted by the same investor guru referenced above;
We also like Harmony — ONE is its ticker — and this one has a low market cap (around $10m at last check).
Don’t forget about PAXG, which is tied to the price of gold; each coin is backed by an ounce of gold. (AFFILIATE LINK: You can get it on Crypto.com and we may be compensated if you make a qualifying purchase.)

Here’s to strapping in for the very choppy waters.

Mar 18 2020

Loving Bitcoin in the Time of Coronavirus

Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote Love in the Time of Cholera in 1985; it’s a book whose title format will be used and overused during the next several months. We shall do the same here, in the interest of being clever, of course, but also because it does lead us to a question that needs to be asked.

(It should also be noted that I have never read this book but I do remember that it figured prominently in the film “Serendipity.”)

Here, the question at hand:

“Should you love Bitcoin with everything that’s going on?”

And that leads us to another question:

“Why love an asset now if it’s probably going to drop by 50% or more in the next couple months anyway?”

Good questions, these. Let’s dive in.

ONE THING BEFORE WE PROCEED: Sites like these rely in no small part on AFFILIATE LINKS — and, given the goofiness that’s out there, if you’re so inclined, folks like us appreciate the assistance.

Here’s an AFFILIATE LINK to Crypto.com <— we can get compensated if you sign up for an account and make a qualifying purchase.
And here’s an AFFILIATE LINK for Coinbase, same deal there.
3HqMK9T2Xzy6CnLeJ5sx1xDgGcqz4Qtmj6 <— that’s our BTC address if you want to send a tip.

Loving Bitcoin…But at a Distance

Here’s a theory: the ride will continue to be wild as heck, based mostly on the fact that Bitcoin is an unproven asset.

Most investment professionals we’re following are looking for analogous events to try to figure out what might happen next. Two examples that come up the most often — remember the cognitive biases, though, that are driving people’s thinking here — are the Financial Crisis of 2008-09 and Sept. 11, 2001.

If you follow that financial markets got worse, then much worse, then better right after that, then you can apply this same logic to Bitcoin (which we’ll use broadly as an example of the crypto markets).

So, let’s look at the 52 weeks that just passed for some price history — this will give us at least a basis for making some sort of prediction.

Bitcoin price chart from past year — The Year That Was

Let’s assume this was an average year for Bitcoin: wild swings and a price that tripled in less than four months, then dropped back to Earth, then dropped even more, and is now at near its 52-week low. And this was with nothing really crazy going on in the world: no financial crises, no major shocking events like Sept. 11, and certainly no global pandemic.

When *I* look at the chart, and being totally honest (and paranoid) here, I look at the high from July and where we are today; then I assume that today is going to be the 52-week high for the next 52 weeks.

That’s Right. I Could See a Huge Drop.

If you do the math on my little theory, here’s what that means: a drop of 60.5% (from $13,073.24 to $5163.92), or all the way to $2039.75.

I’m not alone: one foreign friend who takes advantage of Bitcoin options trading has loaded up the “stink bids” that will profit from huge price drops. (I can’t trade Bitcoin options since I’m an American.)

But Why the Drop? Shouldn’t It Just Be a Bull Market from Here?

I honestly don’t think so…

We’re in completely uncharted territory
The US is considering sending every American adult a check for $1000
And the average American is going to use that on things like food, the mortgage, rent, car payments, diapers…you name it.

BUT if you’re already in the game, here’s a recommendation — NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR FUTURE SUCCESS OR FAILURE — to do the dollar-cost-averaging thing.

Wait, a Bitcoin “Pundit” Saying We’ll See a Price Drop?

Yes. That’s what I think. Uncertainty, coupled with an un-tested asset that isn’t yet “digital gold,” and we’re in for a bumpy ride.