Metacoin

Covering Bitcoin, the Blockchain, Altcoins, and Fintech

Bitcoin

50 Weeks Later: The Jaw-Dropping Returns of the BRED Portfolio

We run the risk of saying “I’ll just leave this here” and, well, just leaving this here. But it deserves some context, so we won’t do that.

The Metacoin “BRED Portfolio” is on Fire

Our original post on BRED was a couple months into the year, but we decided to back-test and figure out what would have happened under the following scenario:

  1. Someone has an extra $10,000 sitting around;
  2. They divide that equally between four of the big coins: Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash;
  3. They leave it alone.

The result is something like this:

Can Anyone Explain?

We’ll hazard a couple guesses as to what is really going on here:

  1. FOMO – “Fear of Missing Out” – is bringing new money off of the sidelines and into Bitcoin, especially; with a huge chunk of the Bitcoin growth during the past three months. (Bitcoin’s price was at 3400 three months ago.)
  2. Coinbase – which has more users than Charles Schwab. (Yes, that’s a REFERRAL LINK over there, and we’ll both get an extra $10 in BTC with a qualifying purchase if you use it.)
  3. Tulip Mania – since everyone’s comparing this Bitcoin and crypto bull market to the Dutch Tulip Bubble, people are acting as rationally now as they did back then.

So Then…What’s Next?

We’ll of course do a year-end wrap-up on the BRED Portfolio, and will run the numbers throughout 2018 on the original BRED, a re-calibrated BRED, and probably a couple other portfolios, too.

In the meantime, if you were wise enough to invest in these back at the beginning of the year AND hold them to now, congratulations to you.

And if not, well, you’re in the vast majority of investors.

 

Is Bitcoin $20,000 Coming This Year?

#BTC20K

The parabolic, chart-breaking, insane rise of Bitcoin has rendered one of our favorite words – “staggering” – obsolete. Staggering is in the rear view mirror – just yesterday, we screenshotted (that’s a verb) a Coinbase chart, then that chart, too, became obsolete.

Tweet One:

Tweet Two:

Why $20,000 Could Happen Next Week

The Great Bitcoin Futures Race of 2017 is the big reason you’ll see more parabolicism – that’s a word – sooner as opposed to later. It’s because institutional money is waiting patiently (more like salivating) for the opportunity to use lots of money to start trading futures.

December 10: That’s the date the Cboe will start trading Bitcoin futures. Cboe chose this date to prove they can hustle and muscle past the CME Group, another Chicago-based market, which announced its Bitcoin futures would start trading on December 18.

One theory – and Lord knows there are dozens of theories as to what might happen – is that Bitcoin will keep rising in anticipation of the futures launches, then rise some more as institutional money flows into things like BTC 50K options or whatnot. Then, just as rapidly, the same theory suggests a severe pullback; this will mostly be from big money managers that are trying to make money on both sides of a trade (something futures and options people do regularly).

The odds of this roller coaster just beginning are pretty high.

What To Do, What To Do…

All right, the first thing I’d suggest – and know that this isn’t investment or trading advice, do your own research, don’t invest more than you can afford to lose, and seek professional guidance on things like taxes and accounting – is to take a deep breath.

via GIPHY

If you’ve spent any time trading anything, you know that your guess is as good as anyone’s as to what really comes next. Heck, just Google any of your favorite market-moving events: “Black Swan,” “Financial Crisis,” “Dutch Tulips,” “Dot-Com Bubble.”

You’ll find a wealth of knowledge on things like Sir Isaac Newton getting “rekt” by some sort of stock investment, or the fact that the only companies that really emerged from the Dot-Com Bubble were named Amazon.

I’ll tell ya what I’m doing, for what it’s worth:

  1. Watching my BTC, and adding to my stake where I can (selling off some winners and taking profits, really)
  2. Bulking up on some alts that haven’t done as well as I would have hoped (see same blog post above; I’m long on all of those listed)
  3. Really bulking up on ultra-cheap coins like POW (which you can still get for free with this link, which throws off some bonus POW for us here, so thanks)
  4. Even buying some more of all the Big 3 on Coinbase – if you’re one of the 15 people in the US who haven’t signed up for Coinbase, use this referral link and we’ll both get a bonus
  5. And moving them to a variety of storage systems and devices – we still recommend the Trezor, that’s an AFFILIATE LINK.

Craziness? The Guess Is You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.

