Taking Profits – Considerations

Einstein is often quoted in the field of economics. The saying “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it”, or something to that effect, is often attributed to him along with the associated “Rule of 72”.

The story of that being an Einstein quote is almost certainly apocryphal, and the Rule of 72 is definitely not Einstein’s work (as if the father of Special and General Relativity needed a cheat method to estimate logarithms! 😆 ), BUT – the essence of the quote is absolutely true.

Compound Interest is an incredibly powerful way of growing wealth in a relatively easy and safe manner, with the major variables in the equation being Initial Investment, Interest Rate, and Time.

As much as we would all like to be rich, that isn’t a reality. Compound Interest presents one option for the “not rich” to possibly become a part of “the rich”. It’s a method which is highly applicable in the crypto world, and one which I personally use daily.

Earning Interest

At the moment, I reinvest every crypto gain I can back into the crypto market. Anything I earn from my blogging gets invested, and dividends paid get invested. Airdrops, hard forks, competition winnings, donations, staking rewards… every last little bit goes back into crypto. I have never withdrawn a single sat.

In this way I earn interest not just on what I initially put in, but also on my earnings. It’s not all strictly “interest” per se, but the effect of holding assets which increase in value over time is essentially the same as interest.

Taking profits is the opposite of that. Taking profits removes money from the interest earning equation, and leaves you with less earning potential. For that reason, it’s important to get it right, you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot by taking profits in a manner which will hurt your investment.

Looking at the three variables of compound interest, we can see where and how manipulating each variable changes things.

Initial Investment is the amount of money that we put in. The more money we put in, the more we earn (how many of you wish that you had put more money into crypto when you started? I know I do!). You can add money into crypto after your initial investment, and it’s a good idea to do so, but the general rule of thumb is: “the sooner you put it in, the better”. Of course I understand that we put money into crypto as it becomes available to do so, so please, this is not me saying “don’t DCA!”, but rather “it’s better to go big early than to invest in a piecemeal manner over a period of time”.

Interest Rate is something which we don’t have much control over. Yes, we can chose which coins to hold based on their returns, but we can’t control how they increase in price, and we alone can’t determine something like the interest rate earned on a staked coin. Indeed, even though there are coins which offer a very good APY, e.g. 20% or more, this figure pales in comparison to the gains that cryptocurrencies themselves make during a bull market. The majority of “interest earned” in crypto comes from the gains in value that cryptocurrencies make during bullish periods. As I write this now, I have six coins which have gone up by more than 20% in the last 24 hours alone, that’s the “interest” I want to compound!

Time is the variable over which we probably have the most control. For the patient investor, time can be the great equaliser. It’s the way that a more patient poor investor can catch up to a less patient rich investor. Time is the reason that investing sooner rather than later is a good idea. The longer your money sits in crypto, the more chance it has to earn “interest”. For instance, if you invested $100 invested today in a coin which averages an annual price increase of 50%, it would be worth $150 a year from now. But if you left the same $100 for four years, it would be worth just over $500.

The difference is non-trivial: the $150 payout means that you’ve earned an average profit of $50 per year. But the $500 payout means that you’ve earned an average profit of $100 per year – double what you would have earned with the shorter investment! What if you left it for 10 years? Then you would have $5766, an average of $567 per year!

Doubling your initial investment would double the profits you make, but doubling the TIME that you leave the money invested for, that leads to exponential returns! For this reason, it is absolutely vital not to take profits too early! When you take profits, you no longer earn gains on all your interest, and you invalidate the benefits of the compound interest equation.

Taking Profits

The key to successfully taking profits is simple: if you are able to do so – don’t take any.

I’ve been running the numbers for some time. I knew a bull run was coming and I knew that it would be a good profit taking opportunity. I also remember that during the last bull run I found it difficult to divorce my emotions from my trading decisions. in preparation for that, I decided to determine a profit-taking plan before the market hype set in.

After many attempts, this is what I found:
There is no scenario in which taking profits works in my favour. No matter which strategy I use, no matter how much (or little) I take, no matter how seldom I take profits, no matter at which BTC price I take profits, I end up losing out in the long-run. And by “losing out” I mean significant losses.

I sat for many hours with the spreadsheet below, working and reworking the figures and strategies.

I found that the second you take profits instead of reinvesting them, you break the power of compound interest. Though I already knew this before going to the spreadsheets, I was hoping to find a way that I could take small profits while not affecting the later figures by much. There is no such way, not unless you’re willing to take profits that are insignificantly small, and what would be the point of that?

The thing with compound interest is this, it is most powerful in the last few periods for which it is calculated. So if, for example, you earn compound interest over a period of 10 years, the greatest gains, by far, are realised in the final two years of investing.

Going back to our earlier example – the $100 which became $5766 after 10 years – more than half of that amount is made during the final two years. After eight years the return is only $2563, meaning that $3203 of the $5766 is earned during the final two years.

If I took profits of just $10 of the $150 I had after the first year of investing, it would translate into the loss of $384 after 10 years. Taking $10 in profits after 1 year means that I get $5382 instead of $5766. And $10 taken from $150 is only 6.7% – hardly a large amount.

The message is clear: taking profits today greatly hinders your ability to make big profits in the future. The longer you reinvest everything, the better – by a HUGE margin!

There is a caveat…

Taking profits – without hurting your investment

There is a way to take profits without harming your investment. In fact, you can help your investment along.

Unfortunately, the old maxim applies to this scenario: “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

As with most things in crypto, if you want greater rewards (or a higher “interest rate”, if you want to see it that way), you need to accept higher risks.

IMPORTANT: Accepting risk is not for everybody! I am a BIG fan of the HODL strategy, and for good reason. It gives a great return, it’s safe, it’s easy and just about anyone can do it successfully if they are patient. If you are risk averse, new to the market, in a fragile economic situation, not good at market analysis or just in doubt, then I suggest that you just continue to HODL. It’s all I’ve been doing for years, and I’m not sorry.

For those who do want to take profits and not hurt their investments, the solution is fairly obvious: sell at the top and then buy back in at the bottom. During this process, you can take a little profit on the side – as long as you buy back at least as much crypto as you sold!

While this sounds obvious and easy, it isn’t. The reason for that is simply that nobody has a crystal ball which can predict the future. We NEVER know when we are at the top of the market and we NEVER know when or for how low it is going to dip. For this reason, we have to compromise when we trade: either we sell too soon and leave some profits on the table, or we risk missing the top (and therefore our opportunity to sell) entirely. The inverse applies at the bottom of a bear market.

Things change VERY fast in crypto. Your chances of hitting the very top of the market, or even calling the top within about 10% of it, are almost zero. Imagine you sell your BTC at $200 000 because you think that’s the market top, and then BTC keeps on climbing for three more months, up to $350 000. That’s a realistic scenario. How will you feel then? It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and the temptation to FOMO back in would be very real!

Similarly, let’s say you sold near the top and are waiting for a buy-back level. You want to buy at $40000, but BTC hits $75000 and then turns positive. What then? These things happen! In April of 2018, BTC dropped to $6500 and then started climbing again. It climbed for three weeks, up to almost $10000 before slowly turning negative again. How would you have felt during this time if you had been waiting for a price of $6000? Would you have been able to wait, or would you have panicked and forced a FOMO buy to avoid missing out?

