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Mar 19 2020

‘Congratulations, You’ve Only Lost 13 percent!’

When the first Financial Crisis hit, we discovered the brilliant Australian satirists Clarke & Dawe. Their take on the European Debt Crisis is worth a watch.

The perspective from Clarke’s character is a propos for today’s post: only losing 13% on a portfolio of crypto assets is, with all that is going on, not too bad.

Choppy Waters — Strap in, #Crypto traders

The Balance Portfolio is Kinda Sorta Hanging in There

We created our Balance Portfolio as an alternative to the BRED Portfolio (more on the 2020 version of that below). We didn’t create it as a panacea to cure market woes from the Coronavirus, though; as we discussed yesterday, we think it may very well get worse before it gets better.

Given all of what is going on, 13 percent isn’t bad, right?

Balance Portfolio as of Today

Down so far…but not as bad as you’d expect

Granted, lots of green numbers appear on the screen today, so had we done this yesterday, it would possibly have looked 5 to 7 percent worse.

(One of my personal faves is VeChain (VET); note that it’s also the worst performer in our portfolio. Still bullish on this one, though.)

But, for a pleasant surprise, check the BRED performance so far this year:

BRED Portfolio as of Today

Better performance; slightly surprising.

DASH is slightly ahead of BSV as the winner here; though, with all of the noise that accompanied BSV and its founder — who claims that he’s Satoshi or something — BSV could drop any second now. Plus, the percentage at stake is tiny when compared to DASH, which started at 25% of the portfolio and is now more than one-third.

What Can We Make of This?

Probably not too much, yet. There’s a chance for more of a pullback, or there’s that possibility that the “flight to safety” will happen, still.

The question that remains: are crypto investors whistling past the graveyard, or — like the guy who did the webinar I watched who thinks he can make you rich; maybe he can, maybe he can’t, we don’t know — are there gems that will still pop (just not immediately)?

If You’re Bullish, Here Are a Couple Picks

We made the bearish case yesterday — just for Bitcoin which, possibly, will drag the rest of the market downward with it — and it’s time to make a bullish case for a couple coins that we’ve picked up recently.

We still like VeChain. In fact, we *think* it was one of the “high market cap/under a penny each” coins that was touted by the same investor guru referenced above;
We also like Harmony — ONE is its ticker — and this one has a low market cap (around $10m at last check).
Don’t forget about PAXG, which is tied to the price of gold; each coin is backed by an ounce of gold. (AFFILIATE LINK: You can get it on Crypto.com and we may be compensated if you make a qualifying purchase.)

Here’s to strapping in for the very choppy waters.

Feb 16 2020

BRED vs. Balance – Which Portfolio Wins 2020 So Far?

Well, this has been an interesting few weeks, huh?

It seems, at least to this reporter, that every time you look up someone is saying “this is the LAST TIME you’ll see Bitcoin under $10,000! BUY NOW! HODL!”

10K BTC Price Movement — Okay, that’s just one week…

Well, then…this *is* quite the development, in that the $10,000 resistance level is something that CT (“Crypto Twitter”) will tell you is really really important for short-term price spikes. So maybe there is something to be said for the fact that once BTC goes above $10,000, it holds for a little and then swings downward and then who knows what happens next?

But What Does That MEAN???

As you know, we’re less about trading crypto and more about investing in crypto. It’s about long-term projects — you can find a whole host of others who will tell you about short-term gains — and we did what we thought was a pretty decent post called Playing the Long Game a few months ago.

In the interest of talking about those long-term investments, we told you a few weeks back about the 2020 Balance Portfolio. Today, we’re curious about that portfolio, how it’s doing, and whether or not it stacks up against BRED, the stalwart we started tracking in 2017.

Let’s Go to the (Crypto) Videotape

Actually, before we do that, two things. ONE: THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. DYOR = DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. We’re not responsible for your success or failure or anything in between. TWO: HERE IS A SPONSORED LINK: If you haven’t gotten yourself some crypto, we highly recommend Crypto.com. That’s our affiliate link and you can get a bonus by using it if you make a qualifying purchase.

