Feb. research: Pt 2

As I am pretty pressed for time, I am going to do a little less in depth overview of other coins to watch in the short to mid term. You will need to do a little reading for this one.

Eternity (ENT)

Market Cap: 1.4$ million

Price:  0.35$ / 0.00003519 BTC

Purpose of coin: Payment platform.

Website: http://ent.eternity-group.org/

Quantum RL (QRL)

Market Cap: 70.6$ million

Price:  1.36$ / 0.0001350 BTC

Purpose of coin: Communication layer to tackle quantum computing threats.

Website: https://theqrl.org/

QRL – The Quantum Resistant Ledger theqrl.org The Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL) is a blockchain designed to withstand the computational attacks possible on other blockchains as the developments in quant…

Edgeless (EDG)

Market Cap: 73.6$ million

Price:  0.89$ / 0.00008902 BTC

Purpose of coin: Ethereum based casino.

Website: https://edgeless.io/

Vibrate (VIB)

 

Market Cap: 45.1$ million

Price:  0.27$ / 0.00002712 BTC

Purpose of coin: Community for musicians, venues, events, gigs, and contact info for music.

Website: https://www.viberate.com/

Viberate – smarter way to explore live music http://www.viberate.com A global platform for musicians, venues and music events. All in one place, presented with rich profiles. Register for free.

Deep Onion (Onion)

Market Cap: 51.7$ million

Price:  4.95$ / 0.0004886 BTC

Purpose of coin: Privacy coin using TOR.

Website: https://deeponion.org/

DeepOnion – Anonymous Cryptocurrency and Untraceable Payments deeponion.org DeepOnion is an anonymous cryptocurrency that is untraceable. All transactions are private and sent through the TOR network.

Unify (UNIFY)

Market Cap: 2.8$ million

Price:  0.15$ / 0.00001555 BTC

Purpose of coin: Crypto ecosystem for crowdfunding.

Website: http://www.unify.today/

Unify http://www.unify.today Unify is cryptocurrency made for crowdfunding

Sugar (SGR)

Market Cap: 0.5$ million

Price:  0.14$ / 0.00001465 BTC

Purpose of coin: Crypto exchange.

Website: http://sugarexchange.io/

Sugar Exchange – Cryptocurrency trading platform. sugarexchange.io is a new type of cryptocurrency trading platform utilizing proven methods, as well as implementing advanced technology to ensure a superior user experience.

Nebulas (NAS)

Market Cap: 330.2$ million

Price:  9.30$ / 0.0009118 BTC

Purpose of coin: Crypto search engine.

Website: https://nebulas.io/

Nebulas – Decentralized Search Framework nebulas.io Nebulas is a decentralized platform which provides a search framework for all blockchains.

Icon (ICX)

Market Cap: 1.7$ billion

Price:  4.64$ / 0.0004546 BTC

Purpose of coin: Decentralised network connecting real world businesses with blockchain.

Website: https://www.icon.foundation/

ICON http://www.icon.foundation ICON은 다양한 Blockchain Community가 연결된 탈중앙화 네트워크입니다.

Maid Safe Coin (MAID)

Market Cap: 220.1$ million

Price:  0.48$ / 0.0000484 BTC

Purpose of coin: Data Storage network.

Website: http://maidsafe.net/

Expanse.tech | Blockchain for everyone http://www.expanse.tech Expanse is an Ethereum based blockchain platform for smart contracts.

Two other coins with high potential are Cardano and NEO. There is a lot of information online about both of these projects. As these two projects are major coins they are more sound but offer longer hold positions.

• Information presented here, including any ideas, opinions, views, predictions, forecasts or crypto picks, expressed or implied are for informational and educational purposes only. The coins posted should not be construed as personal investment advice.

Investor’s Guide

Everybody likes something; cats, green lights, pillows, music, sports, flowers, baby animals, free wifi…

Notice money did not make the list?

It is unusual to run into a bag of money while taking a stroll down the street.

However, the inevitable question was asked, ‘what is the best crypto to buy’? Id est, which crypto is gonna give me a boat load of free money?

That question, is, difficult to answer on its own.