You can not ignore the mental effects of trying to time the market and you can not ignore the fact that the risks are real. BTC may NOT hit your buy price! You may well miss the re-buy point entirely, that’s a real risk. Throughout 2019 I heard people say over and over again: “I’m just waiting for one more drop to $6000/$5000/$3000 before I buy”. Perhaps those guys were lucky, they got the rapid dip at the start of the Covid-19 drama, though I suspect that by then most of them had already capitulated and bought back in at a far higher price. But even after the March 2020 Covid dip, I still heard people waiting for another $6000 or $5000 or whatever price they wanted, only to see BTC keep on climbing and climbing to the prices we see today. So the risks of missing the boat are real, as are the stresses involved.

Good information is crucial to the making of good decisions. This presents a challenge to us. It is vital that you acknowledge just how new cryptocurrencies are as an asset class. While we have seen a few market cycles in the past, we still have a statistically tiny number of cycles from which to work. We do NOT have well established trends or models yet, at least not ones accurate enough to trade on. We have best guesses based on extrapolated data, but we know that those guesses will grow increasingly inaccurate over time.

Remember: you are not special. You are not the one to which the rules do not apply. Most amateur traders lose money. Fact.

I am working hard to try to determine the most accurate trendlines possible. I am also devising a profit-taking system of my own based on those trendlines. It is a “sell and rebuy” system like the one described above, but it is still a work in progress. I believe that I am getting close to a good and accurately predicted strategy, but even so, it’s still susceptible to the risks mentioned above. I have started typing a post about my strategy, but like the strategy itself, it’s still a work in progress. If I can get it to a level at which I am 90%+ confident in it, I will share it with you and will execute the strategy myself.

Further Considerations

Before I end this post, there are a few more considerations which I would quickly like to mention.

When taking profits, plan which currency what you wish to sell into. Fiat currencies are an option, but I do not recommend them. Fiat currencies are immediately traceable by governments and banks, once you sit with fiat transactions, you sit with the issue of paying tax on your crypto gains. As I have said before: crypto has NOTHING to do with your government or banks, and they have no right to tax you on it – provided that you leave it in crypto. If you’re careless or cowardly enough to tell your government what you are doing in the world of crypto, well then, that’s your fault. Remember: the most effective way to imprison a person is to get them to build the prison walls within their own mind. Are you your own jailor?

What that means is that it’s probably best to trade BTC into stablecoins. As much as I hate stablecoins – they’re really just money-making schemes for centralised entities – I hate fiat currencies a whole lot more. Yes yes, I understand that stablecoins form a bridge for users and that they offer convenience and familiarity. But if they are so terribly necessary to crypto, how is it that I never need to use them? That will change if I decide to take profits. I’ll sell BTC and hold it in stablecoins, and then buy it back later. Note, I said stablecoinS. Since I don’t really trust or believe in any of them, I’ll trade into several of them, in order to split the risk.

If I do take some profits for myself, chances are that I’ll invest some of that money in precious metals. While inferior to crypto in many ways, there is still serious value in Gold, Silver and Platinum (hot tip: I think that Platinum is going to do very well this year!). Holding precious metals helps to further spread risk and is a good idea. Just note that the precious metals market is also complex, not to mention highly regulated. DYOR before you even dream of getting into it. (Leave the more exotic precious metals like Rhodium and Palladium unless you really know what you’re doing.)

I will never sell all of my BTC. I don’t see myself selling more than half, and that’s a maximum figure. I need to mitigate some of the risks, risks like “BTC just keeps on climbing” or “Tether turns into a full-blown exit scam and goes to zero”.

There is another consideration: so far I’ve only really spoken about BTC, what about the altcoins? When and how does one take profits on them? That’s a particularly difficult question and there is no simple answer to it. Some altcoins are staked long-term and can’t simply be sold without sacrificing major future gains, if at all. Some, like exchange coins, may do well during periods of bearish selling and may be worth holding no matter what the market does. Some may be going through periods of great adoption and increasing in value despite an opposite market trend. Some may benefit from a hype event such as a main net launch.

It is my opinion that most altcoins are undervalued. I measure altcoin value in sats. Apart from a few over-hyped coins, most of which are currently in the top 20 by market cap, I expect most good (not the hoards of trashy ones which are designed to make someone a quick buck) altcoins to see new ATHs when measured in sats. Taking profits in altcoins is about having realistic expectations as to what total market cap the coin might reach, and about not missing selling opportunities due to excessive greed. When I sell altcoins, I sell to BTC. The job of my altcoins is to help grow my BTC stack. At the end of the day, BTC is my one and only long-term store-of-value coin, so it makes sense to bank my gains in BTC.

Exactly when and how much I bank is hard to say. I truly believe that some of my altcoins have the potential to rival some of the largest companies in existence today. Cryptocurrencies are not the same as shares in a company (in most cases), but they behave in a similar fashion. There is no reason why we can’t have trillion dollar market cap altcoins. Because of this, I will probably never sell my way entirely out of a good altcoin, at least not for the purpose of taking profits. Instead I will sell e.g. 10% of it at a specific sats value, and another 10% at a value 5x higher than that, and another 10% 5 x higher, etc.

The final consideration I wish to mention is financial situation. It’s easy for me to say “Don’t take profits!”, but for some people it may be impossible not to do so. I am acutely aware of the dire financial circumstances in which many people find themselves, especially in these times of government mandated economic shutdowns and rapidly rising costs of living (inflation – note that real inflation and government inflation figures are two vastly different things!). I know that some people may have to sell their crypto even though they don’t want to. I sympathise.

What I do suggest to people in such a situation is: do your best to cut every other expense to the bone before selling off your crypto. From personal experience I can tell you that I took a 50% income cut two years ago. The way I survived was to start budgeting from the ground up. I terminated every contract, account etc that was costing me money, and focussed on paying off interest-bearing debts. I cut luxuries out altogether: no fancy phones, no new clothing, no vacations, no eating out, etc. I’ve even (politely) refused to let my wife buy me birthday presents since 2018. It’s not pleasant at first, but you soon get used to it. The long-term goals are more important to me than the short-term pleasures and I’m honestly not unhappy living this way. I’m sure that it actually does me good. Even so, I acknowledge that I’m lucky: I still get paid something – many people don’t, I could afford to pay off my debts – most people can’t.

So as a final message, I say this to you: do whatever you can to keep as much as you can afford to in crypto. I am staking my own future in it, and I know that every dollar of crypto I save today is potentially $100+ of crypto in a few years time. Whatever you do, I wish you luck and prosperity.

Yours in crypto

Bit Brain

All charts made by Bit Brain with TradingView

“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first” 

~ Mark Twain

“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful” 

~ Bit Brain

Bit Brain recommends:

Crypto Exchanges:




BrainMetric – IT’S STILL ALIVE!

Does anybody remember reading this?

No? Well I don’t blame you. It’s from THIS POST back on 5 August, so I hardly remember it myself!

In all seriousness, I didn’t forget about it, and I actually have been working on it (albeit at a rather low level) for the last four months. I want to reassure you
that I still fully intend to finish it, though it’s going to take much longer than expected. This is it’s story so far…

A Brief History of BrainMetric

As you can see above, I described my metric as being “a quantitative metric used to determine the investor confidence of the market”. That’s no longer an accurate description of it.