Remember: this is a marathon, not a sprint. Lifetimes of gains made in just a year? Seems crazy, but has been par for the course in the past MONTH.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

My Morning Bitcoin Ritual

There’s a certain power to morning rituals, to routines, and to doing the same thing every day – you find yourself ready for a variety of challenges, and, if you’re a morning person like me, you can hit the ground running by 8:30, with your priority list or to do list on the road to being conquered.

Crypto The UnicornIf you’ve followed any of the self-help gurus on the internet over the past ten years or so, you know there is almost a cottage industry built around productivity. So take these with a grain of salt…what works for me may not work for you.

In any event, here’s the ritual I follow, with the specific crypto mantra that has helped me in the past eight months.

Before you ask “who are you and why should we listen to you?” – let’s just say that I’m pretty happy with the little crypto empire I’m starting to build. But I have a lot to learn…which is why you’ll see a good chunk of this devoted to research.

Step One: Fire Up a Specific Set of Sites

I have the following sites set to open up on Chrome:

  • Gmail
  • Google Finance
  • Metacoin – yes, this site is one of the first things I check, to get statistics, read any comments, etc.
  • Twitter – where, in addition to the Team Metacoin account, I spend most of my time tweeting under my Area 224 account, where I have tweeted for close to ten years.
  • Poloniex (more on that in a moment)
  • CoinMarketCap (which gets ripped on by quite a few people, I know…as it appears they really don’t vet their ads very well)
  • LinkedIn (checking in on professional network stuff there)
  • ESPN (well, duh), and
  • POW Token – as I’m semi-obsessed with this one getting off the ground. That’s an AFFILIATE LINK over there. Use it and I get some bonus tokens, but, if this one gets to a penny a token in the next year, they’re handing you a few hundred dollars.

Step Two: Open Up Your Spreadsheet(s)

You of course have a system for charting your holdings – I use Excel, but there are scores of ways to keep track of what you hold and that’s okay.

In my case, though, my Excel systems have helped me to chart everything that’s important in crypto:

  • What I hold
  • What I paid for it
  • What I sold it for
  • What revenue has been realized from any Passive Income Programs (PIPs).

YOU HAVE TO HAVE THIS INFORMATION FOR TAX PURPOSES. IT IS PART OF YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.

I’m an American: I’m not going to get into a debate here on taxation and cryptocurrency – and, as always, we have advised you to get professional help from an accountant and tax advisor. Don’t take this responsibility lightly – if you want the RIGHT to get into cryptocurrency, you have the responsibility to pay your taxes and do everything that is legally required of you. Soapbox speech over.

Step Three: Go Line By Line

Here’s where I go down the list and track where my investments are. The ones that aren’t PIPs can be tracked by a combo of Poloniex and CoinMarketCap.

My holdings might change, but my HODLings aren’t changing very often. Here’s a list of the ones that I track currently:

  • Bitcoin
  • Ethereum
  • Ripple
  • Litecoin
  • NEO
  • Walton
  • ChainLink
  • COSS (to buy this one, you need to go to coss.io).

Weekly or so, I update the BRED Portfolio – I’ll tweet results and sometimes update the blog, too.

Next, I check the PIPs that I’m currently involved with. Note that this list is MUCH SHORTER than it used to be:

  • Bitconnect. That’s an AFFILIATE LINK; however, I’ve begun divesting from my holdings there, using a three-step process to take profits. Instead of reinvesting daily profits, I’m (1) taking them in Bitconnect coins, (2) trading them for BTC, and (3) moving that BTC to another wallet.
  • Hexabot. We talked about this on the blog and had our AFFILIATE LINK REMOVED ON DECEMBER 5.
  • Chain.group. Another one I just heard about, and I have a small stake. Another AFFILIATE LINK.

I track all of my results in the main spreadsheet, and keep track of my total once per day – any more than that and you’re gonna drive yourself nuts.

One thing that I include on my spreadsheet is my tally on BTC Heat – which, yes, is a BTC game. Use that link to get started and it helps me grow my number of spins.

I mentioned POW Token above (still time to get yours with this AFFILIATE LINK) and one other thing that I’ve done to add to my stake is “validate” users. This can be an investment of a half hour or so; but, lately, they’re slowing down how many new users they bring in, so there has been less validation to be done.

I also check the price of POW on EtherDelta; if there’s more of a pullback or I’m feeling frisky, I’ll grab a few more for cheap.

Step Four: Twitter & Research

These two, believe it or not, can go hand in hand. That’s right: “Crypto Twitter” is great, and you can get great ideas about what coins you might want to research. Take it ALL with a grain of salt – you’re not going to get rich just because one random person tweets a coin’s cashtag and tells you it will “moon.”