As an investor, there are many factors to consider before putting any money down. The major and initial things to consider are:

1. Creating a portfolio. Decide where you want to be involved e.g.  existing cryptocurrencies, crowd funding and ICOs, public/private blockchains, mining/cloud mining, arbitrage between markets, day trading or other areas.
2. The amount of risk you are willing to take on. A good idea is to find their Sharpe ratio. Here is an excellent site to find all the comparative data you may need on big coins: https://www.sifrdata.com/
3. Time frame. Are you going to invest and forget it for 6 months? Or will you open you portfolio everyday hoping to make money after a week?
4. Expectations from investment. Ripple made 42,000% growth this year. It cannot continue to grow at the same speed. It is a solid investment, but it will bring modest returns. Remember, if you want to earn massive returns, you will have to find a coin that has a small market cap, preferably under 100$ million with lots of potential for growth.

Once you have a handle on those aspects, you will be better prepared to put some money in a more specific area.

Since the question was about which crypto is best, it would be assumed that the investor is looking at existing cryptocurrencies on public blockchains.

Now, there is just a little more information to wade through and of course, more considerations.

1. Discovering the purpose of the coin. With so many coins in existence, this is a crucial question to be able to answer. You can buy dogecoin because it has made big gains over the last year. However, when you find out the coin was invented as a joke and has no functionality, investing in it seems unwise.
2. People involved on the team. This too, will help you weed out some more riff raff. The team should have members who have extensive experience in coding, developing and marketing. That would also bring with it, some solid partnerships and financial backers (VCs). Google is a good friend here.
3. Having a look at their website. A simple check of a crypto’s website can reveal a lot about what their vision is, where they are on their time line, and what their plans are for the future.

So, let’s give it a go.

Here is a list of the top 16 cryptocurrencies listed by Sharpe ratio. If we choose one coin with a medium Sharpe ratio, we can do a quick peek under the hood.

Example #1: Litecoin (LTC)

Market Cap and Price: 9.3$ billion – 169.74$

Purpose of coin: Litecoin is considered like a little brother to bitcoin. It is also set up as P2P digital currency. It runs on the same code as Bitcoin, but has a much larger coin supply. Litecoin’s supply is maximum of 84 million coins. Therefore, it can make more and cheaper transactions than bitcoin. Another interesting fact is that its creator wanted it to be minable by many, so it runs on the Scrypt algorithm.

Website: https://litecoin.com/  excellent design, very clear, lots of information, usable on a variety devices and has its own wallet.

Who are the people involved on the team: Charlie Lee, former Google employee, solid reputation as coder.

• Side note, Charlie Lee has shown interest in merging Litecoin with Monero. It will create a huge opportunity if the two coins merge. http://bitcoinist.com/possible-litecoin-monero-merger-steps-closer-reality/

Example #2: WaBi

Market Cap and Price: 105$ million – 2.33$

Purpose of coin: WaBi – places anti-counterfeit labels on consumer goods in China. Used to buy authentic goods, receive discounts and loyalty points.

Website: https://www.wacoin.io/ Perfectly laid out, very clear and seems to have transparency and solid time line.

Who are the people involved on the team: Listed on the website – each member can be googled individually.

• Side note, ICO has just ended, baby food product sales began and alcohol sales will begin soon. There is big room for big valuation.

As each investor has different objectives, market preferences and time lines, there is no ‘one’ ideal coin to meet everyone’s needs.

I strongly encourage you to do some research into coins that fit your investment portfolio. Having said that, these two examples are only opinions, but not investment advice. It is always good to remember that past performance is no indication of future returns.

Below are the top 20 cryptocurrencies as of today. Google searches for coins with market caps under 100$ million will give you a wealth of other coins to start looking at.

 

 

Quiet Lightning

News

 

Over the past week, there have been a mix of truly horrific stories with some hopeful ones.

It seems like some Korean government officials have been selling their cryptocurrencies just before regulations were announced. It’s pretty bad when even the dealer is stealing from the house!

https://news.bitcoin.com/south-korean-officials-caught-trading-on-insider-knowledge-of-crypto-regulations/

Japan continues to light the way with more promising news that should push the markets higher soon.  Mitsubishi UFJ is going to roll out their own digital currency following the creation of their seven asset exchange.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/worlds-fourth-largest-bank-mufg-to-launch-own-cryptocurrency-in-2018

The Lightening Network

However, there is something else that is creeping around in the background. Over the past week, the Lightning Network has been gaining traction.