The more I worked on it, the more I realised what else I could do with it by expanding upon it. I’ll spare you the details of the equations, partly to protect my own intellectual property, but mostly
because equations tend to make people’s eyes glaze over!*[1]

I soon realised that my metric needed a benchmark. Finding a good benchmarks is trickier than it seems, because cryptocurrencies are anything but constant. They vary wildly in price compared to other
asset classes, as well as to one another. Even a single cryptocurrency tends to have high price volatility. I reasoned that the best benchmark to have would be an aggregate of the combined data of all of the cryptocurrencies
averaged over different time durations.

The trouble with that approach is that it is practically impossible to do. Wash trading wrecks it. Unlisted coins corrupt it. Delisted coin data are no longer readily available. Data anomalies (e.g. a
spike caused by a data capture error) have a big effect on it. Even in a best case scenario it will only ever provide you with an approximation. With so much data and so many potential points of failure, it becomes a bad idea.

Big Data vs Little Bit Brain

The death blow to the “all coins” approach is the sheer amount of data it requires. Assuming the other issues can be resolved, I would still have to import, capture and process practically
the entire historical database of a site such as CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko. CMC has got almost 4900 coins, CoinGecko (whose API I prefer to use) has over 6200! I’m working alone on this, and that amount of data is way
too much for me to handle! Put it this way: Bitcoin alone represents about 15000 rows of data, each row being several columns wide! In fact, all I’ve managed so far is to process Bitcoin data.

But that’s fine. During this process, I have been able to plan my next steps, and have also found value in BTC data on its own.

Analysis of BTC’s data processed through my most basic algorithm, reveals that it behaves much as as Bollinger Bands do (with similar predictive abilities). It is my hope that I will be able to
calibrate the figures into a form of meaningful “market tension” indicator, an advanced warning sign of when some big price move is about to happen. Take a look at what I mean, this is the most basic form of BrainMetric
data displayed in graphic form:

(Embarrassingly) Made by Bit Brain

Excuse the rudimentary charting, I originally made these strictly for developmental purposes, not for publishing! The aim of charting this was to determine how to use it as a benchmark. What you see
above is basically how BTC trading activity (of which volume is only a part) changes over time. It’s a few months old, but you can notice that the far right side is already very “squashed” – much like the
squeezing of Bollinger Bands. When I calibrate my data, this “squashing” will translate into a market tension; the more squashed it is and the longer it remains squashed, the higher the market tension figure will
be.

Beyond BTC

I have decided that BTC will be my industry benchmark, it’s far easier working with one coin than with thousands! There is the option of using total market data, but this data is very hard to find
for the early years and tends to be inherently corrupted by aggregation, lack of data and coins constantly being added to it. As a constant, it is very poor. It’s also interesting to note that you can’t use something
like the “Top 10” coins, because while the names of those Top 10 may seem fairly constant, they change significantly over time. – making their data impossible for me to process.

I aim to be able to average my BrainMetic over time (in intervals of selectable duration for both macro and micro trends), and then compare it to the values of specific altcoins worked out using the same
method. This will work in much the same way as we currently use BTC/sats price to benchmark the performance of different altcoins. Only, unlike with sats price, with BrainMetric the algorithms will allow us to compare apples
with apples. You can’t say that e.g. DASH is better than TRX just because DASH has a higher sats price. But with BrainMetric you WILL be able to say that one is better than the other, since price will not be a primary
factor.

“Better” is not the correct word, I think “less overbought” would be a more accurate description. BrainMetric will be similar to my 4 November post: “Perspective on Altcoins”, in which I used a pseudo-neutral metric (percentage drop from All Time High) to compare altcoins to one another. (Note: BrainMetric equations will not use ATH.)

Joining the Dots

At the end of the day I have a vision of what I want from BrainMetric, I want something that will show:

· The “Market Tension” of BTC – and maybe selected altcoins too.

· … possibly graphically.

· A fair comparison between various altcoins to show which are undervalued and which are overvalued.

· The later incorporation of an additional metric which I have yet to develop.

BrainMetric will probably take the form of some sort of dashboard with a simple interface that hides all the background number crunching.

Yes, as the last bullet point states, there is a second metric in the pipeline. My brain laid yet another original idea egg that will tie in very nicely with my BrainMetric
vision. So “BrainMetric” will probably become “BrainMetrics” as the second metric literally gets added into the equation. IF I can get it calibrated and start getting good predictive data from it, then the addition of the second metric will:

· Further help to determine “Market Tension” (i.e. how likely the next big jump will be), and

· (importantly) give percentage probabilities as to which direction that big jump will be in.

The second metric will operate on the principle of a rudimentary Kalman filter, calculating future jumps based on the frequency, sizes and directions of previous jumps. At this stage the second metric
exists solely in my head, I haven’t had a chance to even start looking at the equation for it.

Making things happen

After deciding last year that Microsoft has got enough money, I stopped using Excel for my crypto-tracking spreadsheets. After trialling several free alternatives, I settled on the excellent FreeOffice suite for my day-to-day needs. (Visit www.freeoffice.com to check it out for yourself, MS Office users should feel right at home. This post was originally created in FreeOffice.)

Figuring that learning how to import APIs/scrape webpage info into FreeOffice spreadsheets might not be so fun (it can be bad enough in Excel), I decided to switch to the web-based Google Sheets for
my crypto spreadsheet needs. I figured that Google may have better internet data integration tools. That was only partially true, and subsequently took a large step backwards when the most popular crypto plugin ceased working.
But I pushed on and have become moderately competent at getting Google Sheets to work for me.

Level 5+ Excel Grand Wizards will know that with enough time and practise, you can make Excel do just about ANYTHING! It may look similar to its siblings Word and Powerpoint (and the other younger ones that few people use), but under the hood, Excel is a V8-powered, fire-breathing beast! Still used to the formidable capabilities of this beast, I built BrainMetric in Google Sheets.

..and that’s why I’m taking so long to do this.

After much struggling, I realised that it just wasn’t going to work. Using Sheets I simply did not have the tools I needed to effectively process all that data. I don’t blame Google: Sheets
is a very capable web app which can do most things, but it just isn’t Excel which can do absolutely anything!

Knowing what I would have to do, I tried the old “ignore the problem and hope it goes away” trick. It didn’t. Eventually I confronted my demons and dusted off some long-neglected bookmarks in my browser. I started the painful process of re-teaching myself computer programming.

Unfortunately programming is not like riding a bike, it’s a perishable skill – one which I learnt at university two decades ago! Modern programming languages evolve constantly: the little which
I do remember is horribly out of date. It’s like semi-remembering the home phone numbers of people you knew 20 years ago: you dial a few, half of them are wrong, and the other half no longer work anymore. The language
Java is now on version 13. I learnt version 1. An early edition of version 1!

Worse still, I have to fight my way through the badly outdated Java documentation – the hallmark of massive open-source software projects. Since I want to use a specific type of user interface creator
(JavaFX), Java 13 is actually not really suitable for my purposes. Java 11 sort of is. Java 8 is. Don’t ask about the in-between version, just don’t. It’s probably only after
Java 14 is released in Q2 of 2020 that things will work properly again (after some work by the community). If only I’d know that at the beginning, I would have saved days, days which I wasted trying to correctly configure the programming environment of my PC.

