GAME05

The ProShares futures ETF has a 1% fee. Grayscale has a 2% fee, and even free stock trading exchanges you're paying a market maker. Somebody somewhere is always making money off you/me. I almost forgot that Robinhood offers crypto, too, but just a few of them. So it can depend on what you're looking to do, too. Some folks just want Bitcoin and Ethereum, and for that, Grayscale/Robinhood/futures ETF or waiting for a spot ETF is probably your best bet. But if you're hoping to find that next 10x, then you'll want a crypto exchange. But yeah, when you get into it, for a good long while it'll feel like you're seven years old and you just lost your parents in Chinatown. But hey, you've always got us here!

What I'd recommend is going to Coinbase Pro. Remember it'll be different from regular Coinbase. Pro will be the one with the candle charts. It'll take a couple days to get your bank verified and all that. Definitely use a strong password and 2FA. I haven't ever been sent one, but definitely if you get an email from Coinbase that looks all official, assume it's a scam. You can also get one-time-use 2FA codes, which would be helpful if you ever lose your phone. Also get some portfolio tracker, because Coinbase ain't gonna give you a tax form. I use two different exchanges and will trade on them because it's cheaper and faster. I use DEXs, but only when I want to buy a token not yet listed on the exchanges. You're probably never going to have a transaction of 0.25% or less. And yeah, Ethereum's gas fees are outrageous. At this point I don't buy any Ethereum-based token on a dex unless I can get it off an exchange. I feel comfortable holding a modest amount of money on Coinbase. A bigger amount you might want to look into a hardware wallet like Ledger. Online wallets are convenient, but they also end up subject to hacks if you happen to download some virus on your computer. Should be common sense, but don't trade crypto or use an online wallet on a public wi-fi. Metamask is the most popular online wallet and you'll need some sort of online wallet to eventually trade on a dex. But also double-check the online wallet address before you download it--Fantom Wallet has a pretty bad copycat version out there now that people are downloading. Not sure if I've posted this before, but good Youtube channels: Whiteboard Crypto--a great "What is ___" about crypto and doesn't push opinion Invest Answers--some opinion, but generally good quality stuff Altcoin Daily--The Nightly News of crypto Alex Becker--good for degenerate low-cap gaming coins Elio Trades--Been liking him more, though he can be overly bullish at times JRNY Crypto and Sheldon Evans are also good It's also of value to go on CoinGecko and use their "categories" tabs. It helps you learn basically what each coin is about. Especially if you have an industry skillset like you know the Real Estate market, you can focus on just the coins in that category. It's also a great way of investing because there's otherwise just too much out there to properly learn.

When the market crashes I'll be curious if NFT prices go with it. If they do I'm thinking I may well buy "land" on Sandbox.

Stuff like Valkrye that just came on the market is a futures ETF. Grayscale has applied for a spot ETF and that's likely to be approved mid/late December. Right now Grayscale has a few different cryptos it offers, though technically you're investing in the trust which only owns that particular crypto. It's worth looking at some of the differences, as Grayscale doesn't track perfectly with the crypto market. But otherwise yeah, just go with Coinbase Pro. It has a good security record, though I wouldn't hold six figures there. Alts are where it's at!

There's regular Coinbase and then there's Coinbase Pro. Regular Coinbase is simpler but charges 2.5%. It basically exists just to rip off the newbies. Coinbase Pro and Binance US charge 0.5%. If you can find 0.25% let me know! I'd recommend one of those for an exchange. Or KuCoin if you want to trade more than the ~50 coins the other two offer. If you don't want exchanges, then you're talking about a dex (decentralized exchange). Each blockchain has their own. So Ethereum has Uniswap and Avalanche has TraderJoe, etc. You'll need an online wallet like Metamask to use those (not every online wallet accepts every blockchain's coins). But then you're paying gas fees, which will vary by blockchain as well as how busy the network is at the moment.

Nothing about a 10x sounds like boring basics to me. Well done! So the Infrastructure Bill is set to make crypto effectively illegal in 2024. Any trade of $10k or more of any digital asset will require the buyer to collect the APY (identification, including social security number) from the seller. The wording also makes special note that multiple trades of $9999 won't fly. Failure to do so will be a felony. There's some hope, anyway, that since it's three years away that this particular part of the law will be repealed in time.