But, what is the Lightning Network?

We have all heard about how expensive transactions on the Bitcoin network can be. Imagine spending 35$ to buy a 10$ USB? Not worth it.

That is where the Lightning Network steps in scalability: it proposes to let people send and receive transactions off of the main network. This in turn reduces the cost of transactions and increases the speed of the system.

In essesence, the Lightning Network could solve the issues of expensive and slow transactions for bitcoin.

Over the past week, the network has almost doubled in size to over 100 nodes with more than 230 channels. Sounds impressive, until you realise that the total dollar value of the network is just 19,000$.

https://bitcoinist.com/lightning-network-100-nodes-segwit/

That does not seem like a lot. However, as the system grows and overcomes its own growing pains, in a very short few months, the network value could add a few zeros to it.

Solving the problem of being able to use bitcoin as a everyday currency is something essential to its survival.

If successful, the Lightning Network could also help bitcoin put on a few needed pounds.

Visa, Aldous Huxley, and Lightening??

As we ride the rollercoaster, the (M)ass media continues to shower us with pepperings of gloom and doom. Those forecasts are sprinkled with flakes of hope.

Since our latest Buffalo Jump, the headlines have been ripe with new and very interesting, behind the scenes sorts of developments.

VISA – (Very Important Scam Association) 

One of the largest credit card companies in the world has made a rare statement about bitcoin and cryptos.

On Thursday, Alfred Kelly, the CEO of Visa said, “We at Visa won’t process transactions that are cryptocurrency-based. We will only process fiat currency-based transactions.”

https://news.bitcoin.com/visa-ceo-bitcoin-not-payment-system/?utm_source=OneSignal%20Push&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=Push%20Notifications

So, Visa will stand staunchly behind fiat/Government backed currencies… I think I have heard this before…

Personally, I do not agree with Visa and major so called ‘credit card’ companies.

Last year, I bought a plane ticket for 268$ CDN. As the company was US based, I ended up paying 214 US$. Unfortunately, I had to cancel the ticket the same day, as the friend I was going to visit had an emergency in the family.

When I went to cancel the ticket, I saw that my credit card was credited in the amount of 235$ CDN. What??? Did the Canadian dollar fall by 14% in a matter of hours?

At the end of the day, I discovered that Visa had charged me 4% over market value to buy my ticket and charged my 10% over market value to refund the same money I gave them. Oh and by the way, if I did not pay my bill at the end of the month they would have charged my 20% interest on my purchase. V.I.S.A.

B.N.W.

Moving on… I believe in the statement, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

In bigger news, blockchain giants like Dash and Bitcoin are finding the biggest brains in their future markets. And I, for one am very interested, excited and have hope for my children to become pioneers in this Brave New World.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/arizona-state-university-partners-with-dash-to-fund-research-scholarships

Lightening… again??

There are more rumblings about the Lightening Network.

As a crypto/asset/currency/coin advocate, I see how the lightening network will add a much needed layer of scalability to bitcoin.

It almost seems like as if we are using floppy disks when USBs were just around the corner. Upgrade!

Get ready for a BIG change in the next 2-3 months.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-lightning-network-could-make-bitcoin-faster-and-cheaper/

Build-a-Coin

 

Forks, mining, exchanges, legalization, hash rates, ICOs… where does the madness of the cryptosphere begin and end?

Today, a friend and I sat down and thought about what it would take to create our own crypto currency.

It’s not as easy as making a build-a-bear with your child.

We joked about making a “beer” coin or a “Bob Marley” coin. So, I sat down and did some research about what the limit to weirdness there was out there.

Some of my searches ended up in some very odd results.

