Coinbase

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 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 02 2017

How’s Your Bitcoin Hedge Fund Doing?

We like the concept of diversification here – so we’re never going to say to put all your eggs in one basket. In that spirit, we launched our own “Bitcoin Hedge Fund,” which aims to provide a combination of established and emerging cryptocurrencies that can act at least a little like your own index fund.

You can read more about our Hedge Fund here – it’s hypothetical, of course, and you should certainly get professional advice and counsel when coming up with something of your own.

Yesterday, we shared the June 1 update of our BRED Portfolio, which is on fire this year. It had a four-month head start, so of course its results – up 19 times – will be better than our one-month-old Hedge Fund.

Hedge Fund Investment Recap

Here’s what the numbers looked like on May 1.

Now, here are the numbers from June 1, with Coinmarketcap.com‘s prices at around midnight GMT.

The fund tripled – and then some – in just a month!

This leaves us with a few questions:

Can Digibyte keep rolling? Obviously, a 16x multiple is not really sustainable, is it? (If you compare it to, say, Ripple, whose YTD multiple is 36, it looks paltry by comparison. However, Ripple has kept chugging along.)
Ripple, Dogecoin, and Ethereum – not bad one-month performance for each, right? The worst of the three tripled. Can those continue, too, or are we in a bubble?
If even the laggards like WeTrust and Dash are up 30-plus percent, ARE WE IN A BUBBLE?

And that’s the point behind this “Hedge Fund”

The idea is that it’s NOT your entire investment portfolio. Is it 1%? 10% 25% or more? That’s up to you…but, really, the point of any hedge fund is to hedge your bets. One asset class goes up, another goes down, and your overall portfolio weathers the storm.

We’ll keep tracking this, and our BRED Portfolio, and there’s much more coming. For now, though, if you haven’t gotten some Bitcoin, what are you waiting for? Visit our Coinbase AFFILIATE LINK and you’ll get a bonus with a qualifying purchase (and you can buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin there).

May 03 2017

BREAKING: Coinbase adds support for Litecoin

Several outlets, including Tech Crunch and Coindesk, are reporting that users of the popular Coinbase digital wallet and currency trading site can now buy and sell Litecoin.

Coinbase confirms this is the case on its own blog, and you can read the Coinbase blog post here: Coinbase Litecoin.

And, when we visited our own Coinbase dashboard…there it was, in all its glory:

Coinbase started in July of 2012, adding Bitcoin support shortly after it launched, then extending its platform to include Ethereum this past July. Funny enough, we just asked THIS MORNING, in our blog post on a coin you should consider adding to your portfolio, when a new coin was coming to the platform.

So now is as good a time as ever, right? That is, get yourself a Coinbase account and use this link and, with qualifying purchase, you’ll get a bonus. And we’ll get a bonus. It’s that win/win we’ve talked about.

Apr 25 2017

Using Coinbase – A Primer for Bitcoin Newbies

We’re going back to basics today. And we thought we’d use this opportunity to share our Coinbase link – so, in the interest of full disclosure, we could be compensated if you sign up with this link. But, once you spend $100 worth on Bitcoin or Ethereum, you’ll get $10 worth of Bitcoin, too. Win-win.

Basics: What is Coinbase?

Veterans of this space might be surprised when they realize that Coinbase has been around since June 2012. Here’s how they describe themselves.

Founded in June of 2012, Coinbase is a digital currency wallet and platform where merchants and consumers can transact with new digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. We’re based in San Francisco, California.

And, oh my goodness do they have a foothold on this digital wallet space, having raised more than $117m from leading tech investors and venture capital firms. You can see a complete writeup on Crunchbase, one of our favorite tech info sites.

What’s a Wallet?

It might seem obvious, but it’s worth a mention nonetheless: a wallet is where you store your coins. Read this from Coindesk if you’re looking for more advanced info, but, for now, just think of the basic idea as an old school wallet, like the one you’d put in your pants pocket or purse.

In the typical American wallet, you’re likely to find cash – FIAT CURRENCY! – identification, and maybe some credit cards. Some of what’s in a physical wallet is innocuous, right? I mean, everyone holds onto a fortune from their last trip to the Chinese restaurant, don’t they? But it’s that other information that you guard carefully – your ID card is a pain to lose, and you wouldn’t just give out your credit card number or the CVC code on the back to any random stranger.

Your digital wallet can be looked at the same way – in fact, some of the information that moves Bitcoin (or Ethererum, we’ll use Bitcoin throughout this article as a catch-all for the digital currencies on the Coinbase system) back and forth is better thought of as in a safety deposit box or a safe.

The public component to your wallet is the Bitcoin address, and this is something you can give out to anyone and everyone. This is INBOUND. You can use it as a tip jar, you can ask your Uncle to send you that five bucks worth of Bitcoin he promised for your birthday (ha!).

Here’s our Bitcoin address:

1G8Ayc15sqoyGzN4DFUeheRkgFeS9t6oSW

And our Ethereum address:

0xf0940C79d93E88450aA366238ef8C298Da11EB74

Note that those two look different. Because they’re completely different languages and sets of code.

Adding to your account

Here’s where the FIAT CURRENCY comes in: you’ll need to send money to your account using one of a couple methods. One is to link a bank account, and then your Bitcoin will appear in a few days, once the banking systems talk to each other and confirm your account. The other method is to use a credit card. There’s a fee attached – as there is to the bank account method – but the upside is that your Bitcoin will appear almost instantaneously.

Using Coinbase as your “hub”

If you’re brand new to Bitcoin, you can totally use Coinbase as your online hub, your gateway to the vast world of cryptocurrency. As you see above, you can get the current price quote, you can buy and sell – trade – your Bitcoin, you can send Bitcoin to folks you owe money to, and request it from folks who owe you money.

Here’s a snapshot of some of our recent activity.

But, as you might have guessed from some of our other posts here, this is only scratching the surface of our cryptocurrency activity. You can use your account to send money into one of the trading platforms, like Poloniex or Bittrex – two of the ones we use. Or you can invest in an ICO, such as the Exscudo or Sikoba coin offerings we have talked about here.

Only Two Coins?

Despite what the rumor mill might tell you, right now only two coins are on the Coinbase platform: Bitcoin and Ethereum. So if you want to get into other coins, you’ll have to convert them via a trading platform (or an ICO; Gnosis used Ethereum tokens yesterday to raise a crazy amount of capital in their auction). But that’s pretty simple to do.

Pretty simple, right?

Yes, the fine folks at Coinbase have actually made this dummy-proof. Which is one reason they’ve raised so much capital and they’re the wallet of choice here. (It’s not just from that link up there that can score you a Bitcoin bonus with a qualifying purchase, and will also score us a Bitcoin bonus with your qualifying purchase. There’s that “win/win” again.)

Other Coinbase developments

This was mentioned by leading VC Fred Wilson the other day, and, given the growth of Ethereum as the backbone of blockchain applications, it’s probably worth checking out. Token launch from Coinbase.

Last month, we covered the GDAX launch from Coinbase – it’s an important institutional investment milestone for the company.

We’ll keep an eye out for other coins added to the Coinbase site, too.