Bitshares

Sep 04 2017

‘This Bloodbath is Your Next Opportunity’

Thus began an email that arrived – as if on cue – about an hour ago. It doesn’t quite matter that they were talking about a completely different subject; it was from one of the scores of services I subscribe to and it is so a propos to what has gone on this morning.

Prices of Bitcoin, Ethereum Drop…

But why?

Just last week, I was mentioning on Steemit that I saw a real possibility for Bitcoin to hit $5000 and Ethereum to hit $400 (again, it was already there once) by the end of Labor Day weekend. It seems, though, that China had other ideas.

China Says NO to the ICO

This is not totally surprising – China rumors have been out there for a few weeks, and what looked like a coming crackdown at the beginning of the weekend turned into an actual crackdown early this morning, as Chinese regulators – SEVEN OF THEM – said that ICOs were, in fact, illegal under Chinese law.

We can’t explain it as well as Coindesk can, so go check out their article.

This impacted Bitcoin because it’s the main currency that lots of people use, or are chasing, or have as the basis of their portfolio.

This impacted Ethereum because it seems to underpin the vast majority of ICOs and “token sales” – so of course it would drop.

This Will Impact Your Portfolio…

Just how much it will impact your portfolio remains to be seen, and depends upon how much China exposure you have, too.

For instance, one of our favorite new exchanges is Binance, and its BNB coin/token powers the exchange. BNB has been on a little bit of a roller coaster, and our own holdings have gone from 19,000 Satoshis up to 60,000 Satoshis (and then some) then back down into the 12K range today, before trading at 21,000 or so as we write this.

SIDEBAR: Here’s a REFERRAL LINK to a new exchange coming called Altcoin Exchange. Worth checking out, as you can potentially share in the trading fees if you refer enough users.

We’re prepared to weather this particular storm, but you may not be so inclined.

What About Other Altcoins?

Pick your poison: every coin on Poloniex’s list is down…except for BURST.

It might look like a bloodbath – and maybe it IS a bloodbath – but now we’re back to the point of this article…

This could be that buying opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

Ripple? 4685 Sats. (“Sats” is short for “Satoshis,” in case you’re wondering. And a “Satoshi is .00000001 Bitcoin.)

Digibyte? 420 Sats.

Bitshares? 2725 Sats.

It’s possible – possible, but Do Your Own Research – that these coins could be in ranges that they may not be in ever again. If you read up on each project and spend enough time on the forums, you could possibly convince yourself that any one of these coins might be poised for a rebound, and taking off for heights unknown.

Place Your Bets (and Hedge Them)

We have, since day one here, advocated spreading your risk around. It’s one of the reasons that we recommend the Passive Income Platforms like Bitconnect (AFFILIATE LINK over there) and Control Finance (another AFFILIATE LINK).

It’s also why we recommend having your coins on several exchanges if you’re trading, and storing them somewhere like a Trezor (AFFILIATE LINK) or in another cold storage solution if you aren’t.

AND it’s why, once you get started (usually with Coinbase – hey, whaddya know, another AFFILIATE LINK over there!), it’s never a bad idea to have your holdings spread out between multiple coins with multiple uses. (It could be one reason why the BRED Porftolio has done so well this year: four different coins, each with four different use cases.)

Is THIS the Buying Opportunity YOU Were Waiting For?

It could be. In any event, if you’re looking for a time to get off the sidelines and into the action, this might be that time.

Jul 19 2017

Ten Days Later: How About Those Five Coins for Bargain Hunters?

Earlier in my business career, I worked for a company that was part of a paradigm shift of sorts – in the way that health care plans were delivered to corporations. Then, the “high-deductible plan” was foreign. Now, these things are everywhere.

The company I worked for was in the unique position of trying these plans out on a few of their employees, and these same employees would report back to prospective companies “warts and all” on the pluses and minuses of using these plans.

The saying at the company was pretty simple:

We eat our own dog food.

In that spirit, I’ve decided to “eat my own dog food;” or, more accurately, share an update on the “Five Coins for Bargain Hunters” that we told you about ten short days ago.

Why am I doing this?

