Metacoin

Covering Bitcoin, the Blockchain, Altcoins, and Fintech

Passive Income

The Metacoin Q&A – Travis McGarrah – @MakeBitGrow

We’re trying out a new feature here on the site: today we’re running a Q&A with one of the folks we’ve come to know over the past few weeks, Travis McGarrah, whose Twitter handle is @MakeBitGrow. We met Travis online when we were both lamenting the demise of Bithaul.

In this interview, we’re letting Travis share AFFILIATE LINKS and we’ll be sure to mark those as obviously as we can.

Q: What got you into the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency world?

A: I am new to the crypto world. I started researching it this past August, even though I first heard about Bitcoin first back in 2012 or 2013. At that time, I had no idea what it was and today I am kicking myself for not researching and investing back then.

After researching Bitcoin, I decided I need to jump in. In my mind, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a whole is the way of the future. If you know about globalization and understand that the world is getting smaller and smaller every day, you start to understand the need for decentralized currency. In a world where people so freely travel from country to country and commerce is more of a global concept, we need to be able to transfer money from person to person without needing a middle man to exchange fiat currency.

When I came to this realization, I decided to learn as much as I can about the industry.

I work a normal 9-to-5 job, so I don’t have a lot of free time to trade. That is why I got so interested in the various lending platforms out there (most notably Bitconnect and Chain.Group) (NOTE: BITCONNECT AFFILIATE LINK is METACOIN’S, CHAIN.GROUP IS TRAVIS’S.) These programs allow me the chance to passively gain income while still working my 9-to-5.

Q: What has been your most successful trade so far?

A: Being new to crypto and not really trading, my best success has been buying into the ICO for Electroneum (ETN). The just went live on Cryptopia last week. (NOTE: The Cryptopia link is to their referral program; however, we have yet to witness any actual results from their referral program.)

During the ICO, I spent $250 and bought 27,500 ETN. That means I paid roughly $0.009 per ETN. As of 11/6/2017 each ETN is valued at $0.05. On that ICO, I have 5.5x’d my investment. I will speak on Electroneum in a later question.

Q: What has been your biggest trading or investing failure?

A: As I previously stated, I am a fan of the programs that allow me to make money passively. Back in the middle of September there was a website called Aurum Bank that was promising huge growth – we are talking 17% per day – compounding over 15 business days. I invested $1,300 with hopes of making large profits in a short time.

The money never got paid and the website went belly-up. In the matter of 3 weeks, I lost $1300. When you lose $1,300, you tend to get very emotional and start doing ridiculous things. So, without regard to logic, I took another $1,500 and put the money in another website named HourPay.net. They are still operating, but they closed my account and took the money.

This means over the course of 22 days, I lost almost $3,000. That was a gut check and it made me take a step back and evaluate the other programs that I was using at the time. Then I decided to only roll with 3 programs (Bitconnect, Chain.Group, and BitPetite). Since the reevaluation, BitPetite has disappeared, but I was lucky enough to break even on that investment.

Q: That’s a nice segue into Passive Income Platforms – Bitconnect and the like – you and I both met when trying to get to the bottom of the Bithaul scam. Which ones are you currently using?

A: Currently, I am in BitConnect and Chain.Group. From my experience, they are both geared to be around for the long haul. And I recently started using a website called Hexabot, (TRAVIS’S AFFILIATE LINK) which is a new program, but they give you .0001 BTC to start and they have a faucet built into the website. So, you can start using the website at no cost.

Q: Have you done any mining? Any success?

A: I have only spent a little bit on Genesis Mining. I spent about $110 on Ethereum mining and Monero mining. When I get more capital, I would love to put more money into mining. I think there is money to be made there, but you should have a lot of money to invest otherwise you don’t make much. With the $110 I spent, I make about $0.09 per day, which really isn’t anything.

NOTE: Here’s the METACOIN AFFILIATE CODE for GENESIS: waVTYG – use it here: Genesis Mining.

Q: What up-and-coming, under-the-radar, or forgotten coin are you a big fan of?

A: ELECTRONEUM!!! All the way, this is the coin that I am most excited about. I previously spoke on this coin, but I think there is a great chance for it to make waves in the cryptocurrency world.

