Metacoin

Covering Bitcoin, the Blockchain, Altcoins, and Fintech

Dogecoin

The Return of the Meme Coin

Time to have a little fun with a combination of finance, gambling, AI, the Oxford comma, and meme coins.

If I had a dollar for every meme coin I’ve seen, heard about, been pitched, been presented a scammy airdrop tweet for, or lost my shirt on, I’d have probably one trillion meme coins.

(And if you count up all the meme coins stuck in my MetaMask account and maybe sitting on my phone, you’re well on your way to the first trillion.)

So we thought we’d start with Bard, the AI tool from Google, and see what it/he/they think(s) about the current state of Meme Coins.

The prompt:

Suggest five crypto meme coins that could be potential ten-baggers — that is, could go up in price 10x — based on current conditions and past results.

Bard’s Response

Here are five crypto meme coins that could be potential ten-baggers:

  • Dogecoin (DOGE): Dogecoin is the original meme coin, and it has a large and passionate community of supporters. It is also one of the most well-known cryptocurrencies, which gives it a lot of potential for growth.
  • Shiba Inu (SHIB): Shiba Inu is another popular meme coin that has seen a lot of growth in recent months. It is similar to Dogecoin in that it is based on the Shiba Inu dog breed, but it has its own unique features and community.
  • Baby Doge Coin (BABYDOGE): Baby Doge Coin is a newer meme coin that is based on Dogecoin. It has quickly gained popularity, and it has the potential to reach even greater heights than its predecessor.
  • Floki Inu (FLOKI): Floki Inu is another newer meme coin that is based on the Shiba Inu dog breed. It has a strong community of supporters, and it is quickly gaining momentum.
  • SafeMoon (SAFEMOON): SafeMoon is a meme coin that has a unique tokenomics system that rewards holders for holding their tokens. This has helped to create a strong community of supporters, and it has the potential to reach even greater heights.

It is important to note that these are just a few of the many potential ten-baggers in the crypto meme space. There are many other promising projects out there, and it is important to do your own research before investing in any cryptocurrency.

It is also important to remember that meme coins are a high-risk investment. The prices of these coins can be very volatile, and they can lose value quickly. If you are considering investing in a meme coin, be sure to only invest what you can afford to lose.

Let’s Go to the Videotape…

Dave here again. And we’re not exactly going to the videotape, but we are going to compare and contrast the thoughts from the Bard machine with some thoughts of our own. (Folks, THIS is how AI and ChatGPT and Bard and all are supposed to work. Want more thoughts on how your life might change? Check out this post, complete with a Jordan Peterson Meme.) Let’s start with DOGE.

BEFORE WE DO THAT…First of all, this is not investment advice. Note above that Bard told you as much, and said you should “be sure to only invest what you can afford to lose.” Wise old Bard.

AND…why not make this a CLEARLY MARKED SPONSORED POST? Sure. Here’s an AFFILIATE LINK from BINANCE. We can both benefit if you use that link to sign up. Now, let’s get to DOGE…

Elon Musk Was Right

(Thanks to CoinGecko for the stats)

Elon said something once about “to the Moon” and I think he was talking about DOGE because if he had said “to Mars” he’d be talking about SpaceX. Alas, he was right…if you look at the growth of the coin from its all time low 8 years ago. But who HODLed DOGE? Nobody, that’s who.

Is it a safe bet? Eh…

Here’s one way of looking at it: Market Cap. If DOGE is an $11B coin (well, just short, but let’s round up), could it become…a $20B coin? $100B? OR $1B?

From the “Up Only” perspective, yeah, it might be at its peak.

On a 1-10 scale with 10 being the likelihood of a “ten-bagger,” and 1 being “you might be better off rolling your window down while driving on the highway and throwing a bunch of twenties out of your car,” we give this a 3.

SHIB. Or…SHIV.

Here’s the thing about SHIB. You had to get in super early or else…you are probably better off trying other options.