Now that everything is running semi- properly, as much as I want to jump straight into coding BrainMetric, I need to first practise the fundamentals and make stupid mistakes as part of the re-learning
process. Yesterday I started writing a very basic word processor program. Once I can get that finished, then I should be about 70% of the way there and will just need to work on charting and data management skills. That and
Christmas madness should take me well into early 2020.

So BrainMetric is coming, but I wouldn’t start holding my breath just yet!

For now, what I can tell you is that the prototype charts show a very squashed BTC profile. Something is going to happen soon.

*[1] Stephen Hawking said that when he was writing “A Brief History of Time”, he was advised that each equation in the book would halve his sales. He took the advice to heart and included only “E=mc2”, acknowledging that leaving it out may have doubled the sales of his wildly successful bestseller.

Yours in crypto

Bit Brain

“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first” 

~ Mark Twain

“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful” 

~ Bit Brain

Bit Brain recommends:

Crypto Exchanges:




Perspective on Altcoins

Today I would like to do a fun little exercise. Well, I think it’s fun because I’m a crypto lover. If you don’t like crypto, then you should probably stay well clear of my blog!

I spoke about the silliness of altcoin bashing last week, so I’m not going to delve into that again. Suffice to say: I believe in the cyclic nature of markets, and that altcoins will rise again. There ARE signs that that rise has started (meaning that altcoins have bottomed), but that has yet to be confirmed.

For today’s exercise I’m going to look at the following hypothetical situation:

Say I put $100 into the top 20 altcoins. What would they all be worth if they then got back to their All Time Highs?

I will be using the CoinGecko top 20. I know that most people prefer CMC, but I like the added functionality that CoinGecko offers. For example: with CoinGecko I can easily see how far each coin is from its All Time High (ATH).

From https://www.coingecko.com/en?view=all_time_high

Below is a table which I constructed to display those figures. Remember, in each case we are investing $100 at current prices, and then seeing what will happen if that coin gets back to its ATH.

1 BTC $214,59
2 ETH $800,00
3 XRP $1 162,79
4 BCH $1 315,79
5 USDT $132,28
6 LTC $613,50
7 EOS $694,44
8 BNB $194,17
9 BSV $199,20
10 XLM $1 265,82
11 ADA $2 857,14
12 TRX $1 219,51
13 XMR $862,07
14 LEO $200,80
15 OKB $168,07
16 LINK $168,92
17 HT $156,99
18 ATOM $206,19
19 NEO $1 785,71
20 IOTA $1 960,78

It’s true that one shouldn’t read too much into this: the playing field is not entirely level (for reasons such as some coins only being launched after the peak of the bull market). But what it does serve as is a semi-standardised benchmark indicator of potential ROI.

Yes, we all know that BTC is safer than altcoins, but I personally believe in chasing some higher potential ROI at the expense of a little more risk, and even a little bit of extreme ROI at the expense of massive risk. Note: being the top 20 coins, this table does not represent the “massive risk” section of the market – well….. that’s debatable, we’ll get back to that shortly.

Those are the numbers, the raw stats. Let’s now dig into them a little deeper:

At a mere $214.59 return on a $100 investment, BTC looks positively pedestrian when compared to the average – and it is. This is the entire point of investing in altcoins instead of in BTC, that and helping many small projects to become part of our everyday lives – thereby greatly enhancing them.

However, and this applies to all the coins, these returns are only to get back to ATH. They do not include further market growth beyond that point! Only the staunchest bears would believe that BTC has already reached its ultimate ATH. Another term for such people is “idiots who should be ignored”. As the ultimate crypto store of value, I believe that every portfolio should have BTC in it. I would consider 10-20% to be a good figure, though that is largely down to personal taste (and my own percentage is way outside that bracket at the moment!)

Moving lower down the table we see ETH returning $800. Wow, that’s really not a bad potential investment! Ethereum remains the biggest and most popular crypto platform by far, and it is really the only one with many high quality DApps already running on it. No, your 100 casino DApps on your favourite chain are not “high quality”. Even NEO – and you all know how much I love NEO – can boast only a small handful of good DApps at this stage. But Ethereum has hundreds of them, even if it is also packed full of trash coins which should, and probably will, die. The ETH team is also still very active and the platform continues to be developed, albeit that it misses target dates almost as badly as Cardano does! 😄 In summary, Ether is a fairly secure investment with possibly much higher returns than what BTC can offer.

You all know my feelings on Ripple. I mean XRP. I mean Ripple. Apparently XRP is Ripple when Ripple does good things such as forming major partnerships; but XRP is not Ripple when Ripple is criticised for e.g. being centralised or being a company full of ex-bankers. Oh how I hate Ripple and everything it stands for! BUT: like most dodgy investments, Ripple still has a LOT of support. I do not doubt that Ripple will once again see very good returns when the market runs. However, I could never condone investing in such centralised, anti-Satoshi rubbish – so if you want to hold Ripple, then you will be doing so without my support! The returns you may get on Ripple are better than those of ETH, but I would chose to put my money on ETH instead!

BCH and LTC remain viable alternatives to BTC, especially for smaller transactions. I believe that there is a strong future for such coins, a future in which BTC is the store of value, and such coins (you can add DASH, NANO etc to the mix) become the de facto mediums of exchange. It is interesting that BCH offers far higher returns than LTC when looking at their respective ATHs. I surmise that this may be because people once perceived BCH as possible legitimate competition for BTC, whereas LTC was only ever a coin that worked alongside BTC. The two coins are pretty even in my eyes.

Note Tether sitting between BCH and LTC, with a possible return of $132.28! I find that rather amusing! 😆

At $694.44 EOS is not looking as good as ETH. This should serve as a mild warning to EOS investors. I have long said that EOS is good, but over-hyped. I stand by that statement.

At $194.17, BNB is deceptive. As far as exchanges go, Binance is by far the most well known. Crucially, its ROI to ATH is less than that of BTC, which on its own should make the decision to buy BTC instead of BNB a simple one. But BNB is a special case, and I caution against writing it off. While my favourite exchange is KuCoin (and its KCS token), I can not ignore the fact that Binance is also launching programs, projects and platforms left, right and centre. It’s very popular and I have great faith in its CEO. CZ has a brilliant mind and a comprehensive understanding of blockchain technology, business principles, international affairs and also a general sense of what a powerful agent of positive change cryptocurrencies can become.

I assess that if any blockchain company can become the next “Amazon”, “Google” or “Microsoft”, then Binance has the best chance of being that company. It is even possible that as other cryptocurrencies grow, so Binance may one day pass even BTC in terms of market cap! Don’t laugh, just think about it…

BSV is a joke, as is Mr I-did-not-pay-now-I’m-back-in-court Faketoshi. It is sad that such people even exist, they are an ugly scar on the beautiful face of crypto. ‘Nuff said.

Of the top 10 coins, XLM offers the second best potential returns (after BCH) on its climb back to ATH. Personally I consider it a little over-valued, but I far prefer it to its greatly overvalued and far more dodgy cousin XRP.

With the best potential returns of the lot (an incredible $2857.14 for a $100 investment) ADA does look like a prime choice! However, I urge you to remember what I have often said: that US investors are too fixated on US crypto in general, and also that ADA is way behind where it should be: many promises, no deliveries. Other platform coins have since moved far past it, even if market cap has yet to catch up to that fact.

