David Van de Walle

Mar 31 2017

Bitbond: It’s like Prosper, or LendingClub, but with Bitcoin

As we continue looking around the universe for Bitcoin and altcoin uses in the real world, we stumbled upon a site called Bitbond.

(So if you think “Hey, I’ve got a great idea…” they’ve already checked that particular box.)

Peer-to-peer lending has been around for a little while, and two titans of this space are names you’ve likely heard of: Prosper and LendingClub.

Bitbond uses the same principle to let you use your Bitcoin as…principal. (That’s if you have Bitcoin to lend.) If you want to borrow, then there’s that, too – which the site says is ideally suited for folks like eBay power sellers.

If it sounds legit, well, it IS legit. Bitbond has been around since 2013 – see the complete write-up on Crunchbase – and they recently secured Series A funding north of 1000 BTC. (See what we did there?)

Is this better than the Shark Lady’s loan site?

This question is for the small business owners out there – and you know the site I’m talking about. The one that that lady from that show recommends. The only one she would use if she were looking for money.

Well, it quite possibly might be a process improvement. The Bitbond site walks you through what to expect once you’ve been funded. You have to work with an exchange, so you’re going to want to be sure it’s one that people have used for deposits and withdrawals and done so without fail.

And you’re subject to the credit check of Bitbond; given the fact this is a global and “bank-free” site, it’s still a question mark as to how that works.

Rates start at 7.7% and you can have your money in as little as five days.

Bitcoin and altcoin traders…

This also looks like a decent spot to put your coins to work, and – this could be big if you don’t have the stomach for wild mood swings – avoid the dips of your Bitcoin. (I mean, really, we’re talking about something that’s still rather volatile, right?)

The site tells us you can earn “13% interest.” That might sound too good to be true – or it might also sound paltry when compared to the day-trading gains you COULD make from trading the 100% gain du jour altcoin.

That’s up to you.

Other companies will follow…

Let’s think macro for a second. You’ve got the desire to move away from the traditional banking system, and you’ve got banks hustling to employ their own blockchain and cryptocurrency strategies. Plus you’ve got people thinking “OMG, the GOVERNMENT!!!!” or people worried about taxes or people worried about the trillions of dollars in derivatives that could implode any second now.

It makes sense, then, that borrrowing and lending will move this direction – outside the traditional brick-and-mortar, and traditional Central Bank mentality.

And if you look at this site – which is cool as heck – you’ll see that Bitcoin is just a small sliver of the overall pie.

Bottom line: more of this, please. Innovation in all stripes, thanks to blockchain technology.

Mar 26 2017

Let’s Talk About Dash

Dash If you follow the cryptocurrency space, you might have noticed some wild growth from an altcoin called Dash. On the surface, it might look like the growth stems mostly from hype – why else would a coin’s price go (in USD) from $22 to $115 in less than a month?

But beneath the surface, and beneath the FOMO and FUD, lies a rather sophisticated plan: Dash wants to actually become the everyday “Digital Cash” in your wallet.

“Dash is Digital Cash”

Well, if the website itself leads with that message, then it’s likely that’s what they’re going with: “Digital Cash.” And if you look at some of the places you can spend it and even the debit cards you can get that are tied to your Dash wallet, they’re onto something.

I Heart Dash So, generally speaking, it’s just like all the other coins – same concept as Bitcoin, up there near the top of the largest market cap currencies with Ethereum and Monero – leading us to wonder…what really makes it different?

“Dash is what I thought Bitcoin could be”

That quote comes from Amanda B. Johnson, who has fashioned herself as the leading expert on Dash. You can watch an entire interview with her here on something called the “Anarchast:”

If you listen to the interview, even just for a few minutes, you’ll be left with a couple very positive impressions:

Dash is the most instantaneous of the cryptocurrencies
Dash has a private setting that can let you remain anonymous
Amanda is a heck of a brand ambassador for the currency.

Where is this all going? Your wallet, your local store, and the new economy…if Dash itself has anything to do with it.