A little foreshadowing: when we wrote the post on the Balance Portfolio a couple weeks back, we didn’t think we’d see the results that we’re seeing. We thought both would be up a little — but we didn’t think we’d see the winner that we saw.

First, the 2020 Crypto Balance Portfolio:

Two rather pleasant surprises here: ONE is that ETH has nearly doubled. (And, if you were following over the weekend, it had more than doubled before pulling back; prices were north of $280 a couple of times.) TWO is a big wow around EOS. That’s a little crazy, right?

So yeah, if you had invested $10,000 in this Balance Portfolio, you’d have nearly $15,000.

And you would have lost this little contest to the BRED Portfolio.

This one popped because of two factors: ETH (nearly doubled) and Dash (nearly tripled).

Another “Wait, WHAT?” moment was the fact that a $10,000 investment would have given you an 88 percent ROI.

Evidence It’s a Bull Market?

Not one asset in either portfolio is down Year To Date. Not one.

The worst performer of any of the assets was PAXG, which is tied to the price of gold.

What can we learn from all this? Not much, actually — it’s a Bull Market and stuff is up six weeks into the year. Some of the stuff is way up.

Might be time for the “Crypto Dartboard Portfolio:” we’re not going to tell ourselves we’re any better at this than someone randomly selecting crypto projects — but maybe there’s SOMETHING to picking a few potential winners, sticking with some old stalwarts, and hoping for a positive outcome?

As always, maybe staying interested in long-haul opportunities is really the way to go.

Sep 08 2019

How to Get $50 worth of MCO – Crypto.com – for Free

free crypto — Always a couple strings attached, though. Plus Affiliate Links herein. Rock on!

If you’re new to this site, welcome! One of the things we’ve done throughout the past couple years of our crypto journey is to check out a wide range of freebies, sites that hope to amplify your investments, and “airdrops” that give you free coins that could turn into something of value.

We’ve had some luck with these, and we’ve also failed rather miserably.

To wit, visit the following posts for either a laugh or a tear or a combination of both:

We reaallly got hosed on a couple of the passive income HYIP – “high yield investment programs” – such as Control Finance and other names and…yes…we hate to admit… Bitconnect.

You can find a glorious Bitconnect GIF here:

We *did* have luck with a couple airdrops — including ones that gave us the nickels and dimes to leverage into our investment in the Megacryptopolis game.

And, of course, we — like just about everyone else on the planet — continue to reap the rewards from our AFFILIATE LINKS (WE CLEARLY MARK OUR AFFILIATE LINKS SO THERE’S NO CONFUSION) from places like Coinbase and Einstein.

In The Spirit of the Last Bullet, Here’s What You Need to Know

There’s a really unique opportunity here. Monaco used to be the name of the MCO token — you can read a year-or-so-old post here from Investopedia explaining what was going on last year — and then there was a purchase of a web domain called Crypto.com for 12 Million smackers.

It appears (to this reporter) that the plan all along was to use a referral system and credit card-meets-crypto wallet marketing campaign to get users on board. It appears to be working.

How to Get Yours

So, here you go. CLEARLY MARKED AFFILIATE LINK is right here for Crypto.com. It should auto-populate and ask you for your email address, then you can complete the process.

I’m still cloudy on how and when you actually receive your $50 for signing up, and how and when you can actually receive your $50 for referring, too.

There’s an element of this that is pretty cool, though: they want you to stake your coins — read: park them and don’t touch them for a while — and that’s so that you can start using their crypto-based credit and debit cards. They’ve got all the banking licenses to do this in the US, which will make this INCREDIBLY INTERESTING TO FOLLOW.

Yes, I said that in all caps — with all the questions around things like securities and ETFs and crypto taxation and the like, we Americans aren’t as fortunate as folks elsewhere who can roll with Bitcoin options trading and make mad bank.

