Bitcoin

Jul 02 2017

Six Months In: The BRED Portfolio Continues Its Tear

You could actively manage cryptocurrency trades. You could chase ICOs. Or, you could just take a chunk of money, invest it equally in four of the biggest – yet also four diverse – coins, and see what happens.

In the case of the #BRED Portfolio, which we started tracking earlier this year, you would have done pretty well, thanks.

How It Works

Step one of our BRED Portfolio was to take four coins and invest $2,500 into each. The coins were selected, we’ll admit, with the value of hindsight and because they fit an acronym; but we also chose these because of their perceived diversity. You were getting a diversified portfolio because…

B is for Bitcoin – and let’s face it, the word “Flippening” hadn’t even entered the equation until last month;
R is for Ripple – sorry if the XRP ticker symbol would have made this “BXED,” but Ripple, the company behind the coin, is taking on SWIFT and has a shot at actually winning;
E is for Ethereum – “smart contracts” as an alternative network/platform onto which ICOs seem to be launched everywhere;
D is for Dash – we credit folks like Amanda B. Johnson for actually showcasing the consumer value AND the community value of Dash.

We “backtested” this portfolio in that we just went back to January 1 at midnight GMT and checked the USDT value of each coin. The result was a portfolio that started like this:

We decided early on that we weren’t going to rebalance the portfolio. We weren’t going to take profits, we weren’t going to cut losses.

Since it was a hypothetical portfolio, we can do that – we can also ignore things like psychology, ebbs and flows, actually need for income that people might have, etc.

We mentioned above the value of hindsight – note that we came up with this idea in early April; had we chosen a different date, Ripple may not have been on the collective radar just yet, and Dash wasn’t yet a top five coin (which it was when we launched the portfolio).

Nevertheless, our experiment was underway. Now that we’re six months in, let’s check the results.

Oh. My. Goodness.

So, you’re telling me, a “set it and forget it” portfolio, of just four coins, equally weighted and left alone, would have grown to 22 TIMES ITS ORIGINAL SIZE???

Yes. Yes it would have.

What if I waited and started April 1?

That portfolio would have looked a little different, obviously, but, if you started with equally weighted amounts of each coin on April 1 and left it alone, you’d be looking at the following:

In other words, had you waited until April 1, then invested and left your coins alone for three months, you would have gone 5x. FIVE TIMES YOUR MONEY.

What we can learn…

Not sure – all these coins have grown, some are more on fire than others, and the whole space remains all sorts of volatile.

What we’ll do in the days to come is this:

Keep watching these coins, sharing updates as we can over on Twitter (where you should totally follow us)
Share the results of the other hypothetical portfolio we’re tracking – our own “Hedge Fund” – and see how it is doing
And, of course, make changes to our own holdings as we see fit.

We’ll also encourage you, dear reader, to get in the game if you aren’t already: it’s easy and, if you use our Coinbase affiliate link, you can potentially get a bonus of $10 with a qualifying purchase.

Final Note!

Of course, your experience may vary. This is a hypothetical portfolio – making 24x your money is rather unprecedented.

In other words, invest in cryptocurrency at your own risk. And don’t invest more than you can afford to lose. You could end up with 24x returns, or your entire portfolio could get wiped out. Neither is out of the realm of possibility.

Jun 28 2017

It’s Not Too Late To Invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum, or…

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the rest of the cryptocurrencies suffer from a real-world usage problem. Go up to the random person on the street and ask them if they have any Bitcoin. What do you think the percentage of “Yes” responses would be? 50%? 25? 10? 5?

If you read these pages and you follow the crypto space, you’d probably be inclined to think about the people in your bubble, and maybe you’d say the answer would be 50% or higher.

But if you really think about how far crypto has yet to go, then you think about the average person on the average street – I bet that number is way lower than 5%.

In fact, there are brand names out there that are much bigger, and have much more notoriety, than Big B and its Brethren.

Tesla Is Bigger Than Bitcoin

The market cap of Tesla – you’ve heard of them, right? – is around $58 Billion right now. Bitcoin’s market cap – measured by the number of coins in circulation times the price – is around $42 Billion.

Tesla, though, has the same thing going for it as Bitcoin: lots of name recognition but, in reality, not a lot of market penetration.

Or an untapped market.

Tesla delivered 76,230 vehicles in 2016.

Does that seem like a lot? In December of 2016, Toyota sold 240,000+ vehicles. In the US alone. Annual figures were 2.4 million vehicles.

Paradigms Don’t Shift Overnight

For one of the sites we manage, we wrote a post a couple years back that claimed that Tesla is the next Apple. Think about it – the slick marketing, the sexiness of it all; the forward-thinking, rockstar CEO.

But for all the headway that Tesla has made – when we wrote that post, the stock was at $236 a share, it’s now at $371 – it’s quite possible that they have yet to scratch the surface.

Powerwall. Shingles that capture the energy of the sun. And no doubt more to come.

And That Brings Us Back to Bitcoin

Total value of foreign currencies traded on the Forex exchanges, in one day: roughly $5 Trillion.