Dash Evolution

Evolution is their approach to taking digital cash mainstream, ending up on your phone, being used to pay for your latte or your parking or whatever. Don’t believe it? Here’s a screengrab:

Dash Website — Think they’re on to something?

“Connect directly with merchants” sounds like they want to cut out the banks and payment processors. (That’s intriguing.) Or there’s an Uber-like, Amazon-esque “you will be able to rate purchases so the community can decide which vendors are providing quality products and services.”

So not only will you be able to pay digitally with Dash, you can also – like Uber, or Amazon – give the merchant 5 stars. Or 1 star.

The future is now in your hands, consumer.

But…what about those merchants?

Evolution might be really bad news for…

Payment processors. Banks. But not merchants.

If you think about the way current payment processing works, you might get a migraine. There are layers and there’s a back-and-forth and everyone tries to get their cut – albeit small – before the money actually hits the merchant’s bank account. It’s that necessary evil that eats away at margins of the pizza place or coffee shop. It’s a whole bunch of “not fun.”

But take a look at this screener from the Dash website:

“Forget about complex infrastructure or relying on third parties to handle…payments” and “build direct relationships with your customers using the blockchain.”

Which could also have been written: “avoid those companies trying to sell you payment processing because you won’t need them.”

What Does It All Mean?

Heart Dash Saying it might mean good things for Dash, its users, and investors might be the understatement of the decade. You have a strong community, coupled with the infrastructure build to support use in the mainstream economy. And you have people like Amanda (really, we’re just scratching the surface, as there’s a whole host of people talking up Dash out there) stumping on the currency’s behalf.

Might be time to give it a serious look.

Mar 22 2017

FOMO, FUD, Pump and Dump, and Other Trading Caveats

Look at that list…so many coins! So many wild mood swings! So much volatility!

Seriously – if you’re new to trading altcoins and crypto and you want to move beyond the mainstream coins with the high market caps and the household names, you might see some of these and think: PROFIT! I can get in and out, make a quick buck, double my money, and keep doing that til I retire as a Bitcoin Millionaire!

Wait. Hold on. Just a second. You’re likely to get taken for a ride – and you might not like the ending of this roller coaster. Here’s what we mean.

ADVERTISEMENT: If you haven’t gotten started with Coinbase yet, here’s a link. Make a qualifying Bitcoin deposit, you’ll get a bonus, and we’ll get a bonus.

FOMO

Of course, “Fear Of Missing Out” is a widely used term these days. If you don’t go out to the bar, you might miss big fun. If you don’t watch the show, you might miss a cultural experience. And, if you don’t invest in the next big altcoin, you’re going to miss out on big profits.

Careful of that last one.

If we’re using the example from this screengrab, Einsteinium, we see a 64% bump in the price – which, crazy enough, is sorta kinda the norm for some of these altcoins. You don’t want to miss out on THAT ACTION, do ya?

But the FOMO danger here is that old saw about trying to time the market. Take a look at this chart, from the past couple days of EMC2.

Oh. Remember to time the market at your own peril.

FUD?

Yes, Elmer. FUD. “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.”

In the top screengrab, look immediately above and immediately below the Einsteinium price: STEEM is down almost 12%, Shadow is down more than 7%. You could guess that what drove EMC2 up might be the same thing that drove STEEM and Shadow down. Fear (maybe of missing out, maybe that it’s not the greatest coin on the planet), Uncertainty – because, really, what do we know about ANY of these coins and their long-term prospects? – and Doubt because there’s likely somebody on Reddit who has you convinced that Shadow is toast.

Pump and Dump

This is a classic tactic employed by small-cap stocks; depending upon how it’s done, it’s possibly unethical, possibly illegal in the stock market. Simply put, first a group hypes a stock, creating perceived value, and, they hope, driving up the price. That’s the “Pump.” Once the group gets the stock where they want it to go, they cash out, take their profits, and leave those who bought in high holding the bag.

But this is the wild west, so anything goes in these markets, right?