But, if you want to start crypto and you’re not sure how, Crypto.com might be a good starter pack. THERE’S THAT LINK AGAIN – we’ll get something for signing up, and you’ll get free crypto.

Jun 24 2019

Playing the Long Game

Since *everyone* is jumping on the “IT’S A BULL MARKET” bandwagon of late, we thought we’d take a step back for a half-second.

Sure, the trappings of a bull market are there: the quick runs northward, the new entrants, the “OMG HODL” chants. And the $11,000 mark sure is nice.

SO – SHAMELESS PLUG – AND CLEARLY MARKED AFFILIATE LINK: get some crypto over at Coinbase, will ya?

But the real purpose of this here post is…playing the long game. Which means doing a couple things — beyond the HODL moments everyone will tell you about, or the “put 1% of your overall net worth into crypto” that the experts will hit you upside the head with — that might not payoff for months or even years. That’s okay. Time to play the long game with us.

**Let’s be as blatant as possible with this warning: do your own research. Your experience will vary. Not a substitute for investment advice or legal advice. You are on your own — we are just sharing information.**

Long Game Idea 1: Megacryptopolis

I shared my predictions with my buddy Von Likenstien from VRUoT. I was most curious about my timeline, as I said that Megacryptopolis (NOTE: THAT’S AN AFFILIATE LINK) was going to be huge BUT it’s going to take a year.

Did he agree? And how does Megacryptopolis compare with Decentraland — that other interesting land-grab style virtual world game that became rather large a couple years back?

“The big difference,” he told me, “is that, instead of depending on novice programmers to build the system, MCP3D is a complete, robust system. Plus, its economy is closer to that of the Sims.” Taxation is another element that is well thought out in MCP3D, according to Von.

From my perch: I am really new to the virtual world thing, and I never really played the Sims. Nor did I get on board with whatever that virtual world was several years back (must have been huge, right? I forget the name). But there’s something intuitive about the virtual world of Megacryptopolis. And the idea of millions of Chinese users having access to the game on their mobile phones this fall is extremely compelling.

Time Horizon: Probably a Year.

Long Game Idea 2: NFT Artwork and Collectibles

This idea isn’t just one site to visit, it’s an entire concept: Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Artwork and Collectibles.

This particular subject came up when Von and I were trading notes about CryptoSkulls — likely because he sent me a message and said “get on this, bro.” So I did, and ended up with my very own CryptoSkull.

When I asked Von about my CryptoSkull, here was his response:

OpenSea is where a lot of these things get traded, and the fact that it’s a non-fungible token means that it’s really tough to counterfeit.

As always, with these types of things, you’ll use a tool like Metamask and your ETH will be safe (provided you keep track of your seed phrase and guard everything rather diligently).

Beyond CryptoSkulls, there are CryptoKitties and even the pets that come as part of your Citizen packs on Megacryptopolis.

Time Horizon: Immediate (ish) to Two Years*

*the reason we said “ish” up there is that, if you want to trade these things and try to make a buck or two, you most certainly can. OpenSea is one place to do trading — but it’s sorta thinly traded right now.

Long Game Idea 3: ENS

Ethereum Name Service is more than just a new top-level domain for the web. In fact, the TLD component is coming later — a year and a half away, according to Von — because the real reason behind ENS is to allow people to send crypto (Ethereum and ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens) to each other without having to type out a really long address.

Here’s a long address from one of my accounts:

0xD0f4c9280D87ae84c2590164FA089487615Fb1c8

And here’s an ENS “shortener” for it:

jaimedimon.eth

(Yes, I know that Jamie Dimon spells his name “Jamie,” this misspelling was done for a variety of reasons, mostly for humor.)

Some of the domains are already trading, and it’s highly possible that big banks will want their own ENS, for defensive reasons and also to get into the crypto game easily.