This SHIB thing is the 15th-largest crypto by market cap. And it — like the other meme coins — serves no utility. Market cap of $6B. Nah, it gets a score of 2 on the 10-point scale.

We’ll go with SHIV, who gets a 10.

There’s a Baby Doge?

Okay. But, this one is confusing because there are multiple Baby Doges AND this coin is also on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) but has expanded to Ethereum, too. It’s the ultimate in DYOR BUT, with a market cap of $333M, yeah, it has room to grow. Plus the confusion and the desire to get in on something that *could be* the next DOGE means…We give it a score of 6.

FLOKI Is Pretty Much the Same, Right?

A cursory glance at the numbers tells us that FLOKI and BABY DOGE are pretty much the same coin. Both come in at roughly the same market cap, so it might come down to gut feel.

We’re going to give a slightly higher score to FLOKI thanks to its not having “DOGE” in its name. We give it a 7.

What Is SAFEMOON and Why No Dog?

SAFEMOON does not appear to be affiliated with a dog meme. This is a plus.

It’s over on the BSC chain, so there needs to be some BNB to take advantage of it. (How do you get BNB? You use the CLEARLY MARKED BINANCE AFFILIATE LINK.)

Market cap is lowest among the five coins on our list, so it probably gets the highest score. Nice stats here:

We give it an 8.

Final Thoughts on AL, or AI

We have a couple final thoughts here.

First of all, as evidenced by the image at the top of this post, the move to sans-serif fonts has meant that you’re not totally sure if people are talking about Artificial Intelligence or guys named Al.

That being said, the list created by Bard was fine. It served its purpose: quite a bit more than a Google search, but not quite enough to give you the full feel for what’s going on.

Finally, you’re best off — AND THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE — ensuring that you have the basics taken care of and are ready for (surprise) the SHTF stuff we’ve talked about before venturing into the meme coin game.

Crypto Hedge Fund Update

One note before we dive in: we’ve actually made one minor tweak to the “Hedge Fund,” which you’ll see below. We’ll also explain why, but suffice it to say that this is a space that’s always shifting, and we thought this shift was important.

Hi! How was your weekend in Cryptoland? Oh, you didn’t visit?

Bitcoin Hedge FundWait, you don’t know how to find Cryptoland? You must be new here.

Anyway, sit back and relax. Let’s take you on a little journey to the small corner of Cryptoland we call the DIY Hedge Fund.

***DISCLOSURE: As always, do your own research. This is not investment advice or financial advice. We aren’t responsible for gains or losses. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.***

Why We Invested In What We Invested In

The main reason behind the hedge fund was…well, to act as a hedge against other things happening in the world economy. As we mentioned back when we launched this fund, this was (1) hypothetical and (2) based on an assumption that someone has net investment funds of $100,000. That’s how we arrived at the $10,000 figure – 10% of the overall funds.

We gave it variety – didn’t want it all in Bitcoin, and we needed to have a couple emerging coins, too.

Plus, we wanted at least one recent ICO, leading us to WeTrust – which we’re actually getting out of in this hypothetical fund.

So we’ll have to change that fun graphic. But that’s not as important as telling you about the results…

First, where we started

Here’s how the initial investment, made on May 1, broke down.

crypto hedge fund

Simple enough, right? 30% in BTC, and the rest split between those categories – “Established,” “Growth,” and “Emerging”) we talked about above.

(You could argue whether Litecoin should move into the second category of “Established” altcoins – it’s not a Growth coin anymore, and it’s one of the Crytpo Unicorns now, with greater than $2B in market cap – but let’s keep these categories as is for now.)

Now that we see where we started, let’s see what it looks like today, August 7, with the prices from this morning (as close to midnight as we could find, GMT, pulled from CoinMarketCap.com).

crypto hedge fund

 

Not too shabby, right?

Actually, if you could get those sorts of returns from any asset, you should probably take them; any time you take $10,000 and turn it into nearly $40,000 inside of three months, it’s nothing short of staggering.