Here’s where, IMHO, Poloniex does a great job with their “Trollbox,” or the chatroom that’s attached to their trading platform. Start saying things like “wow, XYZ coin is going to the moon!” or “XYZ will hit 10,000 tomorrow, better get yours now!” and you get banned for an hour or a day, depending upon how egregious your sins are.

They’re trying to keep folks from pumping and dumping – especially with thinly traded coins whose prices might be the most volatile.

Trading caveats like these might make you ask: what should I do?

Research. Investigate. Ask Questions.

We don’t give investment advice here, and past performance of any coin is not indicative of future results. But, really, are you going to base your investment on what some rando says on the chatbox?

We’d encourage you to look around, visit other sites, check out the underlying fundamentals of any of these coins. Smith and Crown is a great place to start – look at the market cap, the age of the coin, how many will be released. Visit the individual sites of these coins, too. And don’t forget chatrooms, Reddit, Slack, and the like; you’re often a quick Google search away from the answers to the questions you didn’t even know you had.

Mar 20 2017

Margin Trading Comes to Coinbase through GDAX

Fortune is reporting that margin trading has arrived at Coinbase. You can see the full article here, but suffice it to say the key differentiator for Coinbase’s GDAX trading platform is the one thing that the firm hopes gets it adopted by the big traders: regulatory compliance.

Bitcoin is the future, and it doesn’t actually look like this

GDAX accomplishes this in the form of state licensure, which is normally the first thing that “whales” want to see before plunking down all sorts of money. Or even any sort of money.

Note that margin trading already exists on two of the largest US-based platforms: Kraken and Poloniex. (Kraken appears to have added trading in Monero recently; you can read more about Monero, or XMR, elsewhere on this site.) Other sites have margin accounts available – but sites, as you’d imagine, are scattered around the globe.

And that’s the point of crypto and, perhaps, where the big ol’ dose of irony comes in: in order to become legitimate in the eyes of the mainstream, you have to do some legitimate things – like state licensure. But you can’t maintain that decentralized awesomeness that you’ve come to expect from Bitcoin and altcoins if you’re too tightly regulated. Or if the big banks start getting involved – since their involvement always finds regulatory involvement trailing closely behind.

In any event, feel free to check out the info on the Fortune article and on Coinbase’s GDAX.

And if you want to get started with Coinbase, here’s our handy-dandy affiliate link. (DISCLOSURE: if you make a qualifying Bitcoin purchase, we’ll get some Bitcoin as a result.)

Mar 19 2017

Coin of the Week: Monero (XMR)

We’re starting a new feature on the site, called “Coin of the Week.” Each week, we’ll take an in-depth look at a coin that you may not know about. This week, we’re studying Monero.

Monero

Monero is just about three years old – so it’s not brand-new, but it’s not ancient, either. Right off the bat, Monero wants you to know what it stands for, and you can see that plain as day on the front of the website: “Secure, Private, Untraceable.”

Beyond those three words, the other big thing about Monero is that it’s not based on Bitcoin’s code.

Security, Privacy, and…

Monero says its privacy protocol is based on a “cryptographically sound system that allows you to send and receive funds without your transaction being publicly visible on the blockchain.”

Their peer-to-peer consensus network keeps things secure, and their use of “ring signatures” keeps things, according to their own webpage, “untraceable.”

More Basics

As of this writing, Monero has a market cap of around $341m, and its supply is just north of 14 million units. The plan is for the emission curve to issue a total of 18.4 million coins in its first six years, then leveling off to an annual inflation rate of less than one percent per year, with no cap on number of coins.

Its current market cap ranks it as 4th largest in the world, with exponential growth during 2016 – thanks in part to its adoption by darknet markets during the past year.

Trading and Investing

Trading under the symbol XMR, the chatter around Monero over the past couple weeks centers around “FOMO” – whether or not the big, recent highs are driving investors into the platform just because Monero might be the next big thing.

XMR is traded as a pair with the US Dollar (USDT) on Poloniex.

*All stats current as of March 19, 2017.