Whenever you start to think that crypto has gone too mainstream just remember there's two coins in the Top 10 which offer nothing but a picture of a dog. Then again when people say crypto is stupid and is going to fail, I also can't help but realize there's two coins in the Top 10 which offer nothing but a picture of a dog. I get a little frustrated I haven't made any huge ton of money this year, but then again I started off in regular Coinbase with only the major coins and only got into the small stuff pretty late. Plus coming from the stock market side of things I was going with the Buffet advice of "The best time to sell is never" and ended up eating that 50% July crash and it took a while to recover from that. I had it in my head that the market would move from Bitcoin to the Tier 1s and on down the line. Saw a video recently I tended to agree with and he was saying that in 2017 it worked like that, but that was also when information was sparse, there weren't stablecoins to facilitate trading as well as no major exchanges. But now I'm more moving to the idea of either finding an area you have a particular knowledge of, or deciding on what area will do the best and sticking to that. Ideally both. But basically finding your lane and sticking to it. But money just isn't flowing in an orderly fashion anymore. For the past month I've moved things around a lot. Not chasing trends and buying what's already gone up, but still moving around. I'm trying to stop that now and just sticking with the gaming/gambling side of things. Polkadot is still my #1 holding (was AVAX) but by in large I'm liking the tiny-cap coins and will look to just stick it out with them the rest of the way. I keep making the mistake of not being patient enough, like getting tired of Chain Guardians not moving much at $0.90, selling it and then seeing it at $1.70 a few weeks later. I'm still not great at knowing when to sell. Still fighting the value investing stock market habits. One could certainly just wait to sell when a coin hits an appropriate market cap, but that alone ignores the vagaries of the crazy crypto market as a whole. Not that the answer could ever be concrete and easy. Still, at least the long-term strategy is in place. Hope that the ridiculous fourth-year jump really does happen then get out of the market entirely for six months until things bottom out. Stake the majority in Tier 1 coins. Use a gambling-level amount to play around with new gaming coins, and then just wait four years and hope the trend happens again. And fortunately long-term plans like this *always* work out the way you expect them to! (And likely the four-year bumps and those extreme changes reduce with the further adoption and investment in the space.)

The Valkrye Bitcoin ETF was approved, though it's a futures ETF. As Mark Cuban said "Why buy futures when I can buy the real thing?" Should be a fun day on Monday when the markets open. Fantom jumped a few weeks ago and Polkadot did last week, though I expect a continued big rise out of Polkadot. I think Avax will be a big mover next. Luna took a bit of a jump recently but I think it still has a lot of steam behind it. But overall I think the Tier 1 coins will bounce first followed by the ecosystems behind them. At least that tends to be the way of things with investment money that it trickles down in order of more secure gambles to less secure. People don't want to buy a Bitcoin that's already risen, so they move onto the next best thing and so on. But 1Q and moving forward I really like gaming and gambling. It presents the most immediate use case for crypto along with some new ways consumers can spend money which doesn't exist yet. Plus we're due for a bear market soon which could last a year or so, and what tends to last in bear markets are projects with use cases compared to "what we'll eventually be able to do" projects, same as value stocks vs. growth stocks in the regular market.

Bitcoin ETF rumored to be coming maybe even this month. Load up now before everyone else does!

I do only have thoughts on trying to time things during this expected bull run. Next year my goal is just to get better at taking profits during market runs so that I can better buy back into the dips. By the numbers crypto is 8x more volatile than the S&P, and so I do think that degree of volatility requires a different approach from regular market investing. I missed Solana, too, but I think there's still some room to grow underneath it. Solana grows first and then everything underneath it. For example, Uniswap's market cap is 4.3% of Ethereum, but Raydium is 1.6% of Solana, not to mention whatever more room Solana has to grow. And I'll also be looking at more gaming/NFT projects underneath Solana because being faster and cheaper I think Solana will be the more preferred blockchain for them to use. Build on Ethereum and who's gonna buy a $5 sword along with a $5 gas fee? (I kinda hate Ethereum, but we'll see what 2.0 brings us.) Not sure what you all think, but I'd imagine if there's going to be a "next Solana" in 2022, for now I'm presuming that to be Fantom. I'll probably move into Trader Joe and Chain Guardians come December in the NFT/Gaming space.