I consider myself to possess above-average intelligence and able to grasp difficult concepts easily. But most of the world can’t grasp new concepts, like cryptocurrency, quickly. What ETN is doing is making cryptocurrency more understandable and accessible by 2 main ways.

  1. Moving the decimal of cryptocurrency 6 places to the right. Most of the world operates in a way that 2 decimals make way more sense than 8 decimals. This is going to allow more people to understand how cryptocurrency can be used in mainstream ways. To this day, I still struggle thinking in 8 decimals.
  2. Allowing ETN mining through an app or normal CPU capabilities. When people think of mining they think about antminers or these super computers with powerful abilities. Electroneum is working to release an app that will allow anyone with a smartphone to mine their coins passively. This will allow people that may not every be able to access cryptocurrency the ability to mine and earn money.

Electroneum just got listed on Cryptopia, but they haven’t released their ICO tokens to the investors. They only tokens available are from people that have mined them. I firmly feel that Electroneum is gearing up to be a game changer. Keep an eye out for it!

Q: Where do you see the Bitcoin price on New Year’s Day, 2018?

A: Selfishly, I want the price to have a dip after the Segwit2x split. But realistically, I see BTC being in the $8,500 – $9,000 price range. The price for Bitcoin will continually increase as people find more needs for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

Here’s what Travis looks like; feel free to follow him on Twitter for more insights. He’s one of the good guys…

One last note – be sure to get your POW Tokens while you still can. Free Airdrop. Use this link: POW TOKENS. We get a bonus if you use that link – but you can get bonuses for referring folks, too. Sometime on November 7, they’re doing a Twitter airdrop. You’ll want to follow them and be at the ready.

99 Days of Bitconnect

UPDATED ON NOVEMBER 2 – Bitconnect is still cool, but we’re striking through all the text about Bitpetite, which is a scam.

Here on the site, we’ve talked quite a bit about the concept of “Passive Income,” and, specifically, Passive Income Platforms (PIPs) where you can invest your coins or tokens and watch them make money for you.

We’ve also tried to be as upfront and transparent as possible. This approach, we think, lets us share with you a “warts and all” look at these PIPs and whether or not they might be worth your hard-earned Bitcoins.

Bithaul
Bithaul is a SCAM.

We started our journey with Bitconnect (AFFILIATE LINK), and we’ve also tried a couple duds – “scams” is actually more accurate – like Bithaul (the image over there is what they SAY we have in our account right now, though we haven’t been able to withdraw for almost a month), or Control Finance (another dead site), or Ambis (SCAM).

(The only other platform that we’ve tried and can still vouch for is Bitpetite (AFFILIATE LINK), which continues to have a great track record for us. And we promise to try more of these in the days to come, with a report on them as we proceed.)  Bitpetite is a SCAM.

Bitconnect remains the leader for us because of a couple of factors:

  • It is backed by an actual coin;
  • That coin has a large market cap;
  • There is a wide distribution, throughout the world, of Bitconnect users;
  • The track record of payouts is pretty strong (see chart below).

99 Days In…

Okay, the image we’re about to share will take a little scrolling on your part. It’s a screenshot of our Excel spreadsheet that tracks the amount of interest paid each day we’ve been part of the Bitconnect system. SO it’s 99 days of history, going back to July 10, when we got started. Let’s take a look:

Before we psychoanalyze this spreadsheet, we should probably give you a refresher on the basics.

  • For instance, you need to invest a minimum of $100 to get started. You need to convert Bitcoin into BCC, their coin, and then invest a round number in an increment of $10. We landed on $110 to get started because of exchange rates and whatnot on the day we invested.
  • $10 is a pretty important number for the site, too, because you can only reinvest in multiples of $10.
  • You are given the option to cash out your interest whenever; but we have chosen to reinvest it at each step of the way.
  • Since we’re not “whales” on the site – at least not yet – our investments and reinvestments are locked down for 299 days; to get your money back sooner, you will need to invest a minimum of $1010.

