Dash

Apr 26 2017

BRED or ICO – Which Path?

We’re tooting our own horn…just a little.

If you have followed this site for the past month (and THANK YOU for doing so), you know that we have been talking about two sides of the “coin” when it comes to cryptocurrency. One the one side, the big behemoths, led by Bitcoin, which soared to north of $1400 US this morning. (NOTE: we realize there are some…issues? questions? with Tether and the USDT price on some sites. We’re going with Poloniex’s numbers from a little before noon Central time today.) On side two: the little guys, be they altcoins or ICOs.

AND YES…there are three sides to every coin, o wise one. Side three is the edge of the coin, where many of you might currently be. Reminder to get started with Coinbase, buy some Bitcoin or Ethereum, and get rolling! They’ll give you a bonus and we’ll get a bonus for referring you.

Back to the tooting of our horn: we believe we’re onto something with the BRED portfolio.

BRED is on a TEAR

When we first came up with the concept, we picked four of the coins with the highest market cap, but also four that could fall into different buckets. The same way that Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google make up FANG – with each bringing a different dish to the table – Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash all have something a little different about them:

Bitcoin – “first-mover advantage”
Ripple – “banks are using it”
Ethereum – “smart contract” (banks also using it)
Dash – “most consumer-friendly”

Simple enough, can fit this on a napkin. So we thought, let’s create a portfolio of just these four, give them 1/4 each of our investment, and leave it alone.

Here’s what it would look like right now:

Yes, you read that correctly. A $10,000 investment, spread equally between these four coins, made on January 1, would be worth more than $51,995.12 today.

Oh, and if you sat on the edge of the coin and waited until April 1 to buy, you’d still be up 22% THIS MONTH.

But what if you’re waiting for an ICO?

Some ICOs Had INSANE Weeks

While some of this could be the start of a bubble – and our pal Roger Aitken talks about that in this post on GNO – ICOs are on a tear, too. Well, some of them…

GNO set records, rising to a valuation of $300m
TaaS has raised $6.1m US, all of it outside of the US
MobileGo has raised more than $6m in its first week
Exscudo* stumbled a little on day one, but is nearing the $1m mark in only its second day.

* We are participating in Exscudo’s “bounty program” and have purchased a small stake. Also, we wrote about it in more detail over here.

What’s the Takeaway?

If you think things are just getting going, you may very well be right. Bitcoin’s market cap is above $20b, but, with fixed supply and companies still scrambling to get involved in blockchain technology, the four members of the BRED portfolio seem to be hitting the gas pedal.

And these four ICOs, each with their own different angle and spin, could also be poised to make serious news of their own – I mean, in addition to the news they’ve made already.

BRED or ICO?

What about both?

Apr 07 2017

Quadruple Your Money with the BRED Portfolio

When we stumbled upon this idea this morning, our first instinct was to play it rather cool with the headline. Something like “Introducing the BRED Portfolio: A Buy-and-Hold Bitcoin and Altcoin Investment Strategy.” And that sounds very straightforward, by the book. It’s also boring.

So we went with the clickbait headline.

Read on:

Why “BRED”?

There are a couple reasons behind this one – and it’s not just because these four letters fit together nicely. (They do, though. Props to us.)

Think about one of the best business and investment acronyms out there: FANG. Jim Cramer claims to have created the acronym several years ago, used to put four “new economy” stocks into one nice bucket. Facebook. Amazon. Netflix. Google.

It’s easy to remember, but it also includes four really solid tech stocks – and four companies that are, you could argue, doing quite a bit differently while still being in the same category.

We thought the same thing when creating this portfolio strategy: let’s get four of the biggest cryptocurrencies out there and put them in one bucket.

BUT, let’s do this with an eye toward the ones that have the best chance of long-term staying power.

While “BRED” works nicely as an acronym, these are also four coins that have managed to stick around in the crypto space.

We’re not just rationalizing…

B is for Bitcoin, and you couldn’t have a portfolio like this without Bitcoin, since it started this whole shebang, right?

R is for Ripple – which, for some reason, doesn’t have a ticker symbol that starts with “R” – and Ripple’s USDT price developments of late don’t tell the whole story; consider it the best chance of becoming the backbone of all crypto transactions throughout the world.

E is for Ethereum, whose “smart contracts” were, you could argue, the first yin to Bitcoin’s yang.

D is for Dash – “digital cash” is a very easy and consumer-friendly value proposition. We will argue that this one could win out based on the strength of its community alone.

Look at the rankings, though – if you visit Smith and Crown this morning, you’ll see that these are four of the five largest cryptocurrencies – in terms of market capitalization – in the world. In fact, going back to January 1, you would still have been picking four of the 7 largest cryptos, as shown in this chart from CoinMarketCap.com.

