David Van de Walle

Apr 21 2019

#MCP3D — Do You Have Your Citizens Yet?

EDITOR’S NOTE: We updated this post on April 28 to reflect what folks on the Discord channel have told us — you don’t need Citizens to buy land!

We’ve been tracking this site and its role in the Non-Fungible Token (“NFT”) universe for a little while now. (You can learn more in our recent post, where we get started on the #MCP3D platform.) In our *opinion*, this whole site could catch fire, and we base this opinion on a couple factors:

The “slow burn” development of the platform and users
The fact that the mobile game and 3D game are both on the way
The jockeying for position we see going on on the site
AND the inevitable “OMG” factor that *could* come from scores of Chinese users playing this game on their mobile phones.

We even told you that we’ve cashed in some of our airdrops — WOO HOO! FREE CRYPTO! — to build out our own presence on the platform and in the game. (That link over there is an AFFILIATE LINK to a platform called Einstein, and you can read more about it on the post about the Einstein Exchange.)

How (and Why) to Buy Citizens Now

As we told you in our last post, you need Citizens to play the game. In fact, you can get Citizens and hold onto them and you don’t have to buy any real estate just yet. (We’d get a little of both.)

You need a wallet like Metamask — we prefer that one because, honestly, it’s secure and it has a great name — and then you need some ETH. Not a ton to get started, as the going price right now for a 3-pack (the “Local” pack) is 0.033 ETH. That equates to about $5.71 US – so maybe a Big Mac value meal if you’re into that sort of thing.

They give you a discount, too; the discount was as high as 8 percent, if memory serves, and it dropped a bit since we got into the game.

We decided to embed a tweet from middle of the past week, and we’ll tell you why in a hot second.

#MCP3D people – there’s been a little movement on the sale of Citizen packs.

65 of the lowest-level 3-packs (“Local Pack”) have been purchased this week. Just FIVE “Federal Packs” have been purchased since last week.

7 Astronauts remain.

CC @imTokenOfficial @VRUoT2 pic.twitter.com/iiVlah3tIy
— Dave Van de Walle (@Area224) April 16, 2019

Now, the developments (which speak to the “and Why” in parentheses above):

The packs are selling; not like hotcakes yet, but they’re selling

Two things that we notice; neither of them are huge, but they’re both rather interesting.

Note how, in the above tweet, the discount was 4.20 percent. Today (screenshot directly above is from Saturday evening, April 20, 2019), that discount is 4.80 percent. (DAMNIT, ASSOCIATED PRESS, WE SPELL OUT PERCENT HERE.) The game developers ratcheted the discount up to 5 percent yesterday, in an effort to boost sales.
When we started tracking the numbers (on April 8), there were 3294 Local packs available. Now, just 3214 remain. That’s not crazy growth, but it’s steady.

We would expect more to be sold as Ethereum keeps its price moving up. We’d also expect more people to hang out and wait for more ETH, then to buy Federal packs (that’s one thing we plan on doing), which gives you a better chance of getting an astronaut.

(In case you’re wondering, in the ten days we’ve been watching, only 33 Urban packs, 10 Mayor packs, and just 5 Federal packs have been sold.)

Slow Burn…For Now…

Note that something could change at the drop of a hat — new developments in the game, another giveaway of Bounty Island assets, special pets being released — causing more people to head toward #MCP3D.

For now, we’ll just keep accumulating a little of both, Citizens and real estate, and keep an eye on what’s happening.

Who knows, maybe this Corgi will help us get an Astronaut?

Apr 15 2019

The 2019 Tax Day Crypto Portfolio

Happy Tax Day, ‘Merica!

If you’re visiting this site from elsewhere in the world, welcome! Great to have you here. We Americans have a deadline of today to pay our Federal income taxes and boy is that fun this year. You may have heard about a tax cut last year and the ensuing OMG factor that came next: “the rich paid nothing and I don’t get a refund anymore!”

That’s not entirely true. Because of withholdings and how much some people had – or didn’t have – taken out of their paychecks, it *sounds* like lots of people had smaller refunds this tax season.

Some of you, though, may be getting a little money back. Or, in this roaring economy, you may find yourselves with cash to spend, or invest.

We’re here for ya!

What Happened to Our Other Portfolios?

Oh, you mean like BRED and the “Hedge Fund?” Well, as we spend our time getting this site back and running after the “Crypto Winter,” we plan on revisiting those, too.

For now, though, we’ve decided to give you three options: Small, Medium, and Large. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, this is not investment advice, and remember that you may lose a little, a lot, or ALL of your capital with anything.

Here goes.