Time Horizon: Immediate (flipping/trading) to Two Years

Long Game Idea 4: Urbit

When Von told me about this one, he said “it might blow your mind.” Honestly, it kinda did.

The primer on the Urbit site will tell you more — and it is quite clever — but it’s likely you may not totally understand exactly what they are doing here. (I sure didn’t at first glance. Or at second glance. I’m getting there, though…)

TL;DR from the site: it’s a completely different network of computers, of the internet, of the web. It has the potential to change the world of the web as you know it.

Galaxies are the big hubs — there are a small number of them — then stars, then planets (the addresses on which you build what appears to be your own personal server and bot machine thing). (Again, I’m not a programmer — so I’m trying to translate this from technical into not-so-technical.)

(If you believe the naysayers: this whole idea has taken forever and hasn’t gone anywhere in a dozen-plus years, so why bother.)

Me? I figured (again thanks to Von) that the thing I should do is at least get one of these limited-edition planet things and see what happens. Because there won’t be a ton of them; and each one not only has its own unique name (ours is ~larwyn-tadlen) but its own SYMBOL.

One of those green things could control your toaster someday.

In any event, this one won’t take off for some time — but, in case it does, we’ve at least been part of one of the early land grabs. The network effect here might mean that we’re A FEW YEARS from these things taking hold and being used by the masses. Still, for what was an inexpensive investment for now (less than a cup of coffee), it’s possible that you could see one of those symbols on the cover of a magazine at an airport with the caption of “you could have bought this for two dollars in 2019, now it’s worth a million.” (That year could be 2049, though.)

Time Horizon: Five years, at least.

So there you have it: ideas for you to play the long game with. Some may seem out there, tougher to grasp than the “buy gold” or “have you heard about pork bellies?” ideas of yesteryear. A chance for you to start playing the long game.

Apr 15 2019

The 2019 Tax Day Crypto Portfolio

Happy Tax Day, ‘Merica!

If you’re visiting this site from elsewhere in the world, welcome! Great to have you here. We Americans have a deadline of today to pay our Federal income taxes and boy is that fun this year. You may have heard about a tax cut last year and the ensuing OMG factor that came next: “the rich paid nothing and I don’t get a refund anymore!”

That’s not entirely true. Because of withholdings and how much some people had – or didn’t have – taken out of their paychecks, it *sounds* like lots of people had smaller refunds this tax season.

Some of you, though, may be getting a little money back. Or, in this roaring economy, you may find yourselves with cash to spend, or invest.

We’re here for ya!

What Happened to Our Other Portfolios?

Oh, you mean like BRED and the “Hedge Fund?” Well, as we spend our time getting this site back and running after the “Crypto Winter,” we plan on revisiting those, too.

For now, though, we’ve decided to give you three options: Small, Medium, and Large. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, this is not investment advice, and remember that you may lose a little, a lot, or ALL of your capital with anything.

Here goes.

SMALL PORTFOLIO (Like, $100-$500)…What to Do, What to Do?

TBH, we’d stay away from speculating on high-fliers. We’ve been there, it can get ugly if something goes completely belly up.

In fact, if you want to spend all of your small portfolio on crypto, here’s what we’d recommend:

First: Divide it in Half

Let’s use $500 as the number here. Take half and just put it in a Coinbase account and leave it there. You can get one of 11 currencies at Coinbase (THAT’S AN AFFILIATE LINK OVER THERE AND YOU CAN GET A BONUS AND WE GET A BONUS, TOO, WITH QUALIFYING PURCHASE) and we’d stick with Bitcoin, Ripple, and Ethereum (or just pick one) and leave it there. You’re in the game with $250 and you won’t feel the need to play around. Which brings us to the other half…

Then: Play Around

We’ve made no secret here that we’re now taking quite a deep dive into a crypto gaming community called MegaCryptoPolis. (ANOTHER AFFILIATE LINK THERE.) For this, you need Ethereum and a Metamask account to keep the two safe and in sync.