But We Had to Make a Tweak

That’s right, we ditched WeTrust, since we didn’t like the fact that it was our only negative return. We replaced it with Tierion, which is an ICO that – full disclosure – Dave personally invested in.

We simply swapped the dollar value of the WeTrust coin for an equal amount of Tierion, which was priced at $0.071 by the coin’s management team.

And we are now off to the races…again.

We’ll keep tracking this fund – as we do our BRED Portfolio – and we’ll let you know what happens as we continue our journey through Cryptoland.

BTW…

We’ve also been telling you about Bitconnect – the lending platform backed by the Bitconnect coin. Click on the banner ad below to get started; it’s our affiliate link but, if you join and get others on board, you can share in referral fees, too.

 

Signal to Noise Ratio: Be on the Lookout

It was a busy weekend for cryptocurrency. And, with Consensus – the largest event in the Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency industry – getting started this week, you might be in for a crazy ride of hype, more hype, and even more, uh, hype.

Today, we’re going to talk about the “signal to noise ratio” – expected to be heavily weighted this week in the direction of NOISE – as well as what to potentially look for coming out of the event.

Weekend Headline #1: BTC and ETH

BTC ETH ATHFirst, Bitcoin and Ethereum jumped over psychological hurdles ($2000 for BTC, $120 for ETH), then pole vaulted over the same hurdles, with prices for each reaching all-time highs that might have seemed folly just a couple of weeks earlier.

In fact, we looked at our own screenshot from April 26, where we saw that Ethereum was in the 50s and we thought…WHAT?

This is not unexpected, however: for every case out there that “Bitcoin is overvalued” or “Ether is just a me, too technology,” there seem to be dozens of stratospheric projections – some based on math! – that both coins are only scratching the surface.

Weekend Headline #2 – Altcoin Roulette

Meanwhile, the “Altcoins” – those non-BTC coins that are highly volatile – were also doing some rather odd things in the markets. Take two of the more interesting cases from one of our hypothetical portfolios: Digibyte and Dogecoin.

Here’s a screenshot from our “Hedge Portfolio,” with the three-week growth of those two coins highlighted.

DGB DOGE

Anyone else think this all looks eerily like the late 90s? Instead of a high-flying Internet stock tip, it’s a high-flying cryptocurrency bet that could go from, in the case of Digibyte, $1,000 to $15,304.77?

The flipside of the late-90s argument is the “how are these used in the wild?” argument. Digibyte went “Segwit” before the other mainstream coins. Doge is called by some “the world’s tip jar.” With real use cases and actual nine-digit market caps for both coins, it’s not that you’re betting on cocktail-napkin business plans.

Signal to Noise

We’ve talked for the past several weeks about things like “fundamentals,” and business plans, and use cases, and white papers. And, the fact that we spent so many years in financial services and fintech marketing and communications means, frankly, that we can see through a lot of the BS that accompanies any launch.

This week, as the industry gathers in NYC for Consensus, we invite you to be on the lookout for BS. For hype. For marketing double-speak – which, it should be no surprise, exists in the blockchain and crypto universe, too.

Honestly, and this is not trading advice and you should of course seek your own counsel, fundamentals are what attracted us to investments such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Digibyte, and Dogecoin in the first place. Sure, each has its fanboys and fangirls on the various chat boards, but the reality here is that each has the fundamental potential to make serious noise in this emerging industry.

We invite you to do the same: watch for the “check out this COIN, bro!” posts vs. the announcements of actual news from the businesses. See what looks like an engaged, active community online vs. a coin with lots of questions but very few answers.

And as always, stay grounded. Do your research. Don’t dive in with more than you can handle.

Have a Great Week!

PS: two things we recommend here, and these are AFFILIATE LINKS, so we may be compensated if you make a purchases using them. But we’d recommend them even without the affiliate relationship.

Thing one: Coinbase. It’s the easiest way to get started and, if you want to dip your toes in the water – a distinct advantage of cryptocurrency investment vs. stocks, bonds, or mutual funds – you can buy a little bit. Like $20. Seriously.