The folks at Blockchain say that roughly $700 million in Bitcoin was transacted yesterday. If you add in all of the cryptocurrencies traded on all the exchanges – quick math tells us that was something around an additional $5 billion – you’re still at roughly one tenth of one percent of Forex.

Agreed that we’re not talking about all of the other cryptos, too, in our transaction calculations above – but, still, you can say that we have a ways to go. QUITE a ways to go.

So, What Are You Waiting For?

We’ve shared the Coinbase link a dozen times here, and we’ll keep sharing it.

Doesn’t matter too much if you missed out on the little pullback – we think this whole space is a paradigm shift, and you’re best off getting into the game as soon as you can.

Use the Coinbase link and get a bonus – $10 bucks worth of Bitcoin with a qualifying purchase ($100) of any of the three currencies (BTC, Ethereum, or Litecoin) you can buy on the site. (DISCLOSURE – THAT’S AN AFFILIATE LINK. But you get a bonus too, so that’s cool)

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. The story will be told over the months and years to come. You don’t want to be on the sidelines.

Jun 28 2017

How Are Things? Did You Panic? Did You Buy?

Hi there, crypto trader. How are you. Doing okay? Keeping busy in this new new new market we’re in?

Oh, you panicked? Well, I understand. After all, panic is a natural reflex, especially when the sky is falling like it did for a few days.

I mean, look at this Bitcoin chart!

That’s kinda scary, right?

Buy The Failed Dip

Before we explain the concept, let’s look at an eerily similar chart from Ethereum.

The toughest part about Buying the Failed Dip is figuring out exactly when the dip has failed.

In fact, returning to the ETH chart above, it looks like there were four failed dips – four times where there’s a Fibonacci level that the price dropped below – and four comebacks.

The fourth appears to be happening this morning – welcome to the rapidly changing nature of cryptocurrency markets.

So…what’s the advice here?

Buy The Fundamentals, Dude

Yup. You can day trade or week trade or whatever kind of trade you want to do – that can be profitable, but you have to know what you’re doing. And, unless you are really good at following charts and seeing action, you might get burned.

Or you can Buy The Fundamentals, Dude. That’s right:

Bitcoin is the world’s reserve cryptocurrency, or the gateway to other altcoins.
Ethereum is the smart contract and ICO gateway.
And so on…Ripple cointinues (see what I did there?) making inroads in the world’s banks; Dash has an awesome community; Siacoin (LONG “i”) is likely to tackle Amazon Web Services SOON.

It’s Going to Continue Being Crazy…

Stick to fundamentals.

Jun 16 2017

Bitcoin – Get Started, Then Store It, Or Lend It Out

With today’s post – er, “lesson,” if you are okay with summer school being in session – we’ve decided to look at three phases you could potentially be in with your Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency) journey, especially if you’re interested in using your Bitcoin but not necessarily getting into the mode of a day trader or “coin flipper.”

Maybe you don’t have any and want to get some (Phase 1: Get Started), or you do have some and you want to safely store it (Phase 2: Store It), or you have some that, instead of storing you’d rather lend out (Phase 3: Lend It Out). We’ve got you covered here and we’ll stay away from all the trading lingo like “FUD” and “FOMO” and stop losses and the like.

This post will contain AFFILIATE LINKS, so if you sign up, we may potentially get compensation of some sort – a commission, which, in all of these cases, is paid in some sort of digital currency.

And, of course, go ahead and skip around: if you’ve already started and want to just store Bitcoin, fine: scroll down to Phase 2. Or Phase 3 if you prefer. We don’t mind.

Phase 1: Get Started

What we love about this phase – actually, we love every phase of this, plus everything about digital and cryptocurrencies – is the fact that you can get started inexpensively, and, once you get started, you don’t have to do anything but sit tight.

And, as we mentioned, our focus is on those who aren’t trading on a site like Poloniex, Bittrex, or Cryptopia. We could have called that Phase 1a: Invest – but there are a bunch of other resources on the site for you if that’s your poison.

The best, easiest, and most effective way to get “in the mix” is with Coinbase. (THAT’S AN AFFILIATE LINK.)

You can follow pretty easy steps:

Link a bank account or a credit card. (Bank accounts = less of a transaction fee; credit card = coins get there quickly.)
Decide how much you want from one of three coins: Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin.
Wait for your coins to appear and then
Sit back and decide on your next steps.

If you use our Coinbase AFFILIATE LINK, you’ll get a bonus of $10 worth of Bitcoin with a qualifying purchase of $100 worth of any coins. (And, though you only get that bonus once, you don’t have to buy it all at once. We got started with a tiny sum a while back, then added to it, then got over the $100 hump later. Still got a bonus.)

We’ll admit that part of the joy for us was buying Ethereum and…letting it sit. It’s up more than 4,000% this year. Your experience may vary.

Phase 2: Store It

We know of no better solution for securely storing your Bitcoin – or other cryptocurrencies – than this device, called a Trezor.

The main thing here is that your PRIVATE KEYS are the most important things in cryptocurrency. Like insanely vital.