People that I follow:

  • Sherlock – this guy is good, clever, and on the cutting edge with quite a few trades
  • Bambou Club – somewhere near the Adriatic; he’s also active on Medium with a periodic update on what’s going on in his world
  • Notsofast – trader, miner, lover of altcoins (though he uses a different word for them)
  • Tiffany Hayden – knows XRP backwards and forwards, but shares info about the tech side, too.

I could go on (and reserve the right to update this list down the road) but the point is that you pick a few people that share cool stuff and start hearing what they have to say. And, in my case, that means researching coins and platforms they are talking about.

Try to use a “10th Man” approach, too – if you see quite a few people talking about how great a coin is, or how this next ICO will make people rich overnight, figure out what could possibly go wrong with it. You might end up talking yourself out of making a semi-foolish investment.

A Note on YouTube

Right now, I can’t recommend any YouTubers that talk crypto. Why? My feed seems to be dominated by certain people who talk incessantly about their favorite passive income platform – it’s getting old, getting annoying, and extremely one-dimensional.

I’ll make more videos of my own in the future, but I actually want to add value when I do so – not just talk about my own multi-level marketing abilities.

AND…You Can Do All This In 30 Minutes!

That’s right, whether crypto is your day job or just a side hustle, you really only need to spend 30 minutes on this exercise. It will put you in the right frame of mind and get you ready to build your crypto fortune.

Go get ’em!

 

 

 

The Metacoin Q&A – Travis McGarrah – @MakeBitGrow

We’re trying out a new feature here on the site: today we’re running a Q&A with one of the folks we’ve come to know over the past few weeks, Travis McGarrah, whose Twitter handle is @MakeBitGrow. We met Travis online when we were both lamenting the demise of Bithaul.

In this interview, we’re letting Travis share AFFILIATE LINKS and we’ll be sure to mark those as obviously as we can.

Q: What got you into the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency world?

A: I am new to the crypto world. I started researching it this past August, even though I first heard about Bitcoin first back in 2012 or 2013. At that time, I had no idea what it was and today I am kicking myself for not researching and investing back then.

After researching Bitcoin, I decided I need to jump in. In my mind, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole is the way of the future. If you know about globalization and understand that the world is getting smaller and smaller every day, you start to understand the need for decentralized currency. In a world where people so freely travel from country to country and commerce is more of a global concept, we need to be able to transfer money from person to person without needing a middle man to exchange fiat currency.

When I came to this realization, I decided to learn as much as I can about the industry.

I work a normal 9-to-5 job, so I don’t have a lot of free time to trade. That is why I got so interested in the various lending platforms out there (most notably Bitconnect and Chain.Group) (NOTE: BITCONNECT AFFILIATE LINK is METACOIN’S, CHAIN.GROUP IS TRAVIS’S.) These programs allow me the chance to passively gain income while still working my 9-to-5.

Q: What has been your most successful trade so far?

A: Being new to crypto and not really trading, my best success has been buying into the ICO for Electroneum (ETN). The just went live on Cryptopia last week. (NOTE: The Cryptopia link is to their referral program; however, we have yet to witness any actual results from their referral program.)

During the ICO, I spent $250 and bought 27,500 ETN. That means I paid roughly $0.009 per ETN. As of 11/6/2017 each ETN is valued at $0.05. On that ICO, I have 5.5x’d my investment. I will speak on Electroneum in a later question.

Q: What has been your biggest trading or investing failure?

A: As I previously stated, I am a fan of the programs that allow me to make money passively. Back in the middle of September there was a website called Aurum Bank that was promising huge growth – we are talking 17% per day – compounding over 15 business days. I invested $1,300 with hopes of making large profits in a short time.

The money never got paid and the website went belly-up. In the matter of 3 weeks, I lost $1300. When you lose $1,300, you tend to get very emotional and start doing ridiculous things. So, without regard to logic, I took another $1,500 and put the money in another website named HourPay.net. They are still operating, but they closed my account and took the money.

This means over the course of 22 days, I lost almost $3,000. That was a gut check and it made me take a step back and evaluate the other programs that I was using at the time. Then I decided to only roll with 3 programs (Bitconnect, Chain.Group, and BitPetite). Since the reevaluation, BitPetite has disappeared, but I was lucky enough to break even on that investment.

Q: That’s a nice segue into Passive Income Platforms – Bitconnect and the like – you and I both met when trying to get to the bottom of the Bithaul scam. Which ones are you currently using?