One of the things I’ve noticed in this emerging cryptocurrency trading and investment space is that analysts, coin-pickers, token fans and others are extremely quick to tell you when they went 10x or better on a pick. But they’re awfully slow to tell you about those errors in their ways. I’d rather do this “warts and all” – you can’t take this site seriously if all we do is share our winners.

A Lot Has Happened In 10 Days

Just this afternoon, word broke of a huge theft of Ether from unsecured wallets – a potential huge blow to a coin that is serving as the backbone of so many ICOs.

And this is after price drops in what we call our BRED Portfolio.

This same portfolio, you may recall, was $224,000-plus just 18 days ago.

So…those five coins…where are they now, and would we still buy them?

And before we share this update, this disclaimer. DYOR means “Do Your Own Research.” In other words, we like our ideas, but you are at your own risk if you decided to invest in any or all of these. We are not responsible for any losses. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Library Credits – LBC

Ten days ago: accumulate at the 17-18K Satoshi range.
Today’s price: 12910 Sats.
Recommendation: Still a BUY.

This is one of those long-term plays. I don’t plan on swing trading this one, am more thinking that it has the potential to be very much like YouTube for a wide variety of content. I’m still bullish; accumulation at this price point could pay some serious dividends down the road.

Steem – STEEM

Ten days ago: accumulate up to 60K Sats.
Today’s price: 50K Sats.
Recommendation: STRONG BUY.

We give this a “STRONG BUY” in ALL CAPS because we’re in love with the platform and spend at least an hour a day there. It has engagement that’s off the charts and it reminds us – as we have said before here – of the early days of Twitter. Except you can potentially profit from it, unlike Twitter.

Give it some time, though. Some pundits are suggesting a price of $10 – which would mean growth of 8x where it is now, and would also put it into the crypto unicorn club, as its market cap is around $250m right now.

Stratis – STRAT

Ten days ago: accumulate up to 200K Sats.
Today’s price: 175K Sats.
Recommendation: STRONG BUY.

Actually, this appears to be the one coin that could benefit the most from the one-two punch of Bitcoin’s Hard Fork/Segwit uncertainty, and Ether’s afternoon follies from today.

Yesterday, it actually went above 200K, and it’s only down around 5% today. We love the project and are HODLing this coin.

Antshares – ANS

Ten days ago: accumulate at 285K Sats.
Today’s price: 260K Sats.
Recommendation: STRONG BUY.

Okay, why are three of these five coins now STRONG BUYS in ALL CAPS after ten days of tumult? Simple – these are good projects. Though I was corrected on Steemit by a friend who suggested that Antshares is actually the Chinese Ethereum and not the Chinese Bitcoin, I still stand by it. And you want some variety in your holdings – known as “hedging” – so having some exposure to Asian markets is a really good idea.

Bitshares – BTS

Ten days ago: accumulate at 8000 Sats.
Today’s price: 4700 Sats.
Recommendation: HOLD.

This is the most “meh” of our picks. I’m not going out of my way to pick more up, and I’m possibly going to become a “bagholder” here.

BUT…it could pop again – it’s below its one-month highs of 12,000 Sats. It’s just not a project I am in love with, so I’m giving it a HOLD recommendation.

Next Steps?

Well, similar to the others we talk about here, we’ll keep watching these as they emerge. There will likely be more blog posts like this one down the road.

And we’ll keep eating our own dog food.

Jul 09 2017

Five Coins for Bargain Hunters

Happy weekend, party people!

Oh, not the happiest of weekends? Red numbers got you down? Been watching the crypto markets a little too closely? Afraid of becoming a bagholder?

Fret not, we’re here with an idea or two (or five): coins that might fall into bargain hunter territory.

First up, though, a word or two (or fifty) on some of the big boys and their performance during the past week.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin Holding Their Own

It’s been interesting to watch the scuttlebutt and listen to the pontificators asking about what August 1 – when Bitcoin’s big Segwit situation gets sorted out – will do to the BTC price. And it’s also been interesting to hear what the thinking is on Ethereum and the ICO marketplace and the fact that tons of coins seem to be getting tons of money out of nowhere, all built, it seems, on the Ethereum platform or raising money in Ether. And whether Litecoin does anything huge in the interim.

BUT…all three seem fine.

While BTC has stabilized in price at around 2500, we should note that, while both LTC and ETH are also stable, there’s a bit of a difference in where ETH is relative to its 2-week range.

