Litecoin

Jul 13 2017

DIY: Your Bitcoin Hedge Fund

It’s time to update our Bitcoin Hedge Fund, which we told you about back in May. Before we do that, though, this reminder: we DO have a Facebook page, we ARE on Twitter, and we’ve been spending a ton of time over on Steemit. We’d love to have you join in on the conversation in any or all of the three.

And away we go…

Hedge Fund Background

First of all, the typical standard disclaimer: do your own research. We’re not responsible for gains or losses. Get legal, tax, and accounting advice. Don’t invest more than you can lose. These are volatile-as-f markets, y’all. Really volatile, especially the past several days, where there was at least a little bloodletting and panic.

Anyway, our original post said we’d park a small amount – in our hypothetical fund, we chose a guy named “Herbie” and his hedge fund (“Herbie’s Hedge Fund”) had $10,000 to invest. We chose this amount as ten percent of his investment capital. Is that a good amount? A bad amount? Too high? Too low?

Heck, that’s for you to decide. If you’re Wences Cesares, you’d put 1% of your net worth in Bitcoin and leave it there for several years. That may turn out to be good advice, or it may turn out to completely fizzle.

What We Started With

Our hedge fund had a nice mix of established coins – the BRED portfolio, of course – as well as some emerging coins and a recent ICO. Here’s what it looked like then:

If you have more than a passing understanding of the markets we’re in, you might think every one of those coins has gone up since May 1. And you’d be almost 100% right: using today’s prices, grabbed from CoinMarketCap.com, here’s what you’d have:

Some notes on what we see here:

Bitcoin: Holding Steady

Bitcoin is doing well enough, and it started as 30% of the portfolio – for reasons detailed in May, but, if it’s becoming the reserve cryptocurrency, then yeah, you want a good chunk of it.

What will be interesting, though, is where it goes in the next 20 days or so. Hard Fork, Soft Fork, stuff that even we admit we’re paying attention to but not studying THAT closely – the August 1 deadline date for Segwit-related movement on the part of the BTC-hemoth will mean movement in price not only of BTC, but perhaps of others in the BRED portfolio…and LTC, too.

Timing on LTC, DGB, XRP: Not Bad!

From the “blind squirrel” department, all three have done well. Litecoin was, indeed, a defensive play – you could argue that it belonged in our BRED portfolio – some folks have told us so – but it’s (in our eyes) a bit like Bitcoin and a bit like Dash. But it’s also seen as a Bitcoin alternative, so that’s why it’s here. And it has nearly doubled in the past five weeks.

And some of our success is a little bit of luck – we thought we could be too late to get into Ripple’s XRP token, but it turns out that quadrupled for us.

Digibyte went on a tear, then pulled back and is now back down to Earth – if Earth is an 11x growth in its price.

And, About Our Laggard

Win some, lose some. WeTrust is still a good product/coin/token/system/platform. And we’ll keep it here because we do think that it has tremendous potential.

But two things do jump out at us here at Metacoin HQ:

We picked the wrong ICO.
We are also missing out on a number of these ICOs because we’re in the USA.

A Word on ICOs

Initial Coin Offerings used to be all the rage a couple weeks ago. Then Ethereum pulled back and cries of bubble were everywhere.

THEY’RE BACK.

Tezos $XTZ pic.twitter.com/zswITrHUiY

— BambouClub (@BambouClub) July 13, 2017

That’s one we missed out on entirely because we’re in the USA and these will not let Americans get involved. You have to wait until they are traded on an exchange…

That could actually be a good thing – if an ICO is oversold, overblown, and overhyped, it will more than likely fizzle once it hits the markets, creating a buying opportunity for mere mortals, er, Americans.

But, and this is a message for Congress as they look at tax reform, and maybe, too, a message for the SEC: as long as there’s a ton of caveat emptor attached, what really *IS* the problem with these ICOs being open to American investors? How are they any different from, say, my deciding that Blue Apron is awesome and I want to bet my IRA on the Blue Apron IPO?

Food for thought.

Two More Things

One – our hedge fund actually looks a bit different today than it did on July 1.