While we do believe strongly in the security protocols at Coinbase, and the ones at the trading platforms like Poloniex, you must avoid a single point of failure with your currencies, coins, and tokens. And, once you get to the point where you have more than a little money in any one place, you’re going to start to ask yourself where to put this stuff.

Consider this analogy: you’ve got cash maybe in your wallet. You might have a home safe or a safety deposit box that has valuables that aren’t cash. And you have your money in retirement accounts and investment accounts spread out, likely. There’s no single point of failure.

Avoid the single point of failure at all costs. Use a Trezor. (AFFILIATE LINK over there. And up there.)

Phase 3: Lend It

We’ll admit that this concept scared us quite a bit when we started: do you really want to tie up some of your hard-earned Bitcoin in a platform that locks it up for as much as a year?

But then we thought logically – treat this part of your stash like a certificate of deposit, or have some that you don’t plan on using working for you.

That’s where Bitconnect comes in (AIRHORN: AFFILIATE LINK).

Start with as little as $100 worth of Bitcoin and lend it out.

What the Bitconnect bot thingamajig does for you is use volatility to your advantage – and theirs – and give you a cut of the action. It’s pretty cool, potentially lucrative, and a quick and easy way to park some of your coins for slow and steady gains.

Get Started, Store It, Lend It…

Our three phases above are meant to help you wherever you might be in your journey. Let us know if you have questions…

AND, might we suggest you follow us on Twitter and “like” us on Facebook?

See you next time.

Jun 13 2017

3 Ways to Make it a Summer of Crypto

It’s not even Summer yet. We’re a week or so away – I never remember the exact date and it seems to change each year anyway, so let’s just say “a week or so” – and, if the activity in a few sub-genres of Bitcoin, the Blockchain, and Cryptocurrencies are any indication…

It’s going to be a Summer of Crypto.

Since we need to do a list to make this go viral, but we also want to get outside and enjoy the weather, let us give you three things you need to know…

3 Ways to Make it a Summer of Crypto

1. Follow the (ICO) (Token Launch) Money

Alan Greenspan would have called this market “frothy.” ICOs – “Initial Coin Offerings,” a/k/a “token launches” – have all of the excitement of the dot-com era IPO days, with none of the cocktail-napkin business plans.

Instead, business plans are replaced by teams of coders, programmers, and marketers taking advantage of the fact that ICOs don’t really need investment banks to get companies access to capital.

Yesterday’s ICO for Bancor set records: the equivalent of $150-plus million collected in record time (three hours) for a business that is in the process of launching, but isn’t fully there yet. No matter, VCs, iBanks, heck…anyone with a few (hundred) Ethereum tokens was all-in.

It’s actually a business that has a good chunk going for it; and it’s no surprise that their ICO was successful and that they seemed to be poised for success. Note that the

How to potentially profit?

Watch for new ICOs or their equivalent that – like Bancor – have an interesting story to tell, and a management team behind it with business success.

We especially like CivicKey – Vinny Lingham is one of the Influencers we have had our eye on, and his token launch aims to solve a real problem – managing and verifying online identities.

2. Hedge Your Bets on the Big Boys

Again, we’re not providing trading advice or investment advice; what we do suggest is that you keep tabs on the big players.

Ethereum hit $400 yesterday, then pulled back, now is back in the $350-375 level. It could be volatile – but it also could have more eyes on it and more money thrown its way since the Ethereum protocol/Ether token is used as the backbone for so many token launches.

And then there’s Bitcoin, which has still more than doubled YTD.

This reminds us – if you haven’t yet gone to Coinbase, go do that, use our AFFILIATE LINK, and get some crypto. Bitcoin. Ethereum. Litecoin. Make it happen. (You get a bonus with a qualifying purchase, and so do we, so it’s a win-win.)

How to potentially profit?

Gosh, people, you could just use the BRED Portfolio we’ve been tracking. It’s on fire – and the four coins don’t necessarily move in lockstep, serving as a bit of a hedge against market volatility.

Sortof. Be prepared for “BUBBLE” talk all summer, too. And don’t invest more than you are prepared to lose.

3. Be on the Lookout for Altcoins

“Altcoins” are those non-Bitcoin coins. (We used “coin” three times in that sentence.) Some have tiny market caps – heard of Ripto Bux? It’s been on our radar and currently trades in the 200-400 Satoshi range; market cap of $2 million or so – and others are meandering near the top 20, poised for a panther-like jump into the stratosphere.

OR poised to stay at a low level and not make much noise.

OR…

How to potentially profit?

We’ve shared plenty of ideas here. Plenty. We invite you to do your research and look at these coins and tokens, see if they are used in the wild, and see if there’s a reason for being. Are they solving a problem? Is there a good business case?

We can’t stress enough: do your research. If you want to take a flyer on the potential of a small altcoin with a tiny market cap, fine. Don’t be surprised if your risk capital goes down the toilet.

And even if you’re taking a chance on something in the $500-million market cap range, THAT COULD FIZZLE, TOO.

There they are: 3 Ways.

Get ready. For the #summerofcrypto.