Crypto is a darn big rabbit hole. For the longest time I'd wondered how people were buying these tiny coins which I never saw available on exchanges. Then I saw a video on it and discovered what a dex is. But then a dex only works for certain types of coins and you need different dex-es for different coins. Then access via Metamask, etc. etc. etc. BUT I'm accomplishing my goal of better learning why one is better than another and not just picking things based on hype or which has the cooler-sounding name. A cousin is huge into crypto and has a good few crypto-millionaire friends and he'll also throw me a name or two here and there. Hopefully we see a nice little run into December. I'm figuring first come the big coins, then the alt coins, and then maybe the small ones will catch whatever trickle down is left. Basically I'm hoping to catch a run in one and then just shift over to another which hasn't hit a run yet, all the while reverse-DCA-ing by cashing out a little at a time. After that probably hold a lot as cash expecting a cool-down period and move a little bit to new NFT coin gambles (not actual NFTs as I just can't figure why one is popular and another isn't), especially since those don't often go up/down according to the market above them. Also the coin "Tulip" just reminds me of the Dutch tulip craze and its name alone makes me want to avoid it.

I've heard rumor that crypto also goes up sometimes, too, but the rumor is yet unconfirmed.

Arguments over if crypto is a security or anything else aside, crypto needs ETFs just for the safety/security of all the people trading it. And I wish more people were bringing that up to the SEC. It won't, but I wish this dip put an end to the endless number of people who had been saying that since crypto acted one way four years ago, that it would act the same way now. Or last week when everybody started yelling about the Bitcoin "Golden Cross" and how that means Bitcoin is totally going to double in value in three days. It's day-trader nonsense and the furthest thing from real analysis. Or just as much when they take really put their necks out there to tell you how great a crypto project is only after it's gone up 40%. It's all so much hot air. Not that I was fortunate enough to actually own any, but one thing Solana has taught me is the importance of actual use cases. With the further popularity of crypto I think this is becoming more important, where value is no longer so much tied to what a project can do but what it is doing. And I'm starting to shift my money toward those projects which will have more immediate future uses. Bitcoin as currency is nice, but your baby will be in college before that ever comes to pass in any major country. A grocery store that only operates on 1.5-2% margin to begin with isn't going to be accepting Bitcoin as payment only to have its value drop 8% in a day and suddenly the store's profitable day turns into a loss. We need a payment system which converts crypto to cash immediately which doesn't exist yet, or Bitcoin needs worldwide adoption to stabilize its value, which also isn't happening anytime soon. Where I see the more immediate use cases is in gaming industry, which is worth $20b in the US alone. Using crypto to bet on who wins the next Call of Duty match, or instead of hoping for that 1:500,000 game sword in your loot box, just buying it from somebody else. And while Ethereum is first past the post when it comes to having the technology to do these things, its gas fees are also totally ridiculous. Nobody is going to pay a $5 Ethereum gas fee to buy a $5 sword.

Kinda waiting for what is at least supposed to be a great overall September/October. After that go with maybe four bigger-name coins to just sit on and then a small percent to play around with newer coins, the kinds not yet listed on Coinbase. My friend uses KuCoin, so I'll just do that one. Got a Ledger wallet largely because he has one, so he'd be a good reference if I had a question about it. I do have some nervousness about making a mistake with it and having the money just disappear. A lot of Initial Coin Offerings drop pretty low in price after the initial hype then really increase five-ish months later. So I looked into Seedify where you can pick those up, but holy moly it's complicated and I'm just not touching that. But definitely there's a certain greed factor when you see some of these new coins (be they ICOs or otherwise) go up 12,000% (or whatever outrageous amount) in a week. Ran into a Youtube channel called "Whiteboard Crypto" which is all about 'What is a ____?' so I thought it'd be good to note here. Not an investing channel, but takes you through stuff like what the Tezos coin is supposed to accomplish or what is the blockchain.

Good call whomever recommended Only Murders in the Building. Really love the film noir/art deco (a film guy would better know how to describe it) look and feel of the show. Also really like how they're only slowly introducing the main characters.