At $1219.51 for $100, TRX is looking strong! It’s not that high up that you would expect it to fall down the market cap ladder, the potential returns look good and Tron is a good product. True, like most of the platforms, it also lacks a large number of good DApps – but those will probably come with time. Justin Sun is a dynamic young entrepreneur with enviable levels of charisma, I think there is a high chance that he will lead Tron to success.

XMR has been quiet lately, which is not always a good sign. But I still see Riccardo Spagni on every episode of “Magical Crypto Friends” and he still seems enthusiastic. While they still have issues to iron out, Monero remains the biggest name in privacy coins, and that is NOT something to ignore! A potential return of $862,07 to ATH is only slightly better than that of ETH, but one could argue strongly in favour of privacy coins, based on the way that crypto regulations are going. With exchanges blocking ZCash (which I no longer endorse), it is clear that privacy coins are a threat to the financial centres of the world. If they do succeed, then XMR may well be the most successful of them all.

LEO has a relatively low potential return (very similar to that of BTC), easily explained because it is so new. However, it is the coin of BitFinex, and I have no love for that exchange. I’m still waiting for the whole dodgy BitFinex/Tether monster to come tumbling down. I’m happy to have closed my account there a long time ago, and I have no intention of having anything further to do with that exchange. I suggest avoiding it.

OKB is the coin of another big exchange, though honestly it isn’t one of my favourites and there are other exchange coins which I would much rather hold. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it though, and like LEO, its price is not reflective of it’s potential, because it was only launched after the demise of the 2017/18 bull run.

To an impartial outside observer, the LINK figure of $168.92 should be very troubling! I keep saying that LINK is way too hyped at the moment. It’s possibly the most over-hyped cryptocurrency of all (at the moment). LINK is not a new coin and it’s not even a special coin in any way. Investors should be very worried that it is hovering so close to its ATH figure. I like LINK, but I would NOT buy it now!

HT is almost identical to OKB for the purpose of this post. I wouldn’t put money there.

ATOM has low returns back up to ATH. But Cosmos has been around since 2014 so it… wait. What’s that you say? Cosmos is a new coin? Oh yes, you’re right. Cosmos is a 2019 coin which (to me) looks remarkably similar to Blocknet (BLOCK) – a coin which has been around since 2014. Why is that relevant? Because BLOCK has a market cap that is more than 130 times smaller than that of very similar Cosmos. What does that mean? It means that ATOM is all new coin hype. No thanks.

NEO’s looking solid with a potential return of $1785.71 for its $100. It’s well known how much I love NEO, and with the current blockchain developments in China (which I have been predicting since the China FUD in 2017), I love it more than ever.

IOTA is a dark (and largely forgotten) horse, sitting at the bottom of the list, but with a figure of $1960.78 per $100 should it make it back to ATH. That’s the second highest in the table, and should not be ignored. I know there have been some criticisms of it, but I honestly haven’t looked deep enough into IOTA lately to know if they are valid or not. As with everything in crypto – you should do your own research.

Conclusion

I believe that good altcoins (note: GOOD altcoins) stand to provide much better returns than Bitcoin will in the near future. Of course with the chance of greater returns comes greater risk. How much risk you are willing to expose yourself to will depend largely on your investing style and current financial situation – I recommend being safe rather than sorry. Having said that, the mere fact that somebody chooses to invest in crypto indicates that they probably have a pioneering spirit (it’s still early days for crypto) and personally I already see BTC as a minor “risk”. If BTC works, then it’s logical that altcoins should work too, thus I invest a decent amount of money in them. As of yesterday, 43.2% of my crypto portfolio is in Bitcoin, which is actually almost the highest percentage it has ever been, a consequence of me holding my alts through the bear market.

I continue to invest slowly and carefully, some in BTC, some in altcoins (though I also keep missing the dips!). In the long-term I believe that altcoin investors will be richly rewarded, and I will continue to invest accordingly. Remember that the table above only deals with the top 20, there are many more coins out there. I suggest that people do their best to make decisions based on facts as opposed to emotional attachment. Crypto is often a sentiment game, but sentiment can’t keep a coin going indefinitely.

Yours in crypto

Bit Brain

“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first” 

~ Mark Twain

“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful” 

~ Bit Brain

Bit Brain recommends:

Crypto Exchanges:




Cryptocurrencies – Recent Highlights and the Road Ahead

Well it’s been quite a week for crypto! After too many months of no significant action, things are (finally) starting to come to a head. I’ll briefly discuss the highlights by fitting them in under the simple headings of “Bitcoin” and “Altcoins”.

Bitcoin

The recent Bitcoin price dip to below $7500 was not a surprise. I, like many other analysts, both expected it and welcomed it as a buying opportunity. Most of us (myself included) expected it to dip further. Indeed, I had yet to have a buy order fill (silly me). What we didn’t expect was a rapid BTC rise. Twice.

That the reason for those rises is still open to debate, indicates that (as usual) nobody REALLY knows the real reason behind them. Bullish sentiment appears to be partly from short squeezes, but mainly from FOMO about pro-blockchain comments made by Chinese president Xi Jinping. No doubt the full story is more complex than that, but FOMO never bothers with getting all the facts.

Despite the rapid rise, a little messing around on my charts reveals that BTC MAY still be in a descending channel.

I emphasise that this is just a theory, but I wouldn’t rule it out. My gut feel (which is often wrong when it comes to crypto) suggests that prices may yet again dip lower in the channel. I still believe that BTC has to reach the vicinity of its long-term trendline (approximate position indicated below) before it can begin to climb properly. Granted: the exact position of that trendline is hardly cast in stone.

The massive volume increase which followed the Bitcoin price rise is indicative of just how much (dumb) money is just waiting in the wings – waiting for some sort of confirmation that bitcoin is not going
to crash to zero before it decides to invest.

Altcoins

I have never been impressed by the altcoin bashing that has been so prevalent ever since the Bitcoin Maximalists greatly and suddenly multiplied in number starting in mid-2018. I consider altcoin bashing to be rather immature and short-sighted. As sure as my name is Bit Brain, most of the altcoin bashers will flip and become some of the biggest pro-altcoin campaigners when altcoin season returns.

Altcoin season has threatened to return on several occasions, though we have no positive confirmation of that happening yet. Of course there will always be isolated instances, such as Chainlink which is doing
very well at the moment. I can only shake my head in dismay as I see the Chainlink supporters declare their coin to be bulletproof and capable of decimating all the others. Guys – Chainlink is good, but it REALLY isn’t
anything super-special!

Before I get too far off-topic, I think that altcoin season WILL return very shortly, and I strongly suggest (as I have been doing for over a year now!) that investors stock up on all the ridiculously, laughably, insanely, insert-superlative-herely cheap altcoins that are currently available.

This last year has given us considerable new insight into the possible long-term nature of BTC dominance (seen below). It appears that BTC dominance will probably cease to increase now, freeing up a lot of money to be invested in altcoins.

From https://www.coingecko.com/en/global_charts; modified by Bit Brain

The SHITPERP Index (that’s a real thing, I promise) which tracks the performance of selected altcoins is indicating the same thing. It’s chart shows a double-bottom, indicative of a transition from losing value to gaining value.

President Xi Jinping’s comments (referenced earlier) seem to be having a direct effect on Chinese coins. I have noticed my beloved NEO doing exceptionally well ever since BTC took-off this weekend. The same applies to some of my other Chinese coins such as Ontology (ONT) and THEKEY (TKY). I have been saying for a LONG time that Chinese altcoins is where the smart crypto money should be. I’m sticking to that.