First off, for a short period of time at KFC in Canada,  you could buy some finger licking goodness with bitcoin. Yes, the Bitcoin Bucket was on sale for .0010102 btc. It is interesting because for that short period of time, bitcoin was actually equal to real money.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/bitcoin-becomes-legal-tenders-kfc-canadas-new-bitcoin-bucket-3371344

In the news over the past few days, Venezuela is reportedly going all in on crypto. Though it’s legality is questionable, president Maduro’s has planned to introduce the world to the ‘Petro’. A supply of 100 million Petros will be tentatively released to the market backed by the country’s oil industry.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/venezuela-parliament-calls-presidents-59-bln-petro-cryptocurrency-new-fraud

One coin that I have seen on the market, but many people do not know about is Potcoin. As you would imagine, Potcoin is trying to become the first digital currency to facilitate legalized pot sales. Go check it out: it is a real coin.

http://www.potcoin.com/

Politics and cryptocurrencies know the no limits. I am sure there are many more coins out there like these, but the Putincoin and the Trumpcoin were the two that caught my eye. Help make cryptos great again!

https://putincoin.org/about.html

https://www.trumpcoin.com/

A loud chuckle was heard when I found this next coin. Fuckcoin, yes the world is running out of people who don’t give a “F_ _ k”. A quick look at their video tells it all.

There are a slew of othe crude coins. You will just have to take my word for it that they exist.

One coin that I was tempted to buy in the summer was 42 coin. It is probably weird because of it’s insane pricing. At the time of writing 42 coin is trading for 57,000$!

What is it? Well, nothing. How many are there? Here is a shocker, there will only ever be 42 of them. It is based on the answer given to the ‘ultimate question’ in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

After all this research, my friend and I are no closer to an idea of what our coin may be, but we had a good laugh learning about some of the madness out there.

Sold out!!

Today has been something like a roller coaster.

There is a lot of news about how bitcoin has sunk below the magical 15,000$ point. To be honest, anything under 15,000$ sounds good to me. For the time being the less pressure, the better.

Some news…

South Korea is urging banks to collaborate against cryptocurrencies.

https://news.bitcoin.com/south-korea-countries-eu-imf-collaborate-curbing-crypto-trading/?utm_source=OneSignal%20Push&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=Push%20Notifications

And then the best laugh of the day.

Remember, back in September when J.P. Morgan’s CEO called bitcoin a ‘fraud’. Well, seems he has been turned by the crypto world. He now believes it’s real…

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/09/jamie-dimon-says-he-regrets-calling-bitcoin-a-fraud.html

Searching high and low

Today’s lunch time was another high stress moment.

Bitmain had another batch of Antminer S9s came up for sale. Earlier this week, I made three accounts with Bitmain and asked a few friends to help me fill an order for our small investment group.

At 12 o’clock noon, the purchase button on the Bitmain page turned from grey to that glorious blue colour.

All three of us madly clicked away on the blue button. It is kind of annoying that it’s not possible to just type the number ( as it is limited to 20 per customer) of units you would like.

Two of us were able to get some machines in our carts. However, after putting in the delivery address and pressing the purchase button, a small red banner appeared which it unfortunately said, ‘not enough Antminer S9s left’.

What a horrible system. Once you have items in your cart, they can be taken out??? Ridiculous!

Regardless, the Antminer L3 remained on the website for more than ten minutes. Out of pure frustration, I decided to buy 3 Antminer L3s. Admittedly, I do not really know much about other mining machines. But, I guess that’s what learning is all about.

So, what is the difference between the L3 and the S9?

 

 

 

 

 

Well, that is an interesting thing. When mining for coins, ASIC machines are designed to mine for specific algorithms. In the case of the S9, it only mines for coins that use the SHA 256 algorithm (ie. bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash). Here is a list of the most profitable SHA 256 coins. I like the look of DME at 155% profit a week!!

The L3 can mine any coin that uses the Scrypt algorithm.

So a quick query into the most profitable coins that can be mined on the Scrypt algorithm almost made me choke.

Florin, Einsteinium (EMC2) and Verge all use the Scrypt algorithm! Over the past six months I bought and sold a small amount of EMC2 making a few thousand dollars of profit. And Verge! If you recall earlier in December, I made some comments about what 2018 holds for bitcoin and the cryptosphere. Verge was one of the coins that I had mentioned!

As you can mine 142.00 coins a day… maybe my frustration pointed me in the right direction.

I am on the verge of knowing.

 

 

Oh Canada!!

 

As cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, blockchain technology and mining developments increase, there is a need for a more and more educated public.

We need to read. We need to connect the dots.

As an educator, it is my aim to teach friends and family that have questions about this newly emerging market.

