Metacoin

Covering Bitcoin, the Blockchain, Altcoins, and Fintech

BRED or ICO – Which Path?

We’re tooting our own horn…just a little.

If you have followed this site for the past month (and THANK YOU for doing so), you know that we have been talking about two sides of the “coin” when it comes to cryptocurrency. One the one side, the big behemoths, led by Bitcoin, which soared to north of $1400 US this morning. (NOTE: we realize there are some…issues? questions? with Tether and the USDT price on some sites. We’re going with Poloniex’s numbers from a little before noon Central time today.) On side two: the little guys, be they altcoins or ICOs.

AND YES…there are three sides to every coin, o wise one. Side three is the edge of the coin, where many of you might currently be. Reminder to get started with Coinbase, buy some Bitcoin or Ethereum, and get rolling! They’ll give you a bonus and we’ll get a bonus for referring you.

Back to the tooting of our horn: we believe we’re onto something with the BRED portfolio.

BRED is on a TEAR

When we first came up with the concept, we picked four of the coins with the highest market cap, but also four that could fall into different buckets. The same way that Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google make up FANG – with each bringing a different dish to the table – Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum, and Dash all have something a little different about them:

  • Bitcoin – “first-mover advantage”
  • Ripple – “banks are using it”
  • Ethereum – “smart contract” (banks also using it)
  • Dash – “most consumer-friendly”

Simple enough, can fit this on a napkin. So we thought, let’s create a portfolio of just these four, give them 1/4 each of our investment, and leave it alone.

Here’s what it would look like right now:

BRED Portfolio

Yes, you read that correctly. A $10,000 investment, spread equally between these four coins, made on January 1, would be worth more than $51,995.12 today.

Oh, and if you sat on the edge of the coin and waited until April 1 to buy, you’d still be up 22% THIS MONTH.

But what if you’re waiting for an ICO?

Some ICOs Had INSANE Weeks

While some of this could be the start of a bubble – and our pal Roger Aitken talks about that in this post on GNO – ICOs are on a tear, too. Well, some of them…

  • GNO set records, rising to a valuation of $300m
  • TaaS has raised $6.1m US, all of it outside of the US
  • MobileGo has raised more than $6m in its first week
  • Exscudo* stumbled a little on day one, but is nearing the $1m mark in only its second day.

* We are participating in Exscudo’s “bounty program” and have purchased a small stake. Also, we wrote about it in more detail over here.

What’s the Takeaway?

If you think things are just getting going, you may very well be right. Bitcoin’s market cap is above $20b, but, with fixed supply and companies still scrambling to get involved in blockchain technology, the four members of the BRED portfolio seem to be hitting the gas pedal.

And these four ICOs, each with their own different angle and spin, could also be poised to make serious news of their own – I mean, in addition to the news they’ve made already.

BRED graphic

BRED or ICO?

What about both?

Using Coinbase – A Primer for Bitcoin Newbies

We’re going back to basics today. And we thought we’d use this opportunity to share our Coinbase link – so, in the interest of full disclosure, we could be compensated if you sign up with this link. But, once you spend $100 worth on Bitcoin or Ethereum, you’ll get $10 worth of Bitcoin, too. Win-win.

Basics: What is Coinbase?

Veterans of this space might be surprised when they realize that Coinbase has been around since June 2012. Here’s how they describe themselves.

Founded in June of 2012, Coinbase is a digital currency wallet and platform where merchants and consumers can transact with new digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. We’re based in San Francisco, California.

And, oh my goodness do they have a foothold on this digital wallet space, having raised more than $117m from leading tech investors and venture capital firms. You can see a complete writeup on Crunchbase, one of our favorite tech info sites.

What’s a Wallet?

It might seem obvious, but it’s worth a mention nonetheless: a wallet is where you store your coins. Read this from Coindesk if you’re looking for more advanced info, but, for now, just think of the basic idea as an old school wallet, like the one you’d put in your pants pocket or purse.

In the typical American wallet, you’re likely to find cash – FIAT CURRENCY! – identification, and maybe some credit cards. Some of what’s in a physical wallet is innocuous, right? I mean, everyone holds onto a fortune from their last trip to the Chinese restaurant, don’t they? But it’s that other information that you guard carefully – your ID card is a pain to lose, and you wouldn’t just give out your credit card number or the CVC code on the back to any random stranger.

Your digital wallet can be looked at the same way – in fact, some of the information that moves Bitcoin (or Ethererum, we’ll use Bitcoin throughout this article as a catch-all for the digital currencies on the Coinbase system) back and forth is better thought of as in a safety deposit box or a safe.