A: Currently, I am in BitConnect and Chain.Group. From my experience, they are both geared to be around for the long haul. And I recently started using a website called Hexabot, (TRAVIS’S AFFILIATE LINK) which is a new program, but they give you .0001 BTC to start and they have a faucet built into the website. So, you can start using the website at no cost.

Q: Have you done any mining? Any success?

A: I have only spent a little bit on Genesis Mining. I spent about $110 on Ethereum mining and Monero mining. When I get more capital, I would love to put more money into mining. I think there is money to be made there, but you should have a lot of money to invest otherwise you don’t make much. With the $110 I spent, I make about $0.09 per day, which really isn’t anything.

NOTE: Here’s the METACOIN AFFILIATE CODE for GENESIS: waVTYG – use it here: Genesis Mining.

Q: What up-and-coming, under-the-radar, or forgotten coin are you a big fan of?

A: ELECTRONEUM!!! All the way, this is the coin that I am most excited about. I previously spoke on this coin, but I think there is a great chance for it to make waves in the cryptocurrency world.

I consider myself to possess above-average intelligence and able to grasp difficult concepts easily. But most of the world can’t grasp new concepts, like cryptocurrency, quickly. What ETN is doing is making cryptocurrency more understandable and accessible by 2 main ways.

  1. Moving the decimal of cryptocurrency 6 places to the right. Most of the world operates in a way that 2 decimals make way more sense than 8 decimals. This is going to allow more people to understand how cryptocurrency can be used in mainstream ways. To this day, I still struggle thinking in 8 decimals.
  2. Allowing ETN mining through an app or normal CPU capabilities. When people think of mining they think about antminers or these super computers with powerful abilities. Electroneum is working to release an app that will allow anyone with a smartphone to mine their coins passively. This will allow people that may not every be able to access cryptocurrency the ability to mine and earn money.

Electroneum just got listed on Cryptopia, but they haven’t released their ICO tokens to the investors. They only tokens available are from people that have mined them. I firmly feel that Electroneum is gearing up to be a game changer. Keep an eye out for it!

Q: Where do you see the Bitcoin price on New Year’s Day, 2018?

A: Selfishly, I want the price to have a dip after the Segwit2x split. But realistically, I see BTC being in the $8,500 – $9,000 price range. The price for Bitcoin will continually increase as people find more needs for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

Here’s what Travis looks like; feel free to follow him on Twitter for more insights. He’s one of the good guys…

One last note – be sure to get your POW Tokens while you still can. Free Airdrop. Use this link: POW TOKENS. We get a bonus if you use that link – but you can get bonuses for referring folks, too. Sometime on November 7, they’re doing a Twitter airdrop. You’ll want to follow them and be at the ready.

On Bitcoin $7000, Bitpetite SCAM, and Crypto Legitimacy

First of all, if you’ve been following this site, you know that we try to be as up front as possible. If we see a scam, we’ll point it out. We encourage you to do your own research (DYOR). We are adamant that you should not invest more than you can afford to lose. And we stress, sometimes in bold and italics, that this is all an experiment.

We took a break from blogging for a couple weeks – some of that was to be in our version of a decompression chamber of sorts. Let’s watch the action, let’s watch our baskets of eggs, and let’s ensure that we get our house in order in the background. In our absence – our last post on Bitconnect was on October 17 – we saw a couple things happen, and we’ll try to break them down for you now.

BTW, this might be as good a time as any for the only banner ad we can run on the site right now – that’s right, we’ll talk about how we, too, were scammed by Bitpetite and we’ve had to go back and scrub their ads. So here’s an AFFILIATE LINK for BITCONNECT. DYOR. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Thing 1: Bitcoin $7000

Hitting $7000 (USD) per Bitcoin seems like a really big deal, given our collective propensity to fall in love with large, round numbers.

Then, if you look back at past posts that talk about our BRED Portfolio, you’ll see that Bitcoin was at $4365 on October 1; this means that you could have brought home a 60 percent gain on your money in a shade more than a month.

That makes it a really HUGE deal.

Then, if you factor in the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price plus consider the fact that one Bitcoin on January 1 of this year was $973, you’re actually sitting on at least a 6x return.

That is HUGH. MONGOUS.

But, in some respects, it is beside the point – the price of BTC doesn’t matter so much as the number of BTC you are able to accumulate.