Sometimes, I surprise myself, like with the recent rise of Ripple. My research on Ripple, projected a 1$ price by January 1st. Though a little lean, let’s see if my next predicted price for Ripple will be right by the end of 2018.

Mining Power

In a previous blog, mining and nation states was a topic.

Over the past few days, this topic has been very lightly covered in the news. However, it seems like there is a new developing trend.

In a world where we can ‘kill the environment’ and where ‘carbon tax’ could fix the earth, there seems to be some misinformation.

Did you know that over the Christmas holidays, German utilities companies had negative pricing on the cost of electricity?

Apparently in Germany, while companies, factories, offices and the government took seasonal holidays and shut down; renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal and tidal do not stop.

Demand lowered, supply rose and price dropped.

https://www.sciencealert.com/germany-actually-paid-people-use-clean-renewable-electricity-over-holidays-christmas

So, if this happened in Germany, wouldn’t the same argument hold true for many other countries in the world? If we have an excess of ‘clean’ energy being produced, what should we do with it?

Personally, I would ask Elon Musk to build a super battery that would be able to store all this energy. Grrr, forgot his phone number.

Well, what if countries just started using that excess energy to say… start mining for cryptocurrencies?

Sounds like sci-fi to me…. but, as the words fell trope out of my mouth, I read an article that could connect some dots for a small potato like me.

https://news.bitcoin.com/canadians-harness-wind-to-mine-bitcoin-in-romania/

 

97% of the people I spoke to about Ripple, did not invest.

Of the 3% who invested, they have seen a ROI of 305%  or more.

Toronto Venture Exchange with the symbol BPWR.UN

Only trading at 64 cents right now.  Might put some money in that, couldn’t hurt right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mining Blues and the Law

Over the past few days, I have been on a tremendous learning curve.

During the New Years holiday, a friend of mine jokingly said that, in the last 14 months, I have done the equivalent of a Master’s degree in crypto currency.  Everyday does seem like I am back in university. However, this time, I choose to eat the cheap ramen noodles, but not out of necessity.

Today’s blog is about scarcity, computational power, and legality.

Scarcity

At 3:00 a.m. this morning, Bitmain released a batch of  Antminer S9s, the world’s most powerful bitcoin mining machines. As I was asleep, I missed out on the sale.

https://twitter.com/BITMAINtech?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Later in the day, I got a tweet from Bitmain that said they would sell a second batch of machines at 12 o’clock noon.

Although I was awake for that sale,  Bitmain sold out all of the machines in under 5 (five) minutes!

What is going on? That is insanity! How could a company sell out thousands of machines in minutes? It sounds like the iPhone, Minecraft, Pokemon and the list of other hyper trending products. Keep in mind that here is no preorder selection.

However, the Antminer S9 with it’s 13.5 Th/s power is not a gadget that you can, or should, just simply plug into the wall and wait for cascades of money to shine onto you.

It is noisy. It runs at a very high temperature. It needs a clean environment, a steady supply of energy and internet connection.

Someone, or some groups are buying up all of the machines at an incredible rate. They are creating scarcity in the mining market that has not been seen so far.

And then, there is China…

First they allowed free market style investment in crypto currencies, mining and exchanges. Then they clamped down on ICOs (Initial Coin Offers) eventually banning it.

Recently, they shut down exchanges.

Now they are preparing to regulate power consumption.

What’s next? Will they create their own governmental crypto coin?? #chinacoin ??

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/03/bitcoin-mining-power-usage-comes-under-government-regulation-in-china.html

They are acting as legal wizards, answering the courts of Korea in hours!

Regulations on power consumption. The water is getting deep. I will explain this thought train later.

Computational power

Now that I have a few Antminer S9s bitcoin mining machines online, I am constantly looking at the Eh/s of mining, profitability and my Th/s.

Sounds like a physics lesson.

As we learned before, the bitcoin network will reward one miner 12.5 bitcoins if they are able to solve a mathematical algorithm.

So let’s break it down. One of my machines can make 13.5 Th/s… that is basically, 13.5 trillion guesses per second to find a combination to the padlock that holds the bitcoin.

But, I am one of thousands of miners. And we all have many machines… How many guesses are we all making? At the present moment, the network is running at 1.7 Eh/s or… 1,7000,000,000,000,000,000 guesses per second.  Please remember that one hash is one guess at the combination to the padlock.