We’ve tried to manage this spreadsheet so that it’s obvious to us when we reach a milestone: the “Reinvest” column is highlighted when we reinvest into the system. Another key milestone for us was September 14: that’s the date we took some affiliate commissions from Bitpetite (AFFILIATE LINK; you, too, can sign up and get affiliates on the site and get commissions should you so choose) and invested them into Bitconnect. (That’s why the upper right corner, where it says “initial investments,” reads “$310.”) (ALSO, ignore the “Today’s Total” figure; we’ll fix once the coffee consumption is at normal levels.)

Pluses and Minuses

One thing you’ll need to consider here: are you better off parking some of your coins somewhere (like Bitconnect) or just keeping them in Bitcoins and doing nothing.

This is a legitimate question – we look at our own approach as “risk management” and we aren’t planning on putting all of our eggs in any one basket. Still…

This chart shows the Bitcoin price on July 10 – the day we got started on Bitconnect – and tells us that we would have also done well had we just taken $110 worth of Bitcoin and parked it in Bitcoin. At today’s price of around $5640, that’s more than a 132% return.

BUT, if you see look at our Excel chart above, you’ll see that we did just as well, in a shorter time frame, with our original investment; $110 had turned into $260 on Sept 13, the day before we dropped another $200 into the platform.

In addition to the other concerns that you should have with any Bitcoin-related investment – that you could lose your entire principal, that the site could disappear on you, that you’ll invest your time and money in something you’re better off avoiding – another concern is whether you are better off with the core coins (like our BRED Portfolio) as opposed to these passive income platforms.

This is a legitimate question – might end up being a “minus” in the grand scheme – if you take some of those Bitcoin estimates that are floating around and tease them out. For instance, one prognosticator we found on the internet made a semi-legitimate case for Bitcoin to hit $27,000 at some point in early 2018. By then, our original Bitconnect investment would be worth around $1500, but would pale in comparison to the same amount just parked in Bitcoin (which would quintuple in Q1 2018).

As Always, Watch Your Eggs

The multi-basket, disciplined approach is a good one; and there’s also something to be said for the fact that parking your Bitcoins at Bitconnect actually parks them for 299 days. It’s not like there’s a “substantial penalty for early withdrawal,” since there is, more accurately, “no possibility of early withdrawal.”

So we should summarize the same way we summarize all of our discussions of these platforms: Do Your Own Research, don’t invest more than you can afford to lose, manage your risk appropriately, and…good luck.

 

 

Getting Started (Redux)

Several weeks ago, we posted a few ideas to get you started with cryptocurrency. You know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and some of the other coins and tokens that we discuss on this here forum.

We thought that we’d spend some time today revisiting that idea: How Do You Get Started?

Our goal today is AN ACTIONABLE LIST. A few things to possibly whet your appetite.

We have a few ideas below – and, since this continues to be an experiment, some of the links are going to be different from the last time we did this. As usual, we’ll include a few AFFILIATE LINKS with this post (so we may be compensated if you take some sort of action, like signing up, buying currency, or investing) and we’ll be as blatant as we possibly can when we share one.

Let’s begin.

An Airdrop and This Will Cost You NOTHING

We talked about this “airdrop” last week and it’s still going on. Here’s a link to the POW Token webpage. Simply put, you sign up with your Facebook credentials and the token creators give you a bunch of tokens (or coins).

We have been asked “Why Are They Doing This?” and the best answer to that is that there’s value in a widely distributed network. While the creators make some…interesting…claims on their web page, there is something to the fact that a network with a million people using its product will be much more valuable in the long term than a network with just 30,000 users (which is where it stands today).

For now, think of this as a Western US land grab, and you’re putting stakes in the ground and hoping that it becomes fertile farmland in the future.

Coinbase – STILL the Fastest Way to Get Started

This one will cost you money, but one of the beautiful things about Coinbase (AFFILIATE LINK) is that, for Americans at least, there’s a decent amount of seamless integration between traditional banking and this new economy. The AFFILIATE LINK gives you a $10 bonus (paid in Bitcoin) if you spend $100 on any combination of the three currencies they offer (Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin). (And once you join in, you’ll get your own link and can invite others yourself and possibly be compensated…which is cool with us.)

