• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Metacoin

Covering Bitcoin, the Blockchain, Altcoins, and Fintech

  • Start Here
  • Links
  • Disclosures
  • Sketches 2021
  • Collezione

Bitcoin

Feb 20 2022

When the Growth Portfolio Doesn’t Grow

We’re on a mission with the 2022 Growth Portfolio. We’re just not yet sure what that mission is.

When we jumped into the fray with our own mix of ten tokens to potentially invest in — and of course you should DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH — the thought was as follows: get a basket of tokens and ride out the 2022 market with it.

Up? Down? Sideways? Stalwarts like Bitcoin and Ethereum? Up-and-comers in Web3 like $ENS and $MAGIC? Yes.

So maybe the mission depends on the markets; a basket like this can help you ride the ups and downs.

And, So Far This Year, Lots of ‘Downs’

Meh Performance.

So we’re taking one on the chin so far.

That, my friends, is an understatement. Bitcoin’s doing fine when compared to the others — but still down nearly 20 percent — and Ethereum has been down and then a little back up but still down in 2022. To wit:

The roller coaster that goes down first

No time to do any touchdown dances or victory laps: this is not good performance. What gives?

We Don’t Know Why. Time to Catch the Falling Knife?

This is the question I get pretty often: have we hit bottom, or is it time to catch the falling knife? And, from the school of “IDK, DYOR,” I can posit a guess or two but invite you to study this on your own.

Guess One: Global Unease Equals Meh Performance

If I see one more post about “this is the time for Bitcoin” using the context of global geopolitical events as proof that this is the time for Bitcoin, I’ll scream.

However, you *could* guess that people in places like Canada who have had their bank accounts frozen might see a little truth to that. If you can’t even get money out of your bank then, well, this may be the time for Bitcoin.

Hilarious.

Many people called this: not your keys, not your coins. pic.twitter.com/IGblbjOwJu

— Dave Van de Walle (@Area224) February 20, 2022

(Also, if governments don’t understand how these things work, they may only choose to regulate them further. Will that push any and all coins into an oblivion? Will that lead to a black market for all things? Will that drive everything higher?)

Guess Two: Is There TOO Much Crypto Noise?

Is it possible that the ads from Larry David and Lebron James have rendered some of us inured to the noise around the subject? I mean, not the OGs like you and me, natch, but the rest of the world.

Nobody really knows what constitutes a good deal these days, so the newbies jumping in might not care if Bitcoin is $35K or $25K. And so on: for assets without earnings seasons and dividend payments, you’re flying blind.

Celebrating Our Only Good Pick So Far…

“Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.”

We got lucky with $MAGIC. Somehow, at treasure.lol — that’s the web address! — they’re building a pretty cool…ah…uh…whatever they’re building. But trust us, it’s at the intersection of NFTs and gaming and crypto writ large, so we’re there for it.

We had mentioned it a couple times before on these pages, most recently in this post: How to Spend $1000. And we’ll ride this for as long as is feasible.

Today’s Takeaway…

We have mentioned this is not investment advice, right? And that you should do your own research?

Yes, that. Also you may or may not be better off being lucky than being good.

Written by David Van de Walle · Categorized: Uncategorized · Tagged: Bitcoin, Ethereum, magic

Feb 19 2021

Interview with Jim Rogers

We had the pleasure of sitting down via Zoom with Jim Rogers. We talked about a bunch of stuff, including:

  • Bubbles
  • Money Printing
  • The Pandemic
  • When/where/how a crash might happen
  • Janet Yellen
  • Bitcoin (of course)!

Give it a watch or listen!

Written by David Van de Walle · Categorized: Interview · Tagged: Bitcoin, interview, jim rogers

Apr 16 2020

Why a V-shaped Economic Recovery Is Folly

“In these Uncertain Times” is the phrase that sets my 18-year-old daughter off in fits of eye-rolling. They aren’t fits of rage — as, let’s be honest, when you’re 18 and a college Freshman, your rage is aimed at other things — but genuine reenactments of the Michael Jordan “Stop it” meme.