Thing two: Trezor. You don’t want to mess around with storage solutions that might fail you. Trezor is the only hardware we trust. We break it down on the site, and this is the best deal we’ve seen to date on it.

 

Your Own Bitcoin Hedge Fund

If you look around the internet, you can find quite a few investment funds that aim to capitalize on Bitcoin and emerging blockchain technologies. However, it’s awfully tough to get into them: you’ve either got VC (venture capital) funds that rely on high-net worth investors for their capital, or you have hedge funds that are out of the reach of most mere mortals. (And they don’t really invest in Bitcoin and altcoins yet; thanks in part to the US SEC requirements around funds.)

Then there are the ETFs that we keep waiting for the SEC to approve, as well as the mutual fund industry: do you think they’ll jump into the pool yet? Probably not.

So, what’s an investor to do?

Easy: start your own Bitcoin Hedge Fund.

Okay, a few caveats first: we’re not investment advisors, we’re not registered with the SEC or FINRA. This is not individual investment advice. Use and follow at your own risk. Seek legal, accounting, and other individualized assistance before investing.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s begin.

It’s not REALLY a “Hedge Fund”

That’s right…we’re not actually advocating starting your own “Hedge Fund.” We are advocating starting a fund that “hedges” against ebbs and flows in the overall markets.

This is akin to the precious metals people – the “gold bugs” – who claim that you should have somewhere between 90 and 100% of your money in gold. (That’s a joke: some experts, though, will tell you that you’ll miss out on the potential for explosive growth unless you have 10-20% of your money in gold, silver, and other tangible assets.)

AND the other important part of this equation, which the gold bugs will tell you over and over again, is that you want something outside of the US Dollar in case things hit the fan.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies might help you there, too: since they’re outside the US Dollar, they’re also a tremendous way to avoid having to worry about whether the dollar fares well against the Japanese Yen or the Euro.

Your Own Hedge – Gold, Crypto, Whatever – How Much?

Now we get into your own soul searching. You need to figure out what makes you comfortable. (We realize that a good chunk of this is counterculture stuff – if you walk into your investment advisor’s office and say “I want to put 10% of my retirement in Bitcoin,” they may look at you as if you have three heads.)

So we’re going to create a hypothetical character – “Herbie Hedge,” who, though conjured out of thin air, does not have three heads – and we’ll manage a hypothetical fund on Herbie’s behalf.

Hypothetical Investments

To make it easy, we’re going to say Herbie has $100,000 to invest, and the OLD Herbie – as of twenty minutes ago, before he read this post and decided to create his hedge fund – had his liquid-ish investments (stocks, bonds, mutual funds and cash – since they’re between ordinary investment accounts and IRAs, 401(k)s and the like, we’re calling them “liquid-ish”) distributed like this:

  • 50% S&P 500, DJIA Index funds (or, 50% in an overall stock portfolio that looks like the overall market)
  • 20% Growth, international, value, and the like
  • 20% Bonds
  • 5% Gold, silver, precious metals
  • 5% Cash and cash equivalents.

Pretty simple, right? And he was planning on leaving it there. But now that he’s taken a look around this site, and maybe he’s learned a little bit about the “BRED Portfolio” and the “Coins that May Quadruple,” he’s ready to re-consider what he’s doing long-term. Plus, there’s FOMO to worry about: what if this Bitcoin or these other altcoins or cryptocurrencies really do take off?

Speaking of FOMO, didja see what the BRED Portfolio did over the first four months of the year? Whoa.

Herbie’s Hedge Fund

First up, let’s re-distribute his portfolio, the $100,000 he has to invest.

Let’s say Herbie is still a believer in the overall market, might think he can lessen his reliance on bonds, and wants to keep a little in gold and precious metals. BUT he’s also ready to jump in with both feet – to a certain extent – and invest in Bitcoin and its ilk.