Trade Coins on an Exchange

While there are a few established exchanges that we’d suggest – Bittrex, Cryptopia (AFFILIATE LINK) and Poloniex are three that we currently use – you should also consider signing up for one of the newer exchanges, too.

  • Altcoin Exchange (AFFILIATE LINK) may very well be lucrative for you – we know that other exchanges that started this way (through referrals) compensated their early adopters rather richly. Use our AFFILIATE LINK over there, and then start referring others yourself as you see fit.
  • WCX  (AFFILIATE LINK) is another one, with an ICO coming in a few weeks.
  • COSS is brand new. Not an affiliate link, but we do like the fact it’s based in Singapore and has developers throughout the world.

Passive Income Platforms

Yes, we have been talking A LOT about Passive Income Platforms, or PIPs, that can help you profit with limited amounts of effort. We currently recommend two of them – that’s not to say there aren’t others that are worth your time and investment, but these are the two that we (1) have experimented with and (2) have not let us down.

DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH! Seriously, with any of these, your coins could end up in a black hole of nothing. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

  • Bitconnect (AFFILIATE LINK) is beautiful, we think, because it is backed by an actual coin, one that has a large market cap (as of this writing, around $1 Billion). The odds of it disappearing are small.
  • Bitpetite (AFFILIATE LINK) acts more like a mining platform, in that your “investment” will not be returned to you. However, we now have a nine-week track record of daily payments from the site; note that payments are larger during weekdays than weekends.

An Actionable List?

That’s our hope. You can spend a couple minutes on the first one and it costs you nothing, then, if you’re ready to invest some real money, you can consider trying the other ones out.

In any event, don’t invest more than you can afford to lose…once you get started in this world, it might get a little addictive.

Bitpetite – 6 Weeks In, Going Strong

BitpetiteWe were going to call this post “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” but we feel that would be unfair to the folks at Bitpetite. (That is an AFFILIATE LINK; plus we’ll run a banner ad or two on this post, too. Using our affiliate links to sign up for various programs in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency universe helps us to keep providing the content here; plus, as you’ve seen elsewhere on the site, we take a “warts and all” approach to these platforms, and to our own investments. We’ll tell ya when we’re wrong, and we’ll sometimes even make a mistake or two.)

Another potential title: “The Good, the Okay, and The Meh.” That might be more accurate, as we have had a generally positive experience, we’ve lucked out on the affiliate front – but we do have some issues with Bitpetite that we’ve raised in the past and will continue to bring up.

Let’s go:

The Good, Part I

The Bitpetite platform is one where they perform “Money transfers with cutting-edge technology,” and they rely on your investments to do that. Call us high-rollers if you want: we invested a whopping 0.5 LTC in the platform on August 17, choosing the LTC/LTC option, meaning that we were investing in LTC and our profits were paid in LTC, not converted to USD.

Should you want to get involved, you’ll need to decide which of the three currencies (BTC, ETH, or LTC) you want to use, and whether you want to be paid in that currency or have your payments denominated in USD.

Away we went with our investment, and the value at the time was $44.54 for one LTC. $22.27 at stake. Yes, high-rollers.

You know, in this crazy Bitcoin-related world, and especially with the Passive Income Platforms we talk about on the site, six weeks can sound…well…risky. We’ve seen platforms go belly up in less time than that; our $22-ish was more than enough to try out with.

We can officially report back that…Bitpetite made every single payment.

Bitpetite 6 weeks
Should have invested more, huh?

We are confident enough in this site’s long-term prospects that we will invest again; this time, we’ll put a little bit more at risk.

AD BREAK: should you, too, want to get involved, here’s a lovely ad you can click on.

The Good, Part II

The affiliate program has been good to us; because it’s “multi-level,” it might scare a few people off – if you’ve never been part of a Multi-Level Marketing meeting, you might have scary thoughts of a coffee shop somewhere and being sold into a system where you have to recruit a bunch of people for your downline.

HOWEVER, we haven’t had to sit in on any hour-long presentations, and we’ve relied on this blog, on Twitter and, to a lesser degree, on Facebook to get other crypto enthusiasts involved.