China definitely seems to be looking more blockchain friendly than both the US and the EU at the moment. Combined with their rise to global economic and military dominance (sorry USA, that is happening), I’m feeling VERY good about my Chinese altcoin investments.

BUT:

Note that Xi Jinping is talking about BLOCKCHAINS, not cryptocurrencies! I honestly think that the Chinese crypto hype is premature. Sure, it’s a GREAT idea to get in very early at ultra-low prices, but I don’t think that the current FOMO wave is thinking along those lines; they’re just thinking “China” = “pro-crypto” = “Chinese crypto to the Moon”; which is not necessarily the case. Chinese authorities appear to want blockchain tech that they can control, that’s NOT crypto!

It is however true that Xi Jinping is a visionary and that he knows the importance of not getting left behind in the blockchain race. In the long-run I believe that China will come around to the realisation that decentralised blockchains are the ones that work best and that centralised ones (like many reserve banks are currently investigating, or like Zuckerberg’s shitcoin extraordinaire) are doomed to fail thanks to the transparency and forced accountability that blockchains offer. It’s worth remembering that the Chinese government has been trialling THEKEY for several months already. I also remind you that Da Hongfei got WAY ahead of the game and helped China develop Chinese blockchain regulations about two years ago – regulations he built NEO (and by extension, Ontology too) around…

Looking to the future of alts, my crypto investing suggestions remain unchanged:

1) Good Chinese coins (NEO is still by far the best example, but others (e.g. VeChain) – are also worthy of consideration)

2) Good Exchange coins (My best bets are: Binance (BNB), KuCoin (KCS) and Nash Exchange (NEX) – all of which I have referral links to in my signature block)

3) Good Platform coins (you guessed it: NEO again! Other coins that I would recommend in this category are EOS, Ether (ETH), Ontology (ONT), Tron (TRX) and Holochain (HOT).

4) Other coins which have good use cases, especially the neglected ones which have survived the extremely harsh altcoin winter. Yes, I STILL love CargoX (CXO) (check them out at www.cargox.io and tell me what’s NOT to like!), but there are many others such as Kyber (KNC), Enjin coin (ENJ), UTrust (UTK), TenX (PAY), Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX), OmiseGo (OMG) – too many to list. Just remember: “Favourite” does not equal “Good”!

Final Word

To my fellow NEO investors, it’s good to see NEO getting some LONG overdue attention, but be prepared for the FOMO-turns-to-FUD price drops which are sure to come. Like most good investments, NEO’s strength will lie in its long-term performance.

Yours in crypto

Bit Brain

Featured image in the public domain. Sourced from https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-over-9000

All uncaptioned charts made by Bit Brain with TradingView

“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first” 

~ Mark Twain

“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful” 

~ Bit Brain

Bit Brain recommends:

Crypto Exchanges:




Crypto Shopping Cart – 11 August

 

I haven’t traded much in the last month or two. With the altcoin market still dead, one has to move very cautiously: being careful not to sell low and being equally careful not to buy rubbish.

Here’s what I’ve been selling and buying over the last three weeks or so:

 

Shopping trip 1:

The second part of my OByte airdrop came through about a month ago. Byteball (as it was then known) was airdropped to STEEM holders a little over a year ago, and I’ve been holding onto mine ever since, waiting for the second part of the airdrop to unlock. Obviously this was not a large amount (I didn’t have much STEEM a year ago), but every little bit counts, especially in an altcoin market as undervalued as this one is.

I’ve been watching OByte for as long as I have been holding it, and so far I have just failed to see a good use case for it. It doesn’t have the market penetration of similar coins, and it lacks the product differentiation required to give it unique desirability. I’m using the altcoin winter to weed out my weaker projects, and OByte is one of those which I decided to dump.

I headed over to Bittrex to sell it. Sadly I must say that Bittrex really doesn’t seem to be keeping up with the newer exchanges, it’s still a bit of a pain to use. Because my OByte was not worth much, and I didn’t feel like withdrawing BTC that would have cost me half it’s value in transaction fees, I decided to buy the one coin which I still leave on Bittrex: I bought Blocknet

Blocknet is not a name you hear every day. It’s basically a multi-chain, second-layer, blockchain interoperability system. It’s not a sure thing, but I have high hopes for it and see no reason why it should not succeed. To put it another way: I give it far greater odds of success than Cardano! Take a look at BLOCK if you are unfamiliar with it, they have some interesting things going on, including their own DEX (called “Block DX”). https://blocknet.co

Having nothing more to do on Bittrex, I headed over to KuCoin and sold off some of my TenX (PAY). While I still believe in TenX, I have not been happy with all of their recent decisions. A decision with regard to the distribution of tokens was badly received by the community, and indicative of poor management. That kind of thing sets off warning bells, the last thing I want is to sit on another Electroneum-like management disaster. So I dumped about 40% of my TenX and bought KuCoin Shares (KCS) with it. KuCoin shares are always a good investment – at least they have been for the last two years that they have existed.

Shopping trip 2:

Just before the month drew to a close, KuCoin dropped another surprise on us: the KuCoin Shares Lockup program. Staking rewards offered by this three month staking opportunity were ridiculously good, and I decided to participate. KuCoin Shares are not particularly cheap, but they are cheap for what they are. In an attempt to maximise returns on this opportunity, I traded my small emergency Ethereum fund (stored on KuCoin for just such cases) and bought KCS with it. In addition to that, I also sold off a substantial amount of my STEEM that has been powering down for the last few weeks – unfortunately at a very bad price. With altcoins universally low, it’s become a case of “which coins have the best potential for recovery?” I generally hedge my bets, but a STEEM to KCS swap was a no-brainer in this case.

I was fortunate enough to stake my KCS on Day 1 of the lockup at the maximum ROI percentage – I calculate that I should make a profit of over 10% (in KCS) in three months, which is fantastic! The KCS price climbed during the Lockup program, and for the most part it’s held onto its gains – hardly surprising when KuCoin continues to innovate and offer excellent service. See if you can spot the 24 hours before the staking contract first opened on the chart below…

From https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/kucoin-shares

 

Shopping trip 3:

My most recent shopping trip took place this weekend. ZCash (ZEC) has been under my watchful eye for the last few weeks. I have been growing increasingly uneasy towards it and last week I finally reached the end of my tether and decided to dump it. It’s a risky move: ZEC is far from bad, but I am unhappy with the direction that the management team has moved in. My decision was to get out before the coin suddenly loses most of its supporters – something which I consider to be a very real possibility. I don’t like the funding issues that ZCash is having – that’s bad financial planning. I don’t like the founder rewards disagreements – those are not in the best interests of the community, and have already caused the YCash fork to take place. The final straw for me was hearing that they wanted to basically rewrite the code for ZCash – which would open it up to a whole new set of bugs (remember: this is a privacy coin we’re talking about). Reading the latest posts by the ZCash Foundation and Electric Coin Company (the company which is confusingly ZCash – yet also isn’t – much like the Ripple/XRP obfuscation) did nothing to allay my fears, in fact it made them worse.

