5-coin challenge

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.

Jun 22 2017

The $1000, 5-Coin Challenge

We’re back with what we think will be a fun post. We’re issuing a challenge – and we’ll track our own hypothetical results on this site. Think you can beat us? Share your ideas and comments below.

The $1000, 5-Coin Challenge

We’ve been doing a TON of research here – yes, we’re launching a couple products, so stay tuned for those – and we’re learning a whole bunch about some…let’s say…”emerging” coins. Below-the-radar picks that could take off – or could completely fizzle.

And, with all the attention given to ICOs and token launches, we bet that, once the dust settles, people will go back to “established” coins (post-ICO, or ones that launched a few years ago, or ones that have just been languishing a little) to try to give their portfolio a “pop.”

To participate in the challenge – which you can do with play money or real money, totally up to you – you must select one coin from each of the following categories:

CATEGORY A: 5-digit market cap (as measured by CoinMarketCap.com, we’ll use June 22 figures, but you can use them the day you start)
CATEGORY B: 6-digit market cap
CATEGORY C: 7-digit market cap
CATEGORY D: 8-digit market cap
CATEGORY E: 9-digit market cap – BUT must be UNDER $200,000,000.

You’ll “invest” or actually invest $200 in each.

See what we’re doing here? Trying to get out of our own comfort zone – and also trying to go after speculative and/or distressed assets.

Ready for our picks?

Category A: ERY – Eryllium

We told you we’ve learned a lot over the past few weeks – and Eryllium was a new one for us. TINY market cap – $75,000-ish – and it’s only trading at 700 or so Satoshis. They claim faster transactions, global capabilities, security, and lower fees.

The coin hasn’t cratered this year – it dropped from 1500 or so Satoshis at the beginning of the year, but it’s not in the double-digit Satoshi “danger zone” so that’s a good thing – and they have eight different wallets available. Trades on Cryptopia, among others.

Category B: TOR – Torcoin

Yes, that sounds like Tor the private browser platform thing…but it’s not technically affiliated with Tor the private browser platform thing. However, all the features of Torcoin sound like all the features of Tor the browser.

Market cap of somewhere around $115,000. It’s a bargain in the grand scheme – but, as with everything on this list, if you’re investing with real money, don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

In other words, for us this is probably the most speculative of the five coins we’ll use in this challenge. Even more so than Eryllium. But there’s a chance that a renewed interest in privacy could cause this one to pop.

Trades on Cryptopia, among others.

Category C: CRB – Creditbit (or Credit 2.0)

Rebuilt on Ethereum at the beginning of the year, Creditbit has, in our view, real potential. 30,000 Satoshis is the recent price, trading at 1/5 of its level a couple months ago.

It’s a DAO – Decentralized Autonomous Organization – and there’s a bunch of interest in that concept, too – not just from the ETC/ETH split, but also from the success of Dash.

You can trade it on Bittrex and Livecoin – we have yet to use Livecoin, though, so can’t vouch for it yet.

Category D: GOLOS – Golos

I knew NOTHING about this – NOTHING – until I went to the Golos website.

We translated it from Russian – Thanks, Google! – but, we gotta tell ya…

Golos is the Russian Steemit.

Most of its volume is on Bittrex and it’s trading at about 4000 Satoshis. Russians appear to be adopting blockchain platforms rather quickly when compared to the rest of the world, so this one is worth a shot.

Category E: NXT – Nxt

We’ve owned Nxt before, and now we’ll get into it again. We think it looks enough like XRP that we’re jumping in at this level – even though it’s higher than where it was when we first bought it. Today, around 6700 Satoshis; but we owned it at 3000 (then sold because it wasn’t going anywhere).

Trades on all the major exchanges, including Poloniex.

And Here’s The Recap…

We welcome your feedback, and we’ll track this – warts and all – in the weeks and months to come.

Let us know in the comments what you think.