Everyone has gotten into the “In these Uncertain Times” act. Jan from Toyota — appearing in ads festooned as Jan from Toyota, but, of course, from what might be her home office — tells us that Toyota is there for us. Because auto makers and car dealers are the first thing we think of when we enter a global pandemic.

Jan from Toyota is joined In These Uncertain Times by a newly branded “The More You Know” series from the networks of NBCUniversal. Hey, we don’t know what we’re getting into either, but you should know that we’re here for you. In these Uncertain Times.

In any event, the eye-rolling is warranted. It’s not a specific “stop the spread” or “flatten the curve” catchphrase; those ask for a little bit of explanation about why they are important platitudes. How, exactly, do we “stop the spread?” What, exactly, is this “curve” that we must, together, “flatten?”

We want our mantras to be non-specific and our buzz phrases to be amorphous. “In these Uncertain Times” works. Because nobody knows what the hell will happen next. Thus the eye-rolling.

An Uncertain Recovery

If you’re new to this site, we mostly cover cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and how and if they’re weaving their way into modern life. But, as we’ve discussed in the past…well…In these Uncertain Times, Bitcoin doesn’t have a decades-old history to point to. There are no parallels to the Great Ethereum Bounce of 1976, or the Binance Bottom of 2003.

Which brings us to the overall topic of this article — whether or not anyone knows what in Sam Hill will happen to the economy when and if there’s a magic switch that gets flipped and everyone goes back to work.

May I Interest You in Another Unemployment Chart?

Those six data points above need no explanation. To say they suck is putting it mildly; the wind came out of the economic sails on March 11, and we are not going back any time soon.

The “V-shaped recovery” crowd doesn’t necessarily think there will be an immediate switch-flipping exercise, but they do think that the “Trough of Suck” will be rather short-lived. (More on the Trough of Suck below.)

An overly simplified version of what the V-shaped folks think will happen is here:

Quick bounce back to decent mood?

The assumptions within a V-shaped recovery are too numerous — like dropping a quarter from space and trying to hit a shot glass in a field in Texas — but here’s a quick synopsis of how that could work:

  • A “back-to-work” order arrives from the Federal government and is adopted over the course of a few weeks by at least a vast majority of the states.
  • COVID-19 cases have reached their peak, and we have flattened the curve.
  • Restaurants open back up with a social distancing guideline of some sort.
  • You can get your hair cut and your nails done and get a facial — provided that the provider of these services has been cleared by a doctor to provide these services, and provided that a mask is worn.
  • Your kids go back to some semblance of in-person school.
  • You can host a dinner party at your home with more than just your immediate family.
  • No one in your immediate family is sick.
  • You have contact tracing in place so that you can prove that this morning’s trip to the pharmacy did not expose you to the virus.
  • You have an employer that is willing to bring you back to work, hasn’t laid you off, hasn’t gone out of business, and has received a Paycheck Protection Program loan from the SBA.

Actual Recovery Looks Much Different

What we’re actually going to see…

If you take a look at the blue line up there, it’s sorta kinda meandering downward, and then comes up a little bit — THE NEW NORMAL — and then we all figure out how to manage. Which is much more likely.

Trough of Disillusionment Vs. Trough of Suck

Gartner has a concept called “Trough of Disillusionment.” I’ll let you Google that — type in “Hype Cycle” and learn more about how analysts think about the launch of tech products — but I’ve decided to apply that thinking to something I’m calling the “Trough of Suck.”

In short, the V-shaped crowd may say “it’s going to suck for a little while” and then they think that the switch magically flips and we’re back to where we were before.

There’s also a “U-shaped Recovery” crowd, and they think there will be a bit of an extended period of pain and then gradually things come back.

But neither of these buts “The New Normal” up against the stark realities of that unemployment chart above and gets a real, actual, “Trough of Suck.”