I held ZCash for a long time, so this was not a decision taken lightly (especially considering how much the price has dropped since I got it!). I wanted to put the newly freed up ZCash funds into the best possible coins. I sold my ZEC on Binance, so to keep things simple, I decided that I would only buy cryptos from Binance with those funds. I did entertain the possibility of leaving it in BTC, but because BTC dominance is so high right now, I consider any attempt to sell altcoins into BTC as a bad trade and a case of FUD selling. I opted to buy three altcoins instead.

It should be mentioned that I came very close to buying Holo (HOT) again. The only reason I didn’t buy it is that I have a fairly large amount of Holo already when compared to my other alts (not that any of my altcoin holdings can really be called “large” these days!). Civic (CVC) has been on my “want” list for several months now. With Civic at ATL prices, both in BTC and USD, it looks like an excellent buy opportunity. Combined with the fact that it still looks like a seriously good project and that it’s slowly getting some attention, I more than doubled my Civic stack for only a few dollars. I know that someday I will look back on these purchases and laugh. What remains to be seen is if the laughter will be at the massive profits I have made from them, or from the sheer foolishness of buying altcoins in a market that looks so disinterested in them!

Next on the list was Ontology (ONT). I’m still kicking myself for selling the first ONT that was airdropped to me for holding NEO. I often see ONT as a backup to NEO: should NEO for some inane reason fail to takeoff, then surely ONT will. For now my money is still on NEO (literally), but I think that ONT (which is basically just NEO dressed up in a suit and tie) is a very valuable addition to any crypto portfolio.

The last coin in my shopping cart is Waltonchain (WTC). I’m a VeChain supporter at heart, but Walton has always been worthy competition for them, and honestly there’s not much difference between the two. Lately it seems as if my #2 horse in the race has been outperforming my #1. Keeping my ear to the ground, it sounds as if Walton has been making the good deals lately – deals which should increase its adoption. “Adoption” is the name of the game in the altcoin world. With that in mind, I put the last of my old ZEC funds into WTC.

Conclusion

That’s the end of another month of shopping. While the markets may seem dead, I think this is a great time to accumulate all the good altcoins which are being overlooked by the “new money’ in crypto. The more fickle “old money” has turned BTC maximalist for now, but will surely swing the other way again once the altcoin money starts to flow. FOMO will pull them back over to the alts – where some of us have been waiting all along…

These are not the usual coins that I buy – with the obvious exception of KuCoin Shares. I’m taking this opportunity to increase my stake in some coins I don’t hold enough of, and also taking this opportunity to get rid of my non-performers. I’m also seriously considering putting more fiat in – even though I have none to spare – for reasons which I may elaborate on in my next post.

Opportunities surround us in crypto right now, fantastic opportunities. The trick is to tell the good from the bad. Remember that risk mitigation lies in diversification. Good luck out there.

 

Yours in crypto
Bit Brain

“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first” 

~ Mark Twain

“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful” 

~ Bit Brain

Bit Brain recommends:

Crypto Exchanges:





Don’t miss this one!

 

Yesterday I bought myself (another) 75 KuCoin Shares (KCS).

Yes, I know that my previous post was all about the KuCoin Exchange (The Best Crypto Exchange just got Even Better! (Again)). I apologise for the lack of variety, but this is important and time is of the essence! Similarly, I can’t just write another “Shopping Cart” post and risk you missing this important buy!

I bought those 75 KuCoin Shares (trading STEEM and Ethereum for them) in order to be able to take part in the latest KuCoin programme. Of course they only released this information after my last post – Murphy’s Law at work once again!

So what is the latest KuCoin programme (as if they haven’t already launched enough new initiatives this month already!)?

This is it:

From https://www.kucoin.com/news/en-kucoin-will-launch-the-kcs-lockup-cash-back-program-and-burn-plan

 

 

Of course, if you follow me on Twitter, then you probably already know this:

From https://twitter.com/brain_bit

 

 

If you have a Twitter account and you don’t want to follow me… then, well, I guess I’m sorry – I don’t know how to cure “stupid”.

What is the KuCoin Lockup Plan?

The lockup plan is a three-month lockup of KuCoin Shares on the KuCoin exchange. In other words, it’s a staking contract. The more you stake, the more you can earn. Importantly, the sooner you stake, the more you can earn too. And that’s where it gets impressive:

Recently I staked my WAX coins on their new native (EOS-cloned) blockchain. Returns on that contract amount to 100% over a period of 3 years, which I think is very good! But the KuCoin figures are even better: returns are far higher, working out to a rate which equates to an estimated annual ROI of 50%. Over the three-month period of their staking contract, that works out to just over a 10% return. Not bad for three months, especially with no work involved! That is, quiet simply, the best staking contract I know of in crypto. By far. Yeah you could also get those sort of returns by running the right crypto masternode, but that would probably be considerably more risky – and possibly a lot more expensive.

To get into the KuCoin Staking contract you will need a minimum of 200 KCS. The news of this opportunity caused a price rise in KCS, the tokens have gone up from around $1.30 each to around $1.60. Thus (at time of writing) it will cost you a minimum of $320 to get into the programme – which isn’t cheap, but I consider it to be well worth it if you have the money available! There is a good chance that prices may drop after the staking contract closes, but I really don’t care: KCS is a long-term hold and will no doubt shoot up in price as the platform gets busier (As it has before – to an ATH of $20.17).

Set your alarms:

The lockup plan works as follows: it runs for the month of August, but those who lockup first stand to score the most. Estimated returns start at an annual rate of 50%, but then drop off by 0.5% every day thereafter, so you want to lockup on day one! The staking contract opens on 1 August (I assume directly after midnight) and the time zone used for that is UTC +8. In other words, the contract opens at 16:00 UTC on 31 July, at least I think it does.

For the whales out there, there is a maximum daily lockup amount of 10000 KCS. There is another limit that applies to everyone: a maximum of 500 000 KCS can be locked per day, so don’t wait too long! If you do miss day one or two, it isn’t the end of the world, 49% annual ROI on day three is still pretty darn fantastic! Even if you lockup on the final day of the month, the annual ROI rate will still be 35%, which still beats practically any other staking contract! The entire lockup programme will stop if and when 5 000 000 KCS is locked. This could happen in as little as 10 days, or it may not happen at all. Here is an added bonus: however much is locked up in the programme (in total), that same amount of KCS will be burnt in December 2019. KuCoin are burning KCS like wildfire at the moment (check my previous KuCoin post), a trend which seems to be continuing. This is great for KCS holders, especially when they are getting more KCS for free! If 5 000 000 KCS is burnt, that will mean that the total amount of KCS in existence drops by 2.8%! If you prefer to work with circulating amount (which I do not advise), then that percentage rises to 5.6%! Remember: you can always check out the latest information about KCS specifically at the KCS dashboard at  https://kcs.kucoin.com

You don’t have much to lose

For those who fear that KCS price will drop radically during the three-month staking period, take heart: you can cap your USD losses at 10%. This is because KuCoin have built a safety net into the system: they have a guaranteed service that works like this (in their own words):

After the KCS unlocks, KuCoin provides a service for repurchasing the user’s locked KCS at the price of 10% off the average KCS price (USDT price) on the day of the user’s lockup

What this allows you to do is to turn your recently unlocked KCS into USDT a price of 10% less than what it was worth during the lockup period. The programme is thus not only a good way to buildup your crypto holdings, but also a way to hedge against drops in the market! This offer expires 24 hours after unlocking and is only valid as long as you have not traded or moved your KCS.