The public component to your wallet is the Bitcoin address, and this is something you can give out to anyone and everyone. This is INBOUND. You can use it as a tip jar, you can ask your Uncle to send you that five bucks worth of Bitcoin he promised for your birthday (ha!).

Here’s our Bitcoin address:

1G8Ayc15sqoyGzN4DFUeheRkgFeS9t6oSW

And our Ethereum address:

0xf0940C79d93E88450aA366238ef8C298Da11EB74

Note that those two look different. Because they’re completely different languages and sets of code.

Adding to your account

Here’s where the FIAT CURRENCY comes in: you’ll need to send money to your account using one of a couple methods. One is to link a bank account, and then your Bitcoin will appear in a few days, once the banking systems talk to each other and confirm your account. The other method is to use a credit card. There’s a fee attached – as there is to the bank account method – but the upside is that your Bitcoin will appear almost instantaneously.

Using Coinbase as your “hub”

Coinbase Dashboard

If you’re brand new to Bitcoin, you can totally use Coinbase as your online hub, your gateway to the vast world of cryptocurrency. As you see above, you can get the current price quote, you can buy and sell – trade – your Bitcoin, you can send Bitcoin to folks you owe money to, and request it from folks who owe you money.

Here’s a snapshot of some of our recent activity.

CB Activity

But, as you might have guessed from some of our other posts here, this is only scratching the surface of our cryptocurrency activity. You can use your account to send money into one of the trading platforms, like Poloniex or Bittrex – two of the ones we use. Or you can invest in an ICO, such as the Exscudo or Sikoba coin offerings we have talked about here.

Only Two Coins?

Despite what the rumor mill might tell you, right now only two coins are on the Coinbase platform: Bitcoin and Ethereum. So if you want to get into other coins, you’ll have to convert them via a trading platform (or an ICO; Gnosis used Ethereum tokens yesterday to raise a crazy amount of capital in their auction). But that’s pretty simple to do.

Pretty simple, right?

Yes, the fine folks at Coinbase have actually made this dummy-proof. Which is one reason they’ve raised so much capital and they’re the wallet of choice here. (It’s not just from that link up there that can score you a Bitcoin bonus with a qualifying purchase, and will also score us a Bitcoin bonus with your qualifying purchase. There’s that “win/win” again.)

Other Coinbase developments

This was mentioned by leading VC Fred Wilson the other day, and, given the growth of Ethereum as the backbone of blockchain applications, it’s probably worth checking out. Token launch from Coinbase.

Last month, we covered the GDAX launch from Coinbase – it’s an important institutional investment milestone for the company.

We’ll keep an eye out for other coins added to the Coinbase site, too.

 

An ICO to Watch: TaaS

ICO WatchEDITOR’S NOTE: We learned on April 22, by examining the terms for the TaaS ICO, that investment is prohibited in the United States. In addition to being bolded in the document, you must affirm that you are not a United States citizen before continuing. As of this writing, 9 a.m. CDT in the US on April 24, TaaS has raised US$5.5m.

If you’re new(ish) to the crypto space, you might be wondering: “How do I get in on some sweet ICO action?” And if you’re really new to the crypto space, you might ask: “What’s an ICO?” We’ll try to (figuratively) kill two birds with one stone, er, post by talking a little about a rather interesting ICO we bumped into: TaaS.

ICO: “Initial Coin Offering.”

Here’s a term that is pretty straightforward. IPO – “Initial Public Offering” – makes total sense in the investment vernacular, and is a pretty commonly used phrase. A company, having proved its worth over time, decides to raise money by, for the very first time, offering its shares to the public over one of the bigger stock markets (NYSE or Nasdaq).

Initial Coin Offerings work the same way, but the twist is that an ICO isn’t traded over a stock exchange. And, these coins are often the opposite of proven – in fact, many ICOs are trying to get enough capital to get their idea/coin/token off the ground.

Meet TaaS

 

TaaS ICOFirst of all, we’ll admit it’s a pretty slick webpage – though the logo, frankly, leaves a lot to be desired. Also, there’s a bit of a Soviet connotation in the name – remember “TASS,” the Soviet news agency? (Nyet? You’re probably not old enough.)

But let’s talk about the technical aspects of this, and whether or not this idea is worthy of your investment dollars (or coins, as it were). From the website (which is the first one we’ve seen with the TLD extension of “.fund”):

TaaS is a tokenized closed-end fund designed to reduce the risks and technical barriers of investing in the blockchain space. Built on a profit-sharing smart contract, TaaS introduces an innovative Token-as-a-Service business model, allowing investors to subscribe to the fund’s income stream. TaaS built an innovative Cryptographic Audit technology to become the first, truly transparent fund dedicated to cryptocurrencies and tokens.