Expect this to last a long time…

What we’ve done over the past six weeks is unprecedented — and, dare we dip our toes into the “do you want to save your Grandma or do you want to go back to work?” argument, we’re about to enter into a Trough of Suck phase that will last for YEARS.

Take a look at this jobless claims article from Yahoo: we’ve sent 22 million people into the unemployment lines. How many of those will be able to go straight back to work?

What’s Next?

Allow me, your fearless prognosticator, to hazard a few guesses about what’s next as it pertains to you and your own microeconomy.

1. Since it’s NOT an either-or, people HAVE to go to work.

Though this danse macabre will continue, the list of essential services will expand. Because it has to — yesterday’s Michigand Yeet Fest was evidence that the Governor has overstepped her bounds by at least an order of magnitude and the seeds of discontent were long-since sown.

2. But some of you — some of us — will be stuck.

I was deemed non-essential ages ago and Lord knows I’m going to be doing a metric crapton of soul-searching about what I get to do next. (I can write about Bitcoin until the cows come home; eventually, I may have to learn how to milk said cows. Writers are non-essential — this runs counter to what the talking heads will tell you about how important the arts are In These Uncertain Times — but if I write content and that content doesn’t actually move the needle they’ve been talking about for years (in no small part because you can’t move any needles if those needles are tied to dollars an no one has either needles OR dollars), I’m going to have to find actual gainful employ.)

3. Plan for a long haul — without any idea how long that haul will be.

We’re not just trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube; we’ve asked everyone to brush and spit out and don’t swallow the toothpaste AND we’re trying to put that back in the tube.

Price of Bitcoin? Price of gold? Price of eggs, value of dollars in RMB, cost of goods sold…your guess is as good as mine as to what will happen to ANY of those things.

It’s Not a Binary Question

I’ve dumped a lot at you in this article; thanks for reading so far. If I’ve got an ask, it’s that we stop looking at this as a binary question.

The President was actually right when he talked about the human cost of shutting down the economy. Lives will be lost to the virus — but will more lives be lost to those “deaths of dispair” that people really don’t want to talk about?

The President likes to give the impression that he has a magic on/off switch for the economy; Congress likes to think that its Herculean efforts to get the CARES Act signed into law supplied the direct current for that on/off switch.

The reality — with the “will the recovery be ‘V-shaped'” and the “when can I go back to work?” and the “is it safe enough to be out in public?” crowds — is that these arguments are much more nuanced. The give-and-take that’s playing out in public is not as simple as “go back to work and Grandma dies.”

Stop playing that game. Please.

And pray for a shorter duration of the Trough of Suck.

Written by David Van de Walle · Categorized: Economy, Uncategorized · Tagged: Bitcoin, Trough of Suck

Jan 18 2020

A Balanced 2020 Crypto Portfolio

We struggled with this one for a little while, and you can’t really blame us: 2019 was a meh year for crypto, and our typical portfolio wouldn’t exactly be the way to go for 2020. Plus, a bunch of new entrants — both projects and categories — caught our eye last year.

Our first question: Does the BRED Portfolio makes sense anymore? Given the fact that Bitcoin had a good year and the others didn’t, does the mix of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, and Dash still give you the kind of portfolio that will propel your crypto investments into the stratosphere?

ALSO, it may not be about the “into the stratosphere” anymore for you. And that’s okay. In any event, we have to figure out if there’s another way to do this.

First Up…How Did BRED Do?

Glad you asked: weird year for sure. Let’s look at the numbers:

2019 BRED Portfolio
Down a shade, but not insane, but…

So, in the interest of consistency, here’s what the 2020 BRED Portfolio would look like.

The 2020 BRED Portfolio

However, we don’t think this is the kind of portfolio to focus on for the year(s) ahead. We’ll give a couple reasons why we *think* there’s a rebalancing ahead.

  1. Bitcoin still makes sense, but Ethereum less so.
  2. Ripple is working on a ton of partnerships, but hasn’t grown like before.
  3. Dash didn’t catch fire on the consumer-facing front.
  4. Way too much else going on.
2020 Crypto Balance Portfolio

Let’s Follow the Trends and Create a New Portfolio

Without further ado, here you go: the 2020 Crypto Balance Portfolio.