What does that mean?

Well here it goes:

• 1 TeraHash/ is 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) hashes per second.
• 1 PetaHash/is 1,000,000,000,000,000 (one quadrillion) hashes per second.
• 1 ExaHash/ is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one quintillion) hashes per second.

That is an incredible amount of information. It is almost like a lottery. However, in this lottery, there is a guaranteed winner every 10 minutes.

It’s not like guessing where to mine for gold in Peru or Indonesia.

This mining operation is real, with real calculable guaranteed returns.

When one looks at traditional mining, there are trucks, workers, pollution, disruption of local environments, corruption, destruction of indigenous people’s lifestyles and on and on.

Read all you want about how bad bitcoin mining is, but you will not find a 5 year old child working in a mine. A Chilean miner will not be in a trapped in a collapsed mine and workers will not develop cancer from their work in bitcoin mines.

Then I came across something from an economics lesson.

Metcalfe’s Law – https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/m/metcalfe.htm

Basically, the value of the network is worth the square of it’s size.

So, if I had 10 machines, the value of the network be 10^2, or a value of 100.

With 1.7 Eh/s^2 the value of the bitcoin network should be 2.89 Eh/s. I will only pretend that I, as a Kindergarten teacher, I am able to do that kind of math.

And Legality

Now this part really is interesting to me…

https://news.bitcoin.com/korean-lawyers-take-government-to-court-over-crypto-regulation/?utm_source=OneSignal%20Push&utm_medium=notification&utm_campaign=Push%20Notifications

I cannot vouch for the the firm, but their logic is sound.

Currently, the South Korean Government does not recognize bitcoin or other crypto currencies as legal tender.

This creates interference in cryptocurrency trade, as well as an invasion to people’s property rights.

So, what’s next?

As of a result, Korean lawyers are fighting to change the conduct on the cryptocurrency trading.

Because financial law is not applicable to digital currency, bitcoin should be considered as a commodity. A commodity like rice, cheese or crude oil.

That means: freedom of trading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Medium is the Mess Age

What a tumultuous week it has been for bitcoin.

After a rocket ship like ride in the beginning of December, bitcoin had a correction and entered the 16,000$ range. All normal.

Then it happened.

News, fake news, rumours, half truths, gossips, misconceptions, real news (unfortunately not reported), misunderstood governmental communications and more hit the mainstream media.

B2X

Bitcoin had a hint of insider trading with Coinbase and Bitcoin Cash. Not normal and kind of weird, but nothing has come of Coinbase’s investigation.

A hard fork was revived, with new, possibly dubious, members of the fork. B2X was not supported by the same team as it was with in November. Not normal, and kind of alarming. But, if unsuccessful, then it will not harm most people.

News around the world

Next, embellished news about the South Korean government shutting down exchanges. That was not true. In actuality, foreigners and minors were banned from trading or opening accounts. Was this intentional misinformation or just bad reporting?

In the Ukraine EXMO CEO, no, Manager, no, employee was kidnapped for 1,000,000$ worth of bitcoin. The ransom was not paid for from “financial assets” of the exchange, but was paid for from somewhere else.  Apparently, someone had 1 million dollars worth of bitcoin to pay for an ’employee’ of the exchange and paid it in a hurry. Really weird, and alarming. It almost feels like manipulation of mainstream media negatively focused on bitcoin.

India refreshed warnings about investors losing ALL their money. I will not rehash how India has pooched themselves in the denomination of older currency tender notes. More misinformation about bitcoin and blockchain technology.

Then there was the Facebook warning that a virus could takeover your computer to make it mine for bitcoin… really??? Please read my blog about mining, CPU<GPC<ASIC mining.

Today the Commonwealth Bank of Australia froze accounts that previously had been connected to fraud, attempted fraudulent transactions or facilitated payments to bitcoin or other virtual currencies.

Wait a second, attempted fraud or funding a speculative market are equal?  Well Hell’s bells! Is the stock market not a speculation?? Have there never been frauds committed by the stock market, its members or supporters? Didn’t the 2008 fiasco subjugate the American Constitution? AIG … I feel my Tourettes about to start again.

Welcome to the Brave New World of Pump and Dump.