You could possibly say that about dozens of coins or tokens – yes there will be some wheat and lots of chaff, but the super, blight-resistant, able to feed millions with one stalk kind of wheat that will emerge will be so valuable that the kings and queens of this new economy won’t much care the USD price.

Seriously – there’s a oft-repeated belief in the Bitcoin world that BTC is, indeed, going to $1 Million. Won’t be next year, in all likelihood (though stranger things have happened), and may not happen in the next twenty years. But it will happen.

We’ve had people ask two things: (1) is it too late to buy? and (2) is this a bubble? I’ll answer the first: no. Actually, let me be more emphatic: NO. If you’re not in the game, you’re not in the game – and because of the beauty of Bitcoin, you can drop $100 and get started and maybe trade a little or sock it away or whatever. (We recommend Coinbase, here’s an AFFILIATE LINK, and your $100 investment will get you a $10 bonus, something we’ll also get.)

But, wise sages at Metacoin HQ, is this a bubble?

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. In some respects, that is not the point here – the point is that we are in accumulation mode, it’s a landgrab of sorts, and whether Bitcoin goes to $1 Million or drops to $1 might be beside the point. Here’s why:

Because of the way Bitcoin itself was set up and is structured and governed, 21,000,000 is the cap. No more will ever be issued.

While some are asking the bubble question, others – countless others – are building businesses and services and solutions that keep the Bitcoin movement alive and thriving. Bitcoin may end up being used to pay for cups of coffee, or it may end up being used to buy SUVs, or it may be replaced by an even better coin that is ubiquitous. In any event, if the price crashed today, the entire system wouldn’t immediately crash. Miners will still mine. Traders will still trade. Speculators will still speculate. If you think of Bitcoin as a country that has launched a brand new currency, maybe ask if anyone is using that currency or has the potential to use that currency. In that respect, we are just getting warmed up.

In other words…get in the game. Now.

[QUICK “SPONSOR BREAK” – If you haven’t signed up for the POW Token “Airdrop,” it’s not too late. Use this AFFILIATE LINK – POW Token Airdrop – then get ready for the next airdrop, coming next week.]

Thing 2: Bitpetite SCAM

Did we mention lately that this WHOLE THING is AN EXPERIMENT? Well it is.

As we’ve told you here a few times, we’ll put some of our own capital at risk with some of these Passive Income Platforms that we discuss. And, well, there seems to be a pretty below-average track record for these. Is it our luck? Is it the nature of the beast? Is it a combination?

The latest to go belly up is Bitpetite, and we’re annoyed – but not surprised. In fact, because of our experiments with Ambis and Control Finance and Bithaul, we have made it a habit of taking coins and tokens out at every opportunity. We encourage you to do the same.

We’re going to keep experimenting and putting our money at risk AND STRESSING THAT YOU SHOULD DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND PAST PERFORMANCE DOES NOT INDICATE FUTURE RESULTS.

We now have just one PIP that we’re using – Bitconnect – but we’re looking at a few more. Stay tuned.

Bitpetite is gone – and we apologize for linking to it and promoting it. As we said, it’s an experiment. These things could fizzle.

This gives us an opportunity to suggest that you spread out your risk. It’s really the only way to go – multiple baskets, multiple investments, and multiple streams of crypto income.

Thing 3: Crypto Legitimacy

Honestly, there may not have been a better piece of news than the CME group announcing that Bitcoin futures would be available by the end of the year. In fact, that alone might drive the legitimacy that the Winkelvoss brothers were waiting for when they applied to have their ETF traded.

We cannot underscore enough that, even if there’s a large pullback in the price of Bitcoin, and if Ethereum and Litecoin and Ripple and a bunch of altcoins follow…it might not matter a ton because Bitcoin, blockchains and cryptocurrencies are, indeed, here to stay.

We’ll give you one brief example: we’ve been talking about POW Token a bit, and one of the things that we’ve done on the site is “validate” users. We do this for small numbers of tokens – but we’ve also learned a ton about where these folks are coming from.

To validate folks, we have to click on their Facebook profile and find evidence that it wasn’t a Facebook profile that was just recently created to get free tokens.

And…they’re not. But that’s not the point: these folks are from everywhere. Asia. South America. Europe. The Middle East. Even a few Americans!

Whether or not POW Token will become the next world beater is not actually the question to ask: it’s whether or not cryptocurrencies have hit critical mass (they have) and whether or not there’s the potential for value to be exchanged and these things are easy to use (they are).

The takeaway? Folks, with all this…the belief is that we are just getting started. So glad you’re along for the roller coaster ride.