We’ll redistribute his (hypothetical) portfolio like so:

  • 40% S&P 500, etc.
  • 20% Growth, etc.
  • 20% Bonds
  • 10% Herbie’s Hedge Fund
  • 5% Gold, etc.
  • 5% Cash, etc.

Voila, Herbie is ready to invest $10,000 in his very own hedge fund.

A Visual “Map” of Herbie’s Hedge Fund

Hedge Fund Portfolio

The way we’d propose setting up this “hedge” fund shouldn’t be a surprise to readers of this space.

Bitcoin is there because, well, duh. It is the centerpiece of this new economy. It’s the one that started it all. And, not only do we recommend it in our BRED Portfolio, we also recommend it as one of those four coins that could quadruple. (Yes, we like linking to our own content multiple times in the same post.)

The next 30% is comprised of the other three coins in the BRED portfolio: Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH) and Dash (DASH). To keep it simple, let’s do 10% of our 10K in each.

Following along, let’s aim for the mid-tier: semi-established coins with semi-large market caps. 10% each in Litecoin and Dogecoin.

Finally, there needs to be at least a little that aims to take part in the explosive growth of (some) ICOs and brand-new or new-ish coins. We’re setting aside 10% for two of those: Digibyte and Trustcoin.

Here’s the result:

Metacoin Hedge

We grabbed the values from Coinmarketcap, it’s denominated in US Dollars, and of course its value will fluctuate. Heck, as of this writing, Bitcoin was on a mini-tear and was trading – depending upon the market – between $1450 and $1600.

What if I don’t like these individual coins?

Here’s where we go back to the old saw that we don’t provide individual investment advice, trust the professionals in your circle, and past performance isn’t indicative of future results.

But again, let’s go back to why hedge funds were created: the market ebbs, and your hedge fund flows. And vice versa. You’re going to see results that run counter to the results in the overall market – within reason – and that’s okay. Also, within the individual fund, you will see some altcoins do well and others not so much. So if you don’t want to hedge your bets with Digibyte (which I’ll admit didn’t pop like I thought it would after the Segwit rumors and Segwit news), research another coin.

The goal is to spread your risk overall – remember, only 10% of our liquid-ish portfolio is in this fund – and to spread your risk within the fund itself.

What if I don’t have $10,000?

No problem – actually, the beauty of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency investment is that you can get started with very little. (This is a great time to remind you that you can get started over at Coinbase, and if you use this link and make a qualifying purchase, you get extra Bitcoin…and so do we. So yes, that’s an ADVERTISEMENT.)

So you can borrow liberally from our approach with whatever amount you think makes sense. $1000? $100? Test it out over time, see what happens.

What we’ll do here…

We plan on tracking the results of Herbie’s Hedge Fund over time. We’re curious to see how it does against our BRED Portfolio, and we’re also interested in how it does against the overall stock market.

 

 

Four Coins that Could Quadruple by This Time Next Year

Okay, folks. It’s time. First, the disclaimer:

We don’t provide individual advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Seek professional investment, financial, and legal advice before investing in any asset, let alone cryptocurrencies, which are a brand-new, emerging class of assets. Read our recommendations and take them with a grain of salt, do your own research to back up your investments, and be prepared. Use this site at your own risk.

Now that we’ve scared you, here’s our post.

We gotta admit that this is a rather fun universe we’re entering here. Part dot-com boom (before the bubble), part options trading when it was just invented. And part gambling, because, let’s face it, some of these ICOs and emerging cryptocurrencies are like playing the lottery or playing roulette.

That being said, though, the idea of creating an entirely new form of money, based on computing power and solving code and a lot of stuff that’s way over the heads of mere mortals – well, that’s just plain thrilling.

So, as we jumped head-first into the pool with this post, we tried to think of the particulars that could make these coins actually go crazy in the market. Some of this is going to be a little too techno, and some of it is going to be real-world. All of it is mere speculation: I can’t see the future.