Argue with us if you’d like, but we’re going with this acronym. You’ll see why in a second.

Structuring the BRED Portfolio

To keep it simple, we used January 1, 2017 as our starting point. And, as opposed to weighting the portfolio by market cap – which would have had Bitcoin at about 92% of the portfolio, defeating the purpose – we went with a straight 25% invested in each.

To get the prices, we grabbed a chart from TradingView.com – our first-ever visit to the site, which is bloody easy to use, we might add – and use their figures for open price on January 1.

TradingView BRED Chart — Thanks, http://tradingview.com

So there we are, a simple portfolio with four of the biggest crypto assets. But…how did it perform?

Quadruple. Your. Money.

What will remain to be seen here is whether or not this is an aberration – past performance not indicative of future results and all that.

But holy buckets this thing is on fire.

$10,000 invested equally on January 1 in four cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash – would have grown to $42,567.69 on April 1.

So…Now What, Smart Guy?

Yes, hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, the woulda-shoulda-coulda factor with the coins that aren’t named Bitcoin is pretty huge. And the volatility is such that today’s number on the BRED portfolio is more like $44,000 – and that’s due in part to the Ripple developments over the weekend.

But here’s our take – and we’re not investment professionals, nor do we provide legal advice – on what to do with this information:

Buy and hold. It doesn’t have to be these four cryptocurrencies, but you should consider having a few coins or tokens that you simply leave alone. Don’t trade them, keep them in cold storage, and worry about them only a little.

Mar 26 2017

Let’s Talk About Dash

Dash If you follow the cryptocurrency space, you might have noticed some wild growth from an altcoin called Dash. On the surface, it might look like the growth stems mostly from hype – why else would a coin’s price go (in USD) from $22 to $115 in less than a month?

But beneath the surface, and beneath the FOMO and FUD, lies a rather sophisticated plan: Dash wants to actually become the everyday “Digital Cash” in your wallet.

“Dash is Digital Cash”

Well, if the website itself leads with that message, then it’s likely that’s what they’re going with: “Digital Cash.” And if you look at some of the places you can spend it and even the debit cards you can get that are tied to your Dash wallet, they’re onto something.

I Heart Dash So, generally speaking, it’s just like all the other coins – same concept as Bitcoin, up there near the top of the largest market cap currencies with Ethereum and Monero – leading us to wonder…what really makes it different?

“Dash is what I thought Bitcoin could be”

That quote comes from Amanda B. Johnson, who has fashioned herself as the leading expert on Dash. You can watch an entire interview with her here on something called the “Anarchast:”

If you listen to the interview, even just for a few minutes, you’ll be left with a couple very positive impressions:

Dash is the most instantaneous of the cryptocurrencies
Dash has a private setting that can let you remain anonymous
Amanda is a heck of a brand ambassador for the currency.

Where is this all going? Your wallet, your local store, and the new economy…if Dash itself has anything to do with it.

Dash Evolution

Evolution is their approach to taking digital cash mainstream, ending up on your phone, being used to pay for your latte or your parking or whatever. Don’t believe it? Here’s a screengrab:

Dash Website — Think they’re on to something?

“Connect directly with merchants” sounds like they want to cut out the banks and payment processors. (That’s intriguing.) Or there’s an Uber-like, Amazon-esque “you will be able to rate purchases so the community can decide which vendors are providing quality products and services.”

So not only will you be able to pay digitally with Dash, you can also – like Uber, or Amazon – give the merchant 5 stars. Or 1 star.

The future is now in your hands, consumer.

But…what about those merchants?

Evolution might be really bad news for…

Payment processors. Banks. But not merchants.

If you think about the way current payment processing works, you might get a migraine. There are layers and there’s a back-and-forth and everyone tries to get their cut – albeit small – before the money actually hits the merchant’s bank account. It’s that necessary evil that eats away at margins of the pizza place or coffee shop. It’s a whole bunch of “not fun.”

But take a look at this screener from the Dash website:

“Forget about complex infrastructure or relying on third parties to handle…payments” and “build direct relationships with your customers using the blockchain.”

Which could also have been written: “avoid those companies trying to sell you payment processing because you won’t need them.”

What Does It All Mean?

Heart Dash Saying it might mean good things for Dash, its users, and investors might be the understatement of the decade. You have a strong community, coupled with the infrastructure build to support use in the mainstream economy. And you have people like Amanda (really, we’re just scratching the surface, as there’s a whole host of people talking up Dash out there) stumping on the currency’s behalf.

Might be time to give it a serious look.