SMALL PORTFOLIO (Like, $100-$500)…What to Do, What to Do?

TBH, we’d stay away from speculating on high-fliers. We’ve been there, it can get ugly if something goes completely belly up.

In fact, if you want to spend all of your small portfolio on crypto, here’s what we’d recommend:

First: Divide it in Half

Let’s use $500 as the number here. Take half and just put it in a Coinbase account and leave it there. You can get one of 11 currencies at Coinbase (THAT’S AN AFFILIATE LINK OVER THERE AND YOU CAN GET A BONUS AND WE GET A BONUS, TOO, WITH QUALIFYING PURCHASE) and we’d stick with Bitcoin, Ripple, and Ethereum (or just pick one) and leave it there. You’re in the game with $250 and you won’t feel the need to play around. Which brings us to the other half…

Then: Play Around

We’ve made no secret here that we’re now taking quite a deep dive into a crypto gaming community called MegaCryptoPolis. (ANOTHER AFFILIATE LINK THERE.) For this, you need Ethereum and a Metamask account to keep the two safe and in sync.

We’ve had fun so far with this game – we’re playing with house money, so to speak, as we cashed in “Airdrops” from the past couple years. If you look at your tax refund as house money, you might have some fun, too. Plus, there’s a bit of a gambling element, in that you’re taking a chance on which cool “Citizen” you’ll end up with. Here’s our favorite so far, she means business and we’ve named her “Sloan.”

MegaCryptoPolis “Professional” Who Means Business

MEDIUM PORTFOLIO: $1000-$5000

With this portfolio, we’d suggest you figure out how much – if any – speculation you want to do, and how much you just want to park in something (somewhat) safe.

If you’re not the play money type, then you can consider revisiting BRED: “Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash.”

We just went back to the concept of dividing money equally between the four “core” coins of the BRED portfolio. We also considered “forks” by investing proportionally between the two forked coins; i.e. since Bitcoin’s price is roughly 19 times higher than Bitcoin Cash (BCH), we invested 19 times as much in Bitcoin.

Here’s what it looks like as of this morning:

This is also a “set it and forget it” portfolio — with the idea that you’re not going to spend way too much time looking at the price growth in any of these.

You also may not get rich off of this portfolio, either: assume that the ship has sailed on the OMG I’M RICH!!! portfolios of a few years ago, as you’re not getting in on the ground floor on XRP (the coin from Ripple, which is why it’s known as “BRED” in this portfolio) with the hopes it will go to $20,000 per.

But this would be a good, safe, crypto bet if you can afford it.

WHALE PORTFOLIO: $5,000 on up

Okay, look at the below chart of seven currencies’ “sparkline” graphs from the past seven days. Fourth from the top (nearing its high) and seventh from the top (all upside last week) look most compelling. Curious?

These two might be somewhat worthwhile to take a stab at. BCH is Roger Ver‘s Bitcoin fork – “it’s the real Bitcoin” is what he’ll tell you. BNB is Binance Coin and that’s an equally compelling Asian crypto exchange that’s always doing interesting things – such as burning its own coins, which Twitter friend @BambouClub tells you might be right around the corner.

Both of these large coins — the above chart is from the Top 7 by market cap — and both are likely to be around for a while. We’d suggest considering them as part of your WHALE PORTFOLIO (said in all caps because why not) and here’s how that *could* look (DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!):

60 percent BRED
20 percent Large Market Cap Coins, with 10 percent each in BCH and BNB
20 percent on interesting use case coins — projects in which you see potential.

That third category is where you’ll have to, again, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH; you’ll also need to rely on gut and also sort through whether they’re good blockchain projects, good crypto exchanges, good business models, or just good ideas. Or all four.

Since you’re doing 20 percent in this category, you can pick three or four and, if any one of them goes belly up, you won’t be totally rekt.

Ideas for This Part of the WHALE PORTFOLIO

Here are a few projects to check out:

BitTube (TUBE): Someone’s going to try to take on YouTube’s market dominance and do it through the blockchain. BitTube is one such player (though, honestly, PewDiePie is headed over to DLive, which is on Steemit, so maybe his name recognition gives that platform an advantage).

Storj (STORJ): Decentralized, blockchain-enabled storage is a concept that we’re sure will take off. Whether it’s Storj or someone else remains to be seen.

Quantstamp (QSP) bailed us out in the past by analyzing smart contracts. You buy some of their coin to do that and it’s a pretty seamless thing.

And Paragon (PRG) is doing the cannabis thing — fits and starts during their development but worth looking at, as they now do both a “WeWork-for-cannabis” and a “seed-to-sale” tracking platform.