So yeah, this is our version of an MLM sales pitch – you, too, might have a lot of contacts on a platform and, if you join in and get them to join in, you could find yourself being compensated for others’ involvement. Here’s that AFFILIATE LINK again.

The Okay

“Okay” – which I’d say is a generally positive experience, more positive than negative – probably could be attributed to the “brand experience” here. It’s fine – the website is fine, the name is interesting (but is it pronounced like “appetite” or is it supposed to be French?), and the negatives from the “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” element are offset by the fact that they have paid, consistently, for the six weeks I’ve been in the program.

But we **do** have a couple issues with this site, and we’ll raise those in the next section…

The Meh

Our issues here are almost entirely semantic ones.

It’s not an “investment” if you don’t get it back, right? Or, more accurately, if you think of this like buying a share of stock that pays a dividend: at some point down the road, your hope with the share of stock is that you will be able to sell it for more than you originally paid for it. If you sell it for less, you can then tell yourself that the dividend payments can make up for the loss of principal on the original investment.

With Bitpetite, you say goodbye to the entire principal.

We have bolded and italicized that part because we want to be more upfront than the Bitpetite team is: you will say goodbye to your entire principal.

In our case, the value of the original investment – $22 or so – was paid back and then some; our 0.735 LTC is worth, at today’s price ($54.94), $40.38. That is a return of 89%!

It is not, however, the return of 147% that the site claims.

A 100% return on investment means you have doubled your money. You have not doubled your money – you have done well, this is a great passive income return, but you have not doubled your money. This is an important distinction, and one we challenge Bitpetite to change on its site.

Summary: Bitpetite Might Be Worth Your Time to Investigate

With all of the Passive Income Platforms, we stress you should Do Your Own Research and that these are risky propositions – just like with any other cryptocurrency investments, ICOs, trading “altcoins,” heck, even buying Bitcoin or one of the other behemoths, you could lose your money.

But our recommendation, based on six weeks of positive results, is that Bitpetite still gets a thumbs up, and may be a good place to park some of your coins for passive income.

 

 

BREAKING: Bithaul Won’t Let You Withdraw; Likely a Scam

Bithaul Scam

Once again, the team at Metacoin is likely “taking one for the team.” We “invested” a little into the Bithaul platform and, while the site is still operational, what’s going on is really not a good sign.

Bithaul Sep 25

We revisited our own Bithaul dashboard this morning, saw that we were racking up the Satoshis, and waited until 24 hours after our last withdrawal to take out more Bitcoins. (Or fractions of Bitcoins; we’re experimenting but not going crazy.)

However, our attempt to withdraw was met with an “ERROR” message, followed by another. And another.

We’ve been trying all morning and we’re not alone…

https://youtu.be/Uq5tmkThbqs

Seems like the folks at MakeBitGrow had the same problem; only, to their credit, they thought they’d test the following theory…”If they’ll take deposits, they’re likely a scam.”

Sigh.

What’s Next?

We’ve reached out via email AND we’ve even Tweeted at the company. However, the odds of anyone seeing their money again are pretty slim.

While we wait for any response, it probably makes sense to go back to a couple old saws:

  • A fool and his Bitcoins are soon parted;
  • If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is;
  • Returns that sound unsustainable in the long-term will end up crippling any platform in the short-term.

By that last one: sure, platforms are throwing off interest and you can withdraw, so everything seems hunky dory. Until it isn’t.

We had our own strategy worked out with this site – we were going to be in for a little while, adding some and taking some profits, and then we were going to just take profits and stop adding. This way we could offset any long-term issues with a short-term win or two. But, sadly, it doesn’t appear that we’ll be able to get back what we put in.

Our Recommendations…

We’re doing our best to try out these platforms and to recommend the ones that are paying out and are legitimate. Right now, only two in this category (passive income investment/lending platforms; separate from mining pools like Genesis) still get the green light from Metacoin:

We have not tried a big chunk of these…give us time.

Right now, we can only tell you the ones that we’ve tried that have gone belly up:

One Other Note…

We would suggest pulling down as many records as you can from any platform you use, and make a habit of doing so on a regular basis. This way, you can best account for what you did actually invest in – and, sadly, you can account for any losses – come tax time.