We’ve had fun so far with this game – we’re playing with house money, so to speak, as we cashed in “Airdrops” from the past couple years. If you look at your tax refund as house money, you might have some fun, too. Plus, there’s a bit of a gambling element, in that you’re taking a chance on which cool “Citizen” you’ll end up with. Here’s our favorite so far, she means business and we’ve named her “Sloan.”

MegaCryptoPolis “Professional” Who Means Business

MEDIUM PORTFOLIO: $1000-$5000

With this portfolio, we’d suggest you figure out how much – if any – speculation you want to do, and how much you just want to park in something (somewhat) safe.

If you’re not the play money type, then you can consider revisiting BRED: “Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash.”

We just went back to the concept of dividing money equally between the four “core” coins of the BRED portfolio. We also considered “forks” by investing proportionally between the two forked coins; i.e. since Bitcoin’s price is roughly 19 times higher than Bitcoin Cash (BCH), we invested 19 times as much in Bitcoin.

Here’s what it looks like as of this morning:

This is also a “set it and forget it” portfolio — with the idea that you’re not going to spend way too much time looking at the price growth in any of these.

You also may not get rich off of this portfolio, either: assume that the ship has sailed on the OMG I’M RICH!!! portfolios of a few years ago, as you’re not getting in on the ground floor on XRP (the coin from Ripple, which is why it’s known as “BRED” in this portfolio) with the hopes it will go to $20,000 per.

But this would be a good, safe, crypto bet if you can afford it.

WHALE PORTFOLIO: $5,000 on up

Okay, look at the below chart of seven currencies’ “sparkline” graphs from the past seven days. Fourth from the top (nearing its high) and seventh from the top (all upside last week) look most compelling. Curious?

These two might be somewhat worthwhile to take a stab at. BCH is Roger Ver‘s Bitcoin fork – “it’s the real Bitcoin” is what he’ll tell you. BNB is Binance Coin and that’s an equally compelling Asian crypto exchange that’s always doing interesting things – such as burning its own coins, which Twitter friend @BambouClub tells you might be right around the corner.

Both of these large coins — the above chart is from the Top 7 by market cap — and both are likely to be around for a while. We’d suggest considering them as part of your WHALE PORTFOLIO (said in all caps because why not) and here’s how that *could* look (DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!):

60 percent BRED
20 percent Large Market Cap Coins, with 10 percent each in BCH and BNB
20 percent on interesting use case coins — projects in which you see potential.

That third category is where you’ll have to, again, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH; you’ll also need to rely on gut and also sort through whether they’re good blockchain projects, good crypto exchanges, good business models, or just good ideas. Or all four.

Since you’re doing 20 percent in this category, you can pick three or four and, if any one of them goes belly up, you won’t be totally rekt.

Ideas for This Part of the WHALE PORTFOLIO

Here are a few projects to check out:

BitTube (TUBE): Someone’s going to try to take on YouTube’s market dominance and do it through the blockchain. BitTube is one such player (though, honestly, PewDiePie is headed over to DLive, which is on Steemit, so maybe his name recognition gives that platform an advantage).

Storj (STORJ): Decentralized, blockchain-enabled storage is a concept that we’re sure will take off. Whether it’s Storj or someone else remains to be seen.

Quantstamp (QSP) bailed us out in the past by analyzing smart contracts. You buy some of their coin to do that and it’s a pretty seamless thing.

And Paragon (PRG) is doing the cannabis thing — fits and starts during their development but worth looking at, as they now do both a “WeWork-for-cannabis” and a “seed-to-sale” tracking platform.

UPSHOT: Your Tax Refund Can Work For You, Maybe, With Luck

We’re just here with a few ideas, that’s all. And Lord knows there are folks anxious about getting back in, and curious about whether we’ll see another bull run ever. So, again, look around, do your research, and, if you’re ready, dive in!