UPSHOT: Your Tax Refund Can Work For You, Maybe, With Luck

We’re just here with a few ideas, that’s all. And Lord knows there are folks anxious about getting back in, and curious about whether we’ll see another bull run ever. So, again, look around, do your research, and, if you’re ready, dive in!

Happy Tax Day!

Apr 13 2019

Quick Take: Meet the Einstein Exchange, Get $10*

We found a new exchange and thought we’d give it a whirl. Then, we saw that we were getting $10 for free! So that’s cool, too.

Wait, hasn’t this been done before? Yes, it has been done before – Coinbase (THAT’S OUR AFFILIATE LINK OVER THERE FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T SIGNED UP YET, WE BOTH GET A BONUS WITH QUALIFYING PURCHASE!) famously gives you ten bucks if you sign up and buy crypto on the site – but the folks at Einstein figure “why not?” and are trying to get you on board that way. (AND THAT’S ANOTHER AFFILIATE LINK UP THERE.)

Works for us here at HQ, so we signed up.

Einstein Was Smart, So Is The Exchange Named After Him, Right?

Key to the exchange, of course, is its mobile app. The general concept reminds us of a few that may or may not have taken hold a year or so ago – before the big CRYPTO WINTER/BEAR MARKET/SKY IS FALLING that we all lived through – where you can sorta seamlessly move back and forth between dollars and crypto.

We went online and claimed our money in about five minutes – now it’s a matter of getting more people on the site. Which is why we do this “Quick Take” blog post.

Let’s explain the asterisk above, though…

Item one that is “*-worthy” is that the $10 they give you is…drumroll…Canadian! That’s because the exchange is Canadian. Item two? You need $25 worth of crypto in your account to withdraw it.

Still, if you’re looking to get started, or if you’re Canadian, or both, take a gander. Here’s our CLEARLY MARKED AFFILIATE LINK and you can sign up and get one of your own.

Apr 07 2019

How to Get Started with MegaCryptoPolis…

…AND will it be the next big thing in virtual worlds and non-fungible tokens?

I’ve been playing around more than a little with a site called MegaCryptoPolis, and, so far, I like what I see. The creators have taken the Sims, ratcheted up the look and feel, built virtual cities, thrown in economic incentives like scarcity and supply and demand, and…well, we’re thinking this one could take off. BTW, that up there is AN AFFILIATE LINK – so if you do sign up and buy stuff, we’ll get free stuff for referring you.

And it hasn’t really even launched yet: presale mode means you can still be one of the early adopters.

It will be interesting to see how this site answers a couple questions:

Can it take hold – like Decentraland once did – and will it bring scores of Chinese game players with it?
Will it explain to the world what people mean when they say “#NFT” in a way that doesn’t make people look at them funny?
Is the timing close to perfect – in that people are getting back into crypto after last year’s…uh…questionable performance of pretty much every coin?

So we’re going to come at this with a simple two-step plan – this will help you get started and dive in if you’re so inclined. Later – watch this space for more – we’re going to be a little more analytical: what parts of the game might take hold? Where should you be focusing your time? Does anyone with an “Astronaut” want to show their face just yet?

Let’s Take a Closer Look…

First up, though, ANOTHER AFFILIATE LINK: if you HAVEN’T gotten your free crypto from Coinbase, what are you waiting for? And, if you have already gotten it, maybe you’ll want to learn about Stellar Lumens and get more free crypto?

Okay, back to #MCP3D. It’s a game that has been around for a year or so, and appeared to be in build mode during last year’s Crypto Winter. Now that the world has warmed up to the concept of real projects and has thumbed its collective noses at scams and s**tcoins, projects like MegaCryptoPolis have a real chance of getting it right – and leveraging things like Chinese users (!!!) and virtual worlds (Fortnite without the fighting) to create real economies.

You buy real estate and, when the game launches, you get your Citizens to manage that real estate. Our sense, a couple weeks in to our experiment, is that both are pretty important. But you can’t even get started in the game without Citizens, so let’s begin there.

Step One: Get Started in MCP3D with a Citizen Pack

MCP3D Packs — Four packs from #MCP3D – you need Citizens to play the game

You’re going to get at least three things in a pack – one is a Citizen, and that’s someone with scores in the big six properties (Strength, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck) on which citizens are graded. If you luck out, as I did in my first pack, you’ll end up with a Professional.

You’ll also get a couple other things in your pack. The basic 3-pack includes a citizen and a couple random items, but if you buy the higher-priced packs, the guarantees make it more worthwhile; my last purchase was a Mayor pack, and here’s what it guaranteed me.