2020 Crypto Balance Portfolio
She’s a beauty…

So, what have we done here?

First Up, MOAR Bitcoin

If a stock went up 90% in a year, would you still want it in your portfolio? Or would you take profits?

Good question, and we address that at least a little by (a) keeping BTC in the portfolio and (b) ratcheting it up to 30% of the overall $10,000.

While I wouldn’t go so far as this commentator who thinks Bitcoin will go to $400,000 after its “halving” (when the mining rewards for Bitcoin are cut in half) in May, Bitcoin has cemented itself as the blue chip of cryptos during the past couple years.

You’ll also see that, in this Crypto Balance portfolio, we’ve ignored the forks. If there are notable forks this year, we can take those into account; but “forkening” isn’t that much of a deal the past couple years.

Ethereum, Still, Has a Role

We’ve done some writing on these pages about projects like Megacryptopolis; you can’t play with any of those NFTs, and you can’t trade any assets on OpenSea without ETH that’s in a Metamask wallet (or some other ETH wallet).

Ethereum is really a two-sided coin (ha!) — with quite a few bearish cases on the internet, and a few bullish ones, too. We think the bullish case outweighs the bearish case, though. We’re keeping it in, but dropping it down to 20%.

About the Other Five…

If our goal is a “balanced” portfolio…uh…what the heck does that mean?

In our case, we achieve some level of balance with the other 5 assets in this portfolio, each at ten percent:

XRP — The coin from Ripple still aims to underpin bank transfers, a la SWIFT. Also, if you still believe in the long-term prospects of the project, under a quarter per coin is not a bad deal at all.

MCO — We lurrve this coin. (That’s a technical term, like HODL.) Not just because you can get some for free just by jumping through a couple of hoops [DISCLOSURE ALERT: AFFILIATE LINKS IN THAT ARTICLE] but because they are doing the regulatory thing correctly. We’re American, and bank laws are pretty important to follow.

EOS — I’ll admit to still being really skeptical, but also see the benefits of owning some EOS as an anti-ETH.

VeChain (VET) — This has potential, thanks to the Toolchain, to be the standard corporate “Blockchain-as-a-Service” solution. Partnerships right and left throughout the world. Tremendously undervalued.

VET Website Screenshot
VET’s website tells you what they’re up to.

PAX Gold (PAXG) — One really clever idea is to tie the price of a coin to an ounce of gold — so it’s like Tether, but with gold behind it. Also helps the “gold bugs” get into crypto while helping the crypto bugs get into gold.

And…There You Go

Whether this will catch fire like the 2017 edition of BRED or stall like the 2018 edition of BRED or do nothing like the 2019 edition of BRED…all that remains to be seen. But the plan is that we’ll track both all year and see what happens from there.

Stay tuned. 2020 should be interesting.

Written by David Van de Walle · Categorized: Bitcoin, BRED, EOS, Ethereum, Investing, MCO, Portfolio, VeChain · Tagged: Bitcoin, btc, EOS, ETH, Ethereum, MCO

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:

You’re in it for the long haul here.

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?

Number 4 is BCH, number 7 is BNB.

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!

Happy Tax Day!

Written by David Van de Walle · Categorized: BRED, Tax Day, Uncategorized · Tagged: Bitcoin, BitTube, BRED, Ethereum, Tax Day, XRP

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Search This Site

Most Popular Posts

Liquidity Machine Go BRRRRRR

If you have a hard time keeping up with the latest in crypto, fintech, or any of the other things that keep the economy moving, join the … [Read More...] about Liquidity Machine Go BRRRRRR

discount bitcoin

Time for Discount Bitcoin

It's been a long, long, LONG week on the financial markets. Coronavirus fears plus an oil price drop made for a one-two punch that has left … [Read More...] about Time for Discount Bitcoin

Tweets by TeamMetacoin

Copyright © 2023 · Altitude Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in