Although this chart is a little outdated, the data is starting to show a pattern that we should all be watching.

The (m)ass media is covering bitcoin in a way that could be affecting small potato investors’ sentiment.

Now some real news…

One piece of news, that I had to search for, came out of Stockholm. The Lightening Network was tested by a phone payment provider. Alex Bosworth was able to immediately  top up his cell phone with zero transaction fee.

Now that is some real news. A possible solution to the scalability of bitcoin. The Lightening Network could be what www. was to email, for bitcoin. Keep an eye on that.

As a good friend of mine said recently, “I do not know if bitcoin will be the currency of the future, but the underlying technology of the blockchain has real world potential.”

My advice is to learn what is really important. What news is real and what is the big picture.

 

 

https://www.coindesk.com/payment-provider-bitrefill-runs-successful-lightning-transaction-test/

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pumpanddump.asp

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/how-wall-streets-bankers-stayed-out-of-jail/399368/

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/897908/Facebook-Virus-Bitcoin-Mining-Cryptocurrency

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-kidnapping/ukraine-kidnappers-free-bitcoin-analyst-after-1-mln-ransom-paid-idUSKBN1EN1QB

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2658654.0

https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/2911542-bitcoin-cash-faq

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

http://blog.aylien.com/analyzing-the-media-coverage-of-bitcoin-november-monthly-media-review-with-the-aylien-news-api/

http://www.indianjobs4u.com/old-notes-exchange-last-date

 

Don’t panic!

About 14 months ago a friend asked me where I would invest my money.

I said, if I had 10,000$ that I could potentially win or lose, I would invest in bitcoin. After buying bitcoin, I would then diversify into Monero, Dash, Ethereum, Zcash, Auger and Ripple.

My difficulty at the time was finding an exchange that I could join while living in Saudi Arabia as a Canadian citizen.

As my friend had a bank account in Europe he was able to purchase bitcoin. We bought some bitcoin and started into the wonderful cryptocurrency world.

I studied each coin and platform trying to see which one had the greatest potential.

My answer was Ripple. “Ripple provides a way to connect banks, exchanges, and corporations to send money globally on the RippleNet.” I translated that into English and it roughly meant, Ripple had created an improved version of SWIFT or wire payments. I watched Ripple and saw a number of Japanese banks join Ripple. Soon banks in Europe, Central America and even my own bank in Canada joined Ripple.

At the time Ripple cost 0.5 cents.

When Western Union joined Ripple we saw the price of Ripple begin to rise. It went UP! It seemed like FOMO* to an extreme I had never witnessed before. When Ripple hit 7 cents my friend was calling every five minutes telling me to sell. I said to wait because I felt Ripple could easily be worth a dollar. In the end I sold out his share of Ripple and he walked off with 4000$ of profit.

Below is the proof.

I held on and watched Ripple develop its price after the correction.

Not more than a month later it seemed word was spreading about Ripple. Japanese exchanges added Ripple to their markets and a large number of investors in Japan and Korea got behind Ripple.

Ripple was gaining support from everywhere. The bank of England was ‘testing’ the Ripple network. Although there has never been an official announcement, I felt that Ripple could be the vehicle to settle Brexit payments.

Ripple absolutely exploded!!! Up and up, all  the way to 42 cents!!!

Looking at the graph below you can see how the initial rush to 7 cents was dwarfed by the second wave of investors.

At this point I put more money into Ripple. My notion that Ripple could reach a dollar was not far off. Some other friends were getting interested in this and began investing.

Over a long summer of watching other coins succeed Ripple seemed to loose support. There was no way to get out, so I just put it out of my mind and believed in my original forecast.

I kept reminding myself that on January 1st many banks announced that they would start to use Ripple for cross boarder payments.

Then it happened. With the massive surge in bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies Ripple also got the exposure it needed. It went white hot reaching as high as 1.05$.

It makes me laugh to look back at the 7 and 42 cent levels on the graph.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies became the talk of the town.

Another friend invested in bitcoin and with the recent correction, he is asking if he should just get out of the market with the losses he has incurred.

Below is the graph of bitcoin and its first major correction. It could just be an incredible coincidence, but doesn’t this graph look a lot like the first spike in Ripple?

Are all these predictions about a 100,000$ bitcoin actually possible?