And here’s my pet:

Anyway, the key here is that without citizens, you’re not in the game. Once you have citizens, you can get real estate. [EDITOR’S NOTE (APRIL 29): We’ve been told on the Discord Channel that you DO NOT NEED Citizens to buy real estate.] The other big thing: these are “Generation A Citizens,” so they are rarer. “Generation A Citizens have maximum stamina,” per the website. So there you go – if you’re going to get Citizens to make your time in MegaCryptopolis worthwhile, you’re probably going to want to get them now.

Pro Tip: Use Airdrops That You Forgot About to Get ETH.

I spent about a week, off and on, going to various sites like Poloniex, COSS, Binance, and ForkDelta to find some of the really random coins that were sitting there unused. It paid off: I’m not out of pocket more than a few bucks from my actual wallet.

In other words, I can build a house with house money. Which brings us to Step Two.

Step Two: Buy Real Estate

Time to become a Real Estate Equity Baron!

Let’s look at a house in one of the Districts in the game: this one is District 43 and it’s a high-tax District – so properties here pay more into the tax revenues; those revenues then pay more into owners’ pockets.

The owner of this particular lot – it’s not me, by the way – has a pretty good location, near a lot of green space and what looks like a public reflector pool or some such.

Here are the particulars on this property:

Here’s a smart game player, we think: he acquired this property for less than 0.02 ETH (around a latte in the States) and he’s looking to sell it to make a profit. So there could be a little “pump and dump” here – or he could be looking to move the proceeds into another district of strategic importance.

Where Should You Acquire Property?

Great question: we don’t know yet. District 43 looks smart for the tax-friendly reasons we talked about above. Other districts may have better location, some of them could make sense if they’re cheaper but you can acquire more property. We don’t know.

We do know that property seems to be acquired rather regularly in a District called “Bounty Island.” And if you enter the Bounty Campaign, you could end up with some of that property for free – or you could take it off the hands of a willing seller.

And…WHAT NEXT?

We’d invite you to study the White Paper – there’s much more to come from this game. But the big things are these, from our vantage point.

The game itself hasn’t really launched. So acquiring assets NOW gives you a potential strategic advantage for when it does.
The 3D game, on mobile phones, being used by millions of Chinese players, could make it REALLY interesting.

Watch This Space for More

We’ve had some fun interacting with others who are early adopters in this game – and it is, for now, just that: a game.

But the potential is rather large. So MegaCryptoPolis might just take off.

May 30 2018

BRED Portfolio 2018 – Is It A Good Idea?

Behold, today’s update on the BRED Portfolio – a combination of Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash and all their forks. When we first talked about it, the idea was an index fund of sorts – set it and forget it – with the goal of spreading out your risk and exposing your portfolio to four of the biggest coins.

Spreadsheet time: here’s what it all looked like moments ago. Note that we took $10,000 and divided it among each coin/token equally; in the case of the forked coins, weighting it based on market cap of each on 1/1/18. (That’s how you arrive at a negligible amount of Bitcoin Gold.)

Not very flattering, huh. Especially when you compare it to all the hubbub here around this ground-breaking (yet simple) portfolio idea and how it performed in 2017. You can read about that over here.

But, Should We Stick With It?

I think part of the theory here is that the market as a whole will move up and down, and these coins will track with the market per se. So it’s highly unlikely that 2018 would bring jaw-dropping returns like 2017 did, unless there’s some huge shift in sentiment. And it’s also unlikely that any of these coins will “go out of business” in 2018; though a huge pullback in any one of them COULD happen (if there’s a “black swan” type of event, maybe).

What probably makes sense – and, again, DYOR stands for “Do Your Own Research, so we’re not responsible here for successes or failures in your investments; please consult your advisors and don’t forget to pay your taxes! – might be a couple of portfolio approaches, spreading the risk out a little more but also taking advantage of some fire-sale coins that still have potential. (And having some flexibility to do ICOs, too.)

Maybe An Alt Portfolio, Too?

We talked about these earlier in the year – and all but TRX are down, with some down considerably.

There are two ways of looking at this: one is that they’re mostly duds. The other? Gems that pulled back with the rest of the market and are (at least right now) deeply discounted.

But Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin, Either

What makes for a good “basket” approach? 10 coins? 20? 40? That’s up to you – 40 probably sounds a bit much; but there’s also a need to be able to put a little of your portfolio into coins that are new, unproven, “fliers.”

In any event, given where we are now vs. where we were last year, there’s probably some time to look around and see what’s actually out there and prepare your portfolio for any sort of froth by diversifying.

Good luck!