But if you take our “BRED Portfolio” post as an example of our ability to be soothsayers, we might be on to something here. (If you had invested in the BRED Portfolio on April 1, you’d be up 12.08% in just three weeks.)

Enough background. Let’s dive in: Four Coins that Could Quadruple By This Time Next Year.

Metacoin Meme

#1: Litecoin

That does it for me. Seriously, though, once you’re starting to see a coin used side-by-side with Bitcoin, you now know it’s got real-world functionality.

Litecoin (LTC) is about to hit its fourth birthday, and it’s actually well below, on a USDT basis, its all-time high of $50.27 a coin (achieved in November of 2013). It’s that factor first and foremost on our list of reasons why this coin could quadruple by this time next year.

Volume of late has been huge – 9-figures worth traded a couple times in April – but its utility, to the tune of transactions per day in the thousands (more than double the number of Dash transactions, per this chart), tells us that the coin is actually being used out there in the wild.

Over the weekend, the LTC/BTC pair was trading at .01 to .012-to-1 – support kept the price above .01 pretty much all day on Saturday. This is another good sign.

Expect volatility, though – I’d hazard a guess that it may bounce around in the .009 to .01 range for awhile. That’s a good price to jump in at.

Mandatory mention of Segwit here. LTC is moving toward Segwit. Segwit is important. Let’s all talk about Segwit!

Disclosure: We’re long Litecoin at the present moment.

#2: Dogecoin

Yeah, I can’t believe it either. A coin named after an Internet meme…you CANNOT be SERIOUS? Dogecoin. I’m serious.

DOGE had more than 10,000 transactions in the past 24 hours – more than Litecoin; third in the rankings behind Bitcoin and Ethereum – and its market cap is $50m+. So it’s legitimate.

What really jumped out to me? The average transaction value. It’s pretty low ($310 or so) when compared with others; the median transaction of around $3.28 tells me that people are using this coin as a Venmo substitute. (Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. But I’m guessing fewer lattes are purchased and more random paybacks and IOUs are covered with this one.)

Dogecoin trades around 35-38 Satoshi of late. Its all-time low is 15. I see more mainstream use in its future. I wouldn’t be shocked to see it in the 60s in a month or so.

#3: Digibyte

Digibyte logoDid we mention Segwit above? We did. Here’s a link to the latest on Digibyte Segwit activation.

To the layman, this means little, but to those in the know, here’s the general consensus:

  1. Segwit is important; its adoption will drive the price of the coin adopting it higher
  2. It may never happen with Bitcoin, it might happen with Litecoin
  3. It looks imminent with Digibyte.

Place your bets: with a current market capitalization of less than $10m, do you think the bargain hunters will start shopping for the coin that is the first to activate Segwit? Honestly, quadrupling might be a lowball estimate. We’d accumulate anywhere in the low 100 Satoshi range.

Disclosure: we’re long Digibyte right now.

#4: Bitcoin

BitcoinDidn’t see THAT one coming, did ya?

Let’s assume that Bitcoin stays around $1200 USDT, giving it a market cap of right around $20B. Now, let’s also assume that Bitcoin becomes the word synonymous with all digital currency, crytpocurrency, and altcoins (even though it’s NOT an altcoin), sorta like “Kleenex” brand facial tissue is everyone’s word for facial tissue.

I was going to say that there’s all sorts of crazy economic stuff going on in the world, but heck, I’d focus on two things that should drive the value of Bitcoin way up in the next 12 months:

  1. Brexit
  2. The tenuous state of the EU and the Euro

Now, that might get folks moving toward the US Dollar – which is a fair guess – but if you factor in the dicey nature of the US economy and the role of the Federal Reserve in money printing…do you think the masses will want to start putting their money into the US Dollar? Especially when an infinite supply of dollars could, technically, be printed?

Do you think a $5,000 price point for one Bitcoin is out of the question?

Disclosure: We are currently long Bitcoin.

Additional notes: we do not make any trades in any of the listed coins here for 24 hours after the date we publish this report.