In the paper written to introduce Bitcoin, the inventor (be it Nakamoto or a group of people, as we don't even know if Nakamoto exists) said this: “The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” The Fanny Mae crisis was the impetus, and I don't know if I'd say "banking crisis" so much as it's just digital currency designed to eliminate banks as the necessary middle-man for transactions. Mining crypto takes a lot of energy from the computers running 24/7, but many coins, once they've become established enough that there's a lot on the market already, move to a proof-of-stake method where more coins are introduced to the market by way of new coins as interest. Have your coins held in some staking place and you get back 4-6% (it varies) APR. I would only figure the price of Bitcoin will stabilize upon further adoption. It's still so new yet that Elon Musk can say something bad about it and tank the price 20%. It's still pretty heavily manipulated by individuals and corporations. I think to a large extent manipulated by interests who know that they can make a negative comment, make the market fall, and that's when they quietly buy in to catch the rebound. There's irony in that. Maybe Bitcoin won't even be the currency winner. Maybe it'll be one whose value is tied to the price of gold.

Thoughts for no reason other than to think out loud as I learn this very different thing from regular stock trading, Youtube, and maybe if someone tells me I'm terribly wrong which I'd appreciate: Ellio Trades is a popular Youtube channel, but he's one of those "everything is wonderful every day" sorta people who does nothing but blow smoke up your rear. I suspect he just invests heavily in whatever he's about to pump that day and then takes the percentage increase from his subscribers all jumping on. BitBoy Crypto is a little more down to earth, but they only ever say "This coin is great!" only once it's gone up 20% and you'd be buying high, so therefore what's the value in the channel? It seems impossible to find anyone who doesn't just look at the charts and tell you it's going up based on the Fibonacci Sequence and all that jazz, none of which I believe in. It's halfway impossible to find anyone who will tell you why any certain crypto is a good project and meets a market need. If stocks only went up or down based on moving averages, a bot would make everyone rich, but that's certainly not the case. Pretty convenient that when their predictions don't work, they just don't make another video admitting they're wrong. That said, one Youtube channel I'm starting to somewhat like is "Alex Becker's Channel". He seems big into investing in new projects after they initially dip, but it's beyond my knowledge on how to even get into those things. If they're not on Coinbase Pro I don't know how to do it. But beyond that these seem to be some of his/my takeaways: --Being that crypto is a bigger win/lose gain/loss risk than the regular market, why invest in lower-gain-potential coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum? --Ethereum's gas fees (transaction fees) are outrageous. Nobody will pay a $5 gas fee for a $5 item. There is still value in it now based on hype, but it won't last long-term. --Gaming and NFT crypto projects provide a more immediate use case than currency-based ones, and therefore have a bigger gain potential, or at least a sooner gain potential. --It is important to research if the crypto project has any use cases--companies actually using their product. These are better than ones which don't. Solana, for example, has a few hundred companies currently using their product. Other coins go up based on the theory of what they can do but they're less stable without use cases. --If you like a brand new project and want to get in on its Initial Coin Offering, don't get it immediately. Wait until the initial hype is over, wait until it dips (if it dips), and then buy it on the cheap. Then just give it a few months until people recognize it again and then it'll 5-10x. --I mentioned possibly getting a Crypto Wallet to a friend who is big into crypto. He said that on Coinbase or Binance it's pretty secure to leave money stored there. But elsewhere, or should I just want one, there's a company which will stamp your code words onto a metal plate. That way it's fire/water resistant and permanent, and then he sent copies to his siblings, especially should he die and they would then be able to access his accounts. --More and more I'm liking the idea of playing the dips. If crypto is going to crash 30% out of nowhere, I'm liking the idea of pulling out profits when the market is good and leaving some available money aside for when it does dip 30% in a day or week to then be able to throw some money back in. The "invest in a good company and then forget about it" is probably the appropriate Buffet-style strategy that works well in the regular market, but probably doesn't in such a volatile market as crypto. With crypto it's even harder to control the greed impulse, but I'm starting to think it's all the more necessary to do so. Like this week it dropped 30% and then went up 15% the next day. If I had pulled more money out, sure I'd have missed maybe a 5% gain, but I'd have avoided the big drop and then taken advantage of that rise. Today I pulled 20% out after that rise and plan to hold it for a second dip.

