BRED

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 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.

Jun 01 2017

Turn 10K into 193K in Just Five Months

It sounds too good to be true, right? Make a small-ish investment, of only $10,000, then let it sit and ferment. After five months, sell it all and find yourself with a 19x return: something that others might wait decades for, accomplished in less than half a year.

Welcome to the crazy world of cryptocurrency, and the even crazier concept we created called the BRED Portfolio.

If it sounds too good to be true, are we in a bubble?

Great question, and not one we’re going to answer with this post. Instead, let’s just go to the videotape and talk about exactly how this came about.

First up, in early April – so no, WE didn’t invest in our basket of cryptocurrencies on January 1 – we thought that this world needed something similar to FANG: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. These four companies are all synonymous with some sort of internet, web, social, digital, or online business. But they also are a bit – or a LOT – different from each other.

Bringing us to the BRED Portfolio. We needed a catchy acronym, but we also needed four currencies that each had a little bit of a different angle in this emerging space. Enter BRED:

Bitcoin, the ne plus ultra of cryptocurrencies
Ripple (ticker XRP), which is taking on SWIFT and starting to win
Ethereum, and its smart contracts and backbone of a whole host of other launches (like Golem, for instance)
Dash, probably the most “consumer-y” of the cryptocurrencies.

Our idea: what if you had gone back in time to January 1, bought $2500 of each of the four currencies, and left it alone. What would that portfolio look like today?

If it sounds too good to be true, you need a time machine

Here are the results:

Oh. My. Goodness.

What if you waited until April 1?

We re-weighted the portfolio accordingly, buying $2,500 each of our BRED coins. The result is also quite staggering.

So now what?

You probably have a couple questions, and we’ll try to answer them.

First of all: I can’t say whether or not we’re “in a bubble.” No one knows. For each prognosticator that says there’s too much of all of these cryptocurrencies out there, there’s someone else who says that we’ve just scratched the surface.

The answer – as is normally the case in probably just about everything – is somewhere in the middle. Like the dot-com bubble of the late 90s and early 2000s, if it pops, there will be quite a few losers. There will also be a few winners: companies like Google or Amazon that kept it going and emerged and are now beyond dominant.

As for coins, whether there are too many and whether there’s too much supply of all of them: that is another good question. Ripple is a great example – to the casual observer, supply in the billions vs. an all-time capped supply number of 21 million for Bitcoin might sound like it’s a recipe for disaster for Ripple.

But, as has been discussed quite a few places, maybe Ripple is managing its entire currency plan extremely well.

There will be volatility. There will be craziness. There will be a roller coaster ride. That’s expected.

And, if you haven’t gotten started yet???

What are you waiting for? Seriously, you need to think about getting started with at least Bitcoin and/or Ethereum. You can do that by clicking on this AFFILIATE LINK for Coinbase and getting started. You can start small. But we recommend you get started.

May 25 2017

BRED Update (Or, How’s Your Bitcoin?)

Cryptocurrency traders are a special lot. They are, after all, a new breed, and the markets they trade in don’t totally act like the stock markets, nor do they totally act like the forex markets.

And the “buy and hold” folks seem to be in the minority, at least if you trust the chat rooms on places like Poloniex.

To wit, the activity the past 24 hours or so shows some serious red numbers. Dropping like flies, those “altcoins.” The sky, she’s a fallin’.

Now what? You moved your hard-earned Bitcoins into something like Ripple’s XRP token and you’ve seen it “plummet” 26 percent in the past 24 hours.

You could be like the guy on this all-too-real Reddit post from yesterday.

I have been a BTC hodler for about 3 years now. Things were good and I believe in bitcoin a lot. When the price was dropping and dropping I kept on buying and buying, for the simple reason that I believe in Bitcoin.

Enter a few days ago: Ripple was on the rise. I thought I could increase my BTC-stack a bit by following the ripple trend. I was stupid and went all in… I should never have gone all in on anything. I’m not all in on bitcoin, so why would I put all my hard earned btc in something I do know little to nothing about, right? Well… enter the greed I thought I had left behind me a long time ago.”