Yeah, $7,000 down since July 1. This is why we updated the numbers on July 13 – it’s a more accurate picture of what’s happened over the past 12 days.

Two – your own hedge fund. We told you before that this is a hypothetical experiment and you can use this as a guide for creating your own. However, we like the basic principles here: some big coins, some smaller coins, maybe an ICO or post-ICO coin or token or two. The general idea, as always, with a hedge fund is that you want to hedge your bets.

Overall markets – stocks, bonds, mutual funds, precious metals, pork bellies – those could tank tomorrow, or explode tomorrow, or trudge along. If you have all of your eggs in one basket, you’re likely going to have trouble someday. And if you have all of eggs in the wrong basket, that could spell trouble, too.

Love to hear your ideas! Tell us on Twitter, or in the comments below.

Oh, if you HAVEN’T gotten some coins to get started, pop on over to Coinbase, use this Affiliate Link, and you’ll get a Bitcoin Bonus with a qualifying purchase.

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.

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 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 25 2017

3 Ways to Get Started with Bitcoin Today

I get quite a few questions about this Bitcoin stuff. Like, “How does it work, this digital currency?” Or “How is it more than two thousand bucks for one coin?” Or “How is there so much value placed in something that you can’t even hold on to?”

More recently, I get some other questions. Like, “What the heck are you talking about?” Or “Dude, slow it down just a little.”

There’s a bit of a “rabbit hole” element to this cryptocurrency space – it’s a rabbit hole that I went down last year and really haven’t totally came back up from. And it’s a rabbit hole that got me to make this video:

Yes, it might be over some folks’ heads. Sorry about that.

So, since we all gotta start somewhere, I give you this, the quickest of quick-start guides out there:

3 Ways to Get Started with Bitcoin Today

(1) Thing one is to actually get some of the currency. You can get Bitcoin – that’s the gold standard thing that started this whole space – or one of the other main currencies.

We recommend starting at Coinbase, and we especially recommend using this AFFILIATE LINK to get some. (In this case, the affiliate link will actually give YOU a bonus of $10 worth of Bitcoin if you buy $100 worth of any of the three currencies they offer, which are Bitcoin (it goes by the symbol “BTC”), Ethereum (ETH), or Litecoin (LTC).)

What’s beautiful is that you can get started with a tiny, tiny amount. Got ten bucks? Use the $10 bucks to dip your toes in the water. You will pay a small transaction fee, but, if you were to try to spend $10 on some stock through your online broker, you’d spend probably that much per trade.

(2) Spread yourself out at least a little. (This is not trading advice, consult your investment professional, not responsible for gains or losses.) A recommended approach is to split your initial investment between two coins – Bitcoin and Ethereum – or three coins, adding Litecoin to the mix.

When I started, I started with just BTC and ETH. What I did next is what I’ll recommend for you:

(3) Hang out and watch the space. This means not just reading blogs like this one, CoinTelegraph, and Bitcoin.com, but also looking at the numbers sites and trading platforms to understand what is going on.

Numbers sites? Coinmarketcap.com is our favorite. Coindesk.com is another. These sites cover the numbers of the whole space, and will give you a sense of which coins are trending up or down, as well as the all-important “market capitalization” of each coin.

(You will hear about ICOs, and Smith and Crown does a really good job of tracking those – but you may not be looking for that much granular detail just yet.)

The trading sites make it easy for you to get started actually trading – almost TOO easy, perhaps. Suggestion: go to Poloniex, Kraken, or Bitfinex to take a look at what’s happening. See what’s moving, what isn’t, what’s being traded, and how much it’s trading for.

You may be tempted to play around and do some trading, but you’ll probably want to understand the space much more before you try to make money at it. (Trust us on this one.)

There it is. A 3-Step Plan.

That’s how we suggest you get started. Once you’re ready for the next step, then you can dive much deeper. But if you’re a newbie – and remember, even the experts started somewhere – this will help you get acclimated to the wonderful – crazy, scary, thrilling, but, yes, wonderful – world of cryptocurrency. And Bitcoin.