On the downside, tokens locked into the new programme do not earn the usual daily staking rewards that KuCoin offers to KCS holders. However, those rewards are FAR less than what you stand to gain by participating.

Conclusion

I fully intend to lock up my KCS for this period, and I will do so as soon as I can. For those who don’t hold KCS, I think that the rise in the token price has been minimal and that it is still well worth your time to participate. I truly believe that KCS is an excellent token to hold and that it is greatly undervalued. I also firmly believe that KuCoin is a fantastic exchange. I’ve been using it for nearly two years now and I am 100% happy with it, in fact it often exceeds my expectations!

Following hot on the heels of “Soft Staking”, KuCoin is obviously focusing on staking lately and their offerings in this regard are extremely impressive. I hope they continue in this vein, if they do it should win them many new customers. I do not know what will happen after the three month lockup period ends, I know that your staked KCS will be returned to you, but I don’t know if another programme will follow thereafter, I hope it does! Perhaps it will become an annual event, who knows? At this stage information is still limited. Read the latest of KuCoin’s own articles about the the lockup here:  “KuCoin Will Launch The KCS Lockup & Cash Back Program and Burn Plan”

If you are not a KuCoin user yet, please consider clicking my “KuCoin” banner in my signature and signing up wit my referral link. I get tiny amounts of some of your transaction fees if you do, for which I would be most grateful. While you are at it… remember that Nash goes live next month!

From https://twitter.com/brain_bit

 

 

Nash and its NEX token should become big names in the world of crypto exchanges. After its launch, I see Nash being the best DEX by far, even better than Binance DEX. Initially trading pairs will be limited, but that will change with time. The highly advanced Nash platform and the myriad added features should make it extremely attractive to investors and crypto traders alike. I have built up a relatively big stack of NEX which I am hoarding jealously. I strongly recommend that you look into NEX if you have not already done so.

In the meantime, why not sign up so long? Once again, I have a referral link in my signature. You HAVE to use a referral link to sign up – there is no option to sign up without one. This is designed into the system to help spread the word. The referral link gives you entry into a competition: you can win BTC and NEX by signing up. The lucky draw is at the end of the year, and the more people you refer with your own code (that you will get after signing up), the more entries you get into the competition. I have never been this excited about the launch of an exchange before!

Yours in great crypto exchanges
Bit Brain

Attribution: Featured image from https://www.kucoin.com/news/en-kucoin-will-launch-the-kcs-lockup-cash-back-program-and-burn-plan

Yours in crypto

Bit Brain

“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first” 

~ Mark Twain

“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful” 

~ Bit Brain

Bit Brain recommends:

Crypto Exchanges:





Cryptocurrency Relative Strength Analysis Report For Week Starting 7/28/19

When you think about Cryptocurrencies, one name immediately comes to mind, Bitcoin.  Since the creation of Bitcoin, there has only ever been one cryptocurrency at the top of the market cap rankings…Bitcoin. 

When the price of Bitcoin rises, generally you can expect altcoin prices to rise with it. Likewise, when the Bitcoin price drops, altcoins also follow. And sometimes when Bitcoin is rising, the altcoins are declining due to cash moving from the altcoins to Bitcoin and vice versa.

Source Image

Bitcoin dominance is used to measure the percentage of the cryptocurrency market that can be attributed to Bitcoin. Thus, it’s very easy to determine the relative strength of Bitcoin at any point. Not the case for the altcoins…until now. I have taken the more popular altcoins and determined their relative strength, relative to Bitcoin using just moving average.

Binance

EOS

Ethereum

Litecoin

Neo

Steem

Tron

Zcash

Based on the moving averages and the last daily closing price, relative to the moving averages,

the altcoins relative strength, relative to Bitcoin are the following:

Two Weeks Ago

This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.

Who is Justin Sun???

Justin Sun, is a tech entrepreneur, the founder of the cryptocurrency platform TRON and current CEO of BitTorrent. Justin is former chief representative of the Greater China area of Ripple and Jack Ma (founder of Alibaba) protégé  

Over the course of this week, a lot of news came out in regards to the CEO of TRON, Justin Sun after he cancelled the highly anticipated charity lunch between him and the American investor guru, Warren Buffett. Some of this news is still in rumour form so to speak but it has caused quite a stir amongst enthusiasts.

Earlier in the week, these rumours got so bad and inflated that the price of TRX was affected, and not in a good way.

Reports from Chinese media outlets suggested that Sun was charged by the nation’s authorities on internet safety for his supposed connection to money laundering, illegal fundraising, gambling and even spreading pornography.

And so with this, according to the Twitter user, cnLedger, Sun is banned from leaving the country.

Source

Justin has the brand name like Charlie Lee of Litecoin and the vision and the mouth of Elon Musk, meaning you have to take the good with the bad.

The price of Tron is at a major confluence line at $0.02.  Short term, price can go either way.  Long term, I like Tron. 

This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.

Buy Some Real Estate With Ethereum

Fundament, a Berlin-based blockchain firm’s receipt of approval from BaFIN to issue blockchain-based bonds that are backed by real-estate. In an announcement on July 23, 2019, Fundament revealed that as a result of the regulator’s approval, it will be running a public offering valued at EUR 250 million ($280 million). 

As a result, crypto fanatics in certain regions who want to invest as little as 50 euros in Germany’s real estate at a variable interest rate can opt to pay with ethereum instead.

Furthermore, the token sale will begin on August 2019 where it will be launched on the Ethereum blockchain. The process will adopt the standard procedure that was notable among Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) of 2017 and beyond. In addition, the tokenized bond can be withdrawn in the form of a foundation token to a wallet that is compatible with Ethereum’s blockchain.

Source

Ethereum was like the second coming of Bitcoin, where you could build Dapps on the blockchain, but the transactions weren’t fast (relative to the 3rd and 4th generation blockchains). However, Ethereum’s mission is to replace internet third parties that store data, track financial instruments via smart contracts and eliminate the server / cloud model.

Despite not making a lot of noise in recent months, Ethereum remains a top 5 blockchain, at least by market cap and will be one of the blockchains that will still be around in 10 yrs. However, in the short term, price is correcting to the support / resistance line at $160.

This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.

Cryptocurrency Relative Strength Analysis Report For Week Starting 7/22/19

When you think about Cryptocurrencies, one name immediately comes to mind, Bitcoin.  Since the creation of Bitcoin, there has only ever been one cryptocurrency at the top of the market cap rankings…Bitcoin. 

When the price of Bitcoin rises, generally you can expect altcoin prices to rise with it. Likewise, when the Bitcoin price drops, altcoins also follow. And sometimes when Bitcoin is rising, the altcoins are declining due to cash moving from the altcoins to Bitcoin and vice versa.

Source Image

Bitcoin dominance is used to measure the percentage of the cryptocurrency market that can be attributed to Bitcoin. Thus, it’s very easy to determine the relative strength of Bitcoin at any point. Not the case for the altcoins…until now. I have taken the more popular altcoins and determined their relative strength, relative to Bitcoin using just moving average.

Binance

EOS

Ethereum

Litecoin

Neo

Steem

Tron

Zcash

Based on the moving averages and the last daily closing price, relative to the moving averages,

the altcoins relative strength, relative to Bitcoin are the following:

This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.