Let’s just say it didn’t end well. A cautionary tale for the day traders and trend riders. And those who don’t hedge. And those who don’t buy and hold. And…

Enough Already: Get to the Headline

Oh yeah, that. The headline today asks “How’s Your Bitcoin?” because that has been the dominant news this week. Yes, even above some of those other coins that seemed to come out of nowhere and jump up by 2x or 3x – I’m looking at you, ZCash – Bitcoin’s rise to above $2,500 each is rather thrilling. Cool, yes, unsettling, maybe.

The BRED Portfolio, which we started tracking on April 1 (it’s ONLY been two months? Really?), takes four of the currencies – Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, Dash – and puts them in equal parts into a basket, with an initial investment of $10,000. (We went back to January 1 so we could look at this from a YTD standpoint, and we’ll give further updates on the 1st of each month.) Its growth has been staggering – but the growth has actually been mostly due to non-BTC assets.

Meaning that Bitcoin is back in the spotlight at the expense of some gains in the portfolio.

So, even with the attention on Bitcoin, the BRED Portfolio is still dominated by the growth of XRP, which is still more than half of the overall $195,821.24.

Is there a lesson here?

Maybe: diversification is good. Riding the waves isn’t. Buying and holding, probably also good – unless this entire portfolio and the crypto universe turns out to be a house of cards, in which case we’re all spinning our wheels.

A broader point, though, is one that we should make: Bitcoin is still “dominant” (this gets tracked – Bitcoin as a percentage of the overall cryptocurrency marketplace, which, according to Coinmarketcap.com, has fallen to 49.3%) AND is still the gateway currency. If you’re getting started, or if you’re trading for the first time, the odds are that you’re trading Bitcoins for whatever you end up with.

Bitcoin is the gold standard, or the world’s reserve cryptocurrency.

Whether it will remain that way for a while? That we’ll wait on.

May 19 2017

Bitcoin $2000, Ethereum $120

Quick post here, because most pundits will, IMHO, “Bury the Lead.”

(If you’re not familiar with that concept – “burying the lead” involves talking about everything but the biggest news first. Sorta like…”Hey, how ya doin? Did you hear that it’s supposed to rain today? Yeah, it’s been kinda cold, too. My dog is tired. The kids are okay. By the way, I won the lottery last night and now have a million dollars! Talk to you later.”)

And all the pundits will say “OMG, Bitcoin got up to $2000!” Which is great. A worthy accomplishment.

But, IMHO, the worthier accomplishment – and the “LEAD” in this story, is this: Ethereum is up to $120.

Ethereum All-Time High: Biggest News of the Week

Why?

Support over $100/coin. This is rather big, since ETH went over that figure overnight, stayed over that figure this morning and into the afternoon, and now leads Poloniex in volume (on the BTC-pairs portion of the exchange; screenshot above).
Ethereum is the business story – maybe moreso than Ripple. Yes, the XRP love was shown this week, and a pullback into the 17000-Satoshi range wasn’t unexpected. But where the action is going to be is not necessarily in payment processing and transactions between banks (which, don’t get me wrong, is vitally important), but in using Ethereum’s “smart contracts” to underpin just about every sort of insurance, banking, legal, and other kind of contract in the world.
That was a bold statement – and it’s one we talked about a little here. The ETH coin underneath the Ethereum technology has the potential to be more earth-shattering than Bitcoin itself, and more earth-shattering than Ripple’s XRP for sure.

And an ETH Investment YTD…

Here’s this afternoon’s BRED Portfolio chart. Sure, it’s no XRP, but your ETH investment would be would be A-OK.

OMG.

Happy trading!

BTW, if you haven’t gotten started with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin yet, use this AFFILIATE link to check out Coinbase. You’ll get a $10 bonus (well, $10 worth of BTC) with your $100 purchase of any of the three coins. And we’ll get a $10 bonus for referring you.