I'm not even sure Bitcoin is going to be the one coin that's primarily used as currency. It won because it was first past the post, but there has got to be better programs out there for currency. Plus El Salvador aside, the regions you'd really need for mass adoption like the US and EU, are likely going to be last to really adopt it because they have the most stable currency. Buying a Snickers with Bitcoin in Wisconsin is still probably 20 years away.

(not claiming to be an expert, but writing about it helps my own understanding) Bitcoin was started in 2008 because of the mortgage crisis tanking the economy. The problem it's trying to address is the power that centralized authorities have on the value of fiat currency. Today that might extend to printing trillions of dollars or national debt. Bitcoin folks would probably show you the Zimbabwe trillion dollar bill as one example of why bitcoin is better. It's also why bitcoin was started with a finite number of coins available to prevent inflation. And then the decentralized wave hit other avenues like applications on the internet because some issues are similar. We're entrusting most all of our information to giant companies like Google and Facebook, whereas storing our information on the decentralized blockchain is out of their control. Not sure why or how, but I do hear blockchain advocates say that transmitting data on the blockchain is faster and more secure than traditional methods, and that transactions should also be cheaper. And the new hot thing is NFTs, of attaching a coin to intellectual property (art, music) as well as video game property (the rare sword you just got in a loot crate, or valuable property you control in a massive multiplayer online game). That coin signifies ownership and also allows you to sell that property to someone else. There's also programs out there now which will allow people to gamble on another's or your own video game--the program creates a $5 coin (or whatever denomination) which is transferred to the winner of the bet and also takes a gas fee (transaction fee).

Does anyone here actually mine crypto? Based on the articles I've read (for what that's worth) it takes about eight months to reach the break-even point. Looks like companies sell rigs designed for it and they don't necessarily take up a whole room (just depends on how much you're looking to make). But it does strike me as a good potential passive income source. Granted, I have a particular barrier in that I don't know anything about computers and would have to find somebody I could pay to set it up and teach me.

There's a hardware invention missing yet. Something like a credit card which would do the bitcoin-to-cash conversion for you automatically for a fee and work like a credit/debit card. When this little 'event' ends and the crypto market tanks again, my plan is to put a sizeable percentage into it with the plan to just bury it for four years. Then with play money going off Coinbase with a hardware wallet and going for some of the newest coins. Way higher risk/reward, though.

Speaking of the regular market, what are peoples' thoughts on the immediate future? Michael Burry has heavily shorted the market including Arc's funds, Ray Dalio is more on the inflation train and Buffet is currently holding 31% cash which is extremely high for him. I was considering dry bulk goods shipping, but so much of that depends on Corona lockdowns continuing/expanding, and I have a hard time seeing that happening.

Not that I want anyone to get hurt, but in an odd way I really am looking for the trend to continue and the bottom to fall out of the market, when everyone says crypto is dead and worthless. Bitcoin purchased 365 days ago is almost exactly 4x today, 5x if 2019 and 6.7x in 2018. It would mean almost four years of little/no returns, but presuming the peak happens again, that's an amazing amount of money to be made. Just looking at the charts of the other coins from November of last year almost makes you sick if you didn't get in at that point (which I didn't). Granted, I guess a lot of new coins are nothing more than scams or pump-and-dumps taking advantage of the hype. And I guess with Coinbase being on the Exchange now, there's an expectation that they'll expand their offerings and one can become exposed to a lot more brand new offerings.

Not referring to TheBruce at all with this, but what I see all the time is how crypto is on a four-year cycle, or how now is the "alt-coin season." To me this just screams predicting the market based on what is really a very young lifespan of crypto. Just a few months ago everyone was saying how four years ago the market was up/down at these points and therefore it'll be the same now. At this point, early enough in my crypto-trading life, I see nothing supporting this apart from coincidence. Or even more so I see so many price-prediction videos where they're only putting a Fibonacci chart over the top but not telling you why that particular coin is better than the rest or why there's a market need for it. If Fibonacci were some guaranteed thing, you could just write a trading bot which follows it and be rich. I have the dual-authentication on Coinbase Pro but I've reached an amount of money where I think I also need a wallet. I guess there's online ones, though what's to say a bad virus doesn't also steal that. I don't love the idea of having a little USB stick worth $~~~~, but I guess it is what it is. But I suppose keeping it in the police evidence locker at work is about as safe a place as can be.

Should we split this thread between the regular market and the crypto market, or is there no call for that?