Sounds a little like a cross between a mutual fund and a venture capital fund.

A Crypto “Fund of Funds?”

We’ll go with that: here appears (at least to our eyes, which, while not “untrained,” aren’t experts in the fund space) to be the closest thing to a Fund of Funds that you’ll find. At least so far. Fund of Funds invest in, well, a bunch of funds. They’re like hedge funds but they just spread themselves around various mutual funds.

Or this could, if you read the materials on the site, appear to be closer to buying into a trading desk or flash trading firm. Except they’re just going after blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies.

How will this shake out?

Darn good question: we’ve only got a few more weeks before the ICO is done and you can’t buy the tokens directly. Instead, you’ll have to rely on trading them on the open markets – and, as of this writing, only two exchanges are going to have the TaaS tokens as part of their mix: Livecoin and Kuna (the largest exchange in the Ukraine). (Read more here from Cointelegraph.)

So we’ll be watching closely.

By the way, if you want us to write up your ICO, send us a note: info – at – metacoin – dot – co.

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.

 

Sikoba Launching as Peer-to-Peer IOU Platform

SikobaWelcome to the brave new world of blockchain startups, where ideas range from the straightforward to the esoteric to the “what IS that?” Different angles toward distributed ledger technology, different industries impacted, and different levels of buzz, all in one emerging, exciting, and sometimes downright crazy industry.

So we thought we’d talk about one of the ideas that falls into the “straightforward” category: a company called Sikoba, whose ICO we started tracking a couple weeks ago here on the site. (And, of course, if you’re part of an ICO or blockchain startup, reach out! We’d love to hear from you. Info – at metacoin – dot – co.)

Don’t Call it a “Lending Platform”

When we caught up with Sikoba CEO Aleksander Kampa over email, we were very quickly corrected on one point: Sikoba is not a peer-to-peer lending platform. Here’s more:

Metacoin: Please give us your elevator pitch.

Kampa: Sikoba is a decentralised money platform based on peer-to-peer IOUs and built on blockchain technology. Participants who know and trust each other in real life grant each other credit lines in the Sikoba system. They can then pay each other without using fiat money. These peer-to-peer credit relationships are governed by contracts with specific conditions, fee structures and repayment rules. Using credit conversion, a kind of configurable rippling, payments between participants who do not trust each other become possible. Fiat money or cryptocurrencies are used when there are no credit links between participants, or to repay outstanding balances when needed.

Metacoin: How is Sikoba different than btcjam or other peer-to-peer lending platforms?

Kampa: Sikoba is not a peer-to-peer lending platform! It is a peer-to-peer IOU platform, which allows payments to be made without having money (whether fiat, crypto or any other asset) to begin with. 

Metacoin: Why is blockchain technology needed?

Kampa: Sikoba is being designed as a decentralised system with the goal of eventually becoming independent and self-organising. Blockchain technology will make this possible.

Metacoin: What is the consensus model of your chain? (if applicable)

Kampa: We’re designing the Sikoba blockchain as a “federated blockchain”. This is a permissioned mining model where only authorized nodes add blocks to the blockchain. The Sikoba federation will be self-governing, meaning that members will be added or removed from the federation based on votes of the federation members themselves.

Metacoin: What are the tokens people get for participating?

Kampa: Following the presale, Sikoba presale tokens will be issued on the Ethereum blockchain. They will eventually become exchangeable into Sikoba (SKO) tokens, which will be used to pay for transaction fees on the Sikoba network.

Metacoin: When exactly does the sale start?

Kampa: The pre-allocation phase has started on 17 March 2017, the public presale will start on 25 April.

Metacoin: When will the token be released to participants?

Kampa: Sikoba presale tokens are expected to be released by the end of June 2017. Participants will receive usable Sikoba tokens when the Sikoba platform launches, which is expected in 3Q2018.

Metacoin: What is the current state of your project?

Kampa: We are a technical team of 3 people, plus several people providing support on a part-time basis (Ethereum coding, admin, legal). Sikoba is still at the concept stage, elements of technical documentation exist but are as yet incomplete. With the funds raised in the presale, we aim to expand the team, finalize a detailed white paper and develop a MVP before the end of the year.

Where to find info…

You can check out the Sikoba Presale Page to learn more. Sikoba is also on Twitter.

Kampa is pretty active on Medium, and you can see his take on “replacing banks” here.