BTC: High of 2720, Low of 2168. It’s a range up/down of 552. Its current price is right around 58% of its range. Close to that Fibonacci level of 61.8%.
LTC: High of 55.40, Low of 32.37. Range up/down is 22 bucks, and its current price is at 68% of its range. Sticking around there for a little while, maybe…
ETH, however: High of 318, Low of 204. Range up/down is 114. Right now, it’s at around 31% of its range. Key Fibonacci levels are 23.6% and 38.2% – 31% is right at the middle.

UPSHOT: WATCH THE ETH PRICE. Watch for support either above or below those percentages: 230.79 on the low end, 247.75 on the way up. These could be good levels to buy on the way up, or to sell on the way down.

Now, let’s return to the regular programming.

Five Coins for Bargain Hunters

1. Library Credits – LBC

Open source YouTube competitor? Democratized payouts? Sounds just a little like Steemit to me.

But I’m game on the product – if you want to sign up on the wait list, you can use this referral link to do so, and we might move up in the line. But then again, you’ll get your own referral link and you might move up in the line, too.

From an *INVESTMENT* standpoint, though, this one, we think, has some serious potential. Here’s why:

It launched in July of 2016 at north of 120,000 Sats. Then it popped – heading to 280,000 Sats before coming back to Earth. Then it stuck around in the four-digit Satoshi level until May of this year, and flirted with 25,000 Satoshis until recently.

The reason for its climb of late: it’s starting to come into its own as an actual site with merit – not just as a coin that could have potential. In other words, past its growing pains as a startup, it’s now ready for prime time.

You can get LBC for around 17-18,000 Sats. Anywhere below 20,000 might be good to accumulate.

2. Steem – STEEM

Steem is the coin. Steemit is the platform. Steem can be converted to Steem Dollars, too.

I’m on this platform daily and, to be honest, I don’t totally “get” it yet. HOWEVER, I see it moving northward from here, and I’ll give you three reasons why:

Controlled, stable growth. Despite the fact that the site is adding around 5000 users a day of late, the site still only has somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 users worldwide.
Active community that gets paid for content. I haven’t profited much from the site just yet, but, to be honest, that’s not why I’m there yet. I’m there because it feels a lot like the early days of Twitter to me. Less negativity, and more content to sink your teeth into.
Bagholders that need the site to come back. Yes, I said that out loud – quite a few people are there because they were on the site early, had tons of coins when they were worth 500-650,000 Satoshis each. They now trade at 60,000 or so – with recent highs of 80,000 Sats.

60-80,000 Satoshis would still be a bargain when compared to last year’s prices. The question is whether it will get busy enough to head into 100K territory and beyond.

BTW, sign up for an account now. Go to Steemit for more details.

3. Stratis – STRAT

How could a coin that has gone up from 7300 to 171,000 be a bargain?

Well, this coin’s team has hit pretty much every development milestone. In fact, 171,000 is today’s price; 435,000 was the price just six weeks ago.

We think the recent pullback is mostly because of the overall market pullback.

It’s also an “enterprise platform coin” – in other words, the coin/token fuels the platform for corporate and enterprise clients. So those big corporates looking to get into the blockchain can – and do – call up the Stratis people and say yo.

Say yo yourself at somewhere below 200,000 Sats.

4. Antshares – ANS

It’s the Chinese Bitcoin.

Full stop.

It has gone from 15,000 Sats to 367,000 Sats – 24x – before pulling back to 285,000 or so today.

If there’s one project that could potentially have another 24x up its sleeve before the end of the year, this one may be it.

5. Bitshares – BTS

This is a mysterious platform – to me at least – and it has been around for nearly three years. Most mysterious: the price now is around what the price was in late Summer 2014.

This looks a little like Stratis and a little like Ripple and a little like…well, it’s kinda sorta an enterprise blockchain thing meets a trading platform.

That price, tho: 13,000 Sats a couple months ago, 6000-range now.

Considering we’re now below where the coin was in September of 2014, you might consider accumulating up to 8000 Sats.

Final Thoughts:

Remember, do your own research. We’re not responsible for any gains or losses. Seek professional counsel for things like legal and tax ramifications. Stay woke.