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Litecoin

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:

Litecoin on Coinbase

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.

 

Written by David Van de Walle · Categorized: Coinbase, Litecoin

May 02 2017

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.

 

 

Written by David Van de Walle · Categorized: Bitcoin, BRED, Dash, Digibyte, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Hedge Fund, Investing, Litecoin, Ripple

Apr 23 2017

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

The first-ever #subway restaurant accepting #LTC! And soon there will be more. Make #Litecoin great again! @SUBWAY @SatoshiLite @slushcz @ pic.twitter.com/idpiV5hl8i

— Oldrich Peprla (@OldrichPeprla) April 21, 2017

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.

 

Written by David Van de Walle · Categorized: Bitcoin, Digibyte, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Quadruple, Segwit · Tagged: altcoins, Bitcoin, digibyte, doge, dogecoin, four baggers, litecoin, segwit

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