money

keep bitcoin under your mattress!

| roger nunn

Trusting a bank to look after your money has always been a difficult proposition. People like the idea that their money is kept safe and are always looking for a way to do it. Many people put money in the “safety” of the bank and found later that it had disappeared. This is why Banks are supposed to keep enough liquidity to reassure the depositors that their money is safe.

Some people have hidden the money at home, hidden so that thieves cannot find it, often in or under the mattress. This idea is good for inspiring treasure hunters looking for gold coins as people have also died without revealing where the money was hidden.

Recent crypto difficulties have mirrored those of the banks before regulation became standard. Celcius and FTL are examples of how keeping your money on a trading site can result in losing value. So not only does your crypto drop in value, the organisation holding it can lose it all for you.

Crypto writers have repeatedly said that you should store your crypto in a hardware wallet and keep it at home. If you have done this, then no-one can steal it from you.

Maybe you should just put your hardware wallet under your bed.

What comes as well as crypto?

| roger nunn

I am happy that I got involved with crypto and spend some time every day listening to youtubers, checking prices and then trading.

It’s working but I don’t feel that I want to do only crypto trading. I have spent a lot of time looking for the new ways that technology will change our lives and how I can get involved with it.

I have looked at electric cars, AI, etc but don’t have the resources to get involved in a meaningful way.

I am involved now with remote analysis of local data, using a new technology called Mioty. It allows free long range and low power data transfer even when other tech fails due to excess users.

The Company is called Enduralink, getting onto a new tech as an early adopter.

https://www.investmentnetwork.sg/business-proposals/iot-industry-40-b2b-15-1178001

Crypto growing pains

| roger nunn

When I was a child my parents used to talk about “growing pains” in relation to real or imagined difficulties experienced by myself or my siblings.

I never found out if there was such a thing as a growing pain but I feel that the idea suits crypto currencies very well.

Crypto is no longer new but it has not yet matured at all. It is leaving infancy and is unlikely to die, especially given that its market cap (total value) exceeds 2 trillion and it keeps finding new use cases (areas where it adds value to the current way of doing things).

I see crypto as a teenager, suffering from growing pains as it starts to mature, still unsure of what the future hodls and full of excitement about its place in the world.

Once crypto grows up there will probably be less uncertainty but also less excitement linked to its current unpredictability.

Therefore now is a good time to learn and get involved, even making money in the process.

Now…..should I buy or sell some crypto?

| roger nunn

We have had a few weeks of dropping prices (in US$) of most of the crypto space. At the time of writing, a recovery seems to be in the air but,…..

There seem to be equal numbers of doomsayers predicting a collapse as predicting a huge rise in Bitcoin ( with some others being touted as the replacement of bitcoin).

So what should I do?

Right now I am trading coins and tokens against one another, buying those that have dropped in value with those that have risen. This system works, slowly and with a lot of manual intervention. I have looked, and am still looking for an AI based robot that will do the tedious buying and selling for me, making money as long as there is fluctuation.

If there is a good auto-trading bot that works I am unlikely to hear about it, the owner will simply build his portfolio while saying nothing.

I still don’t know whether to sell my holdings or to buy more, one of which is likely to be a money making step.

I will probably play it safe, buy a little and hope that the whales manipulate the market in my favour.

The Bitcoin club

| roger nunn

There is a gradual public acceptance that there might be some value in crypto currencies, specifically Bitcoin. Those who invested early on and didn’t lose their private keys have made significant increases in their wealth.

I remember being interested in the idea in 2012 but didn’t buy any because it was a lot more complicated at the time. Buying and trading wasn’t easy and of course now I wish that I had made the effort.

Everything is clear with hindsight so now I’m looking forward to get it right this time. I know that is always some risk but without being involved I can’t expect to benefit.

I have small holdings of a number of crypto currencies and some bitcoin. Some bitcoin here means some part of a bitcoin.

In the long run I believe that the value of bitcoin will continue to rise and eventually owning one whole bitcoin will be like being a multi millionaire in today’s world.

So owning one Bitcoin will be like being a member of an exclusive club, and those people who are lucky enough to hold thousands now will be the wealthy ones.

Spreading the word on crypto

| roger nunn

Yesterday I made a short presentation to family members to explain what crypto is all about.

I have been interested in bitcoin since around 2015 and spent many hours reading and watching videos before starting to trade it myself.

I went through the 2017 boom and the drop that followed, all the while learning about it and watching new developments.

Now I am even more convinced as to its long term viability, especially as I believe that the decentralised consensus is an excellent way of linking the power of spending to real democracy.

However, finding a way to present this view of the future without appearing to be a fanatic proved to be very difficult.

I ended up by talking about the reason for bitcoin’s development and the benefits it can bring wherever value needs to be maintained or transferred.

I am working on totally non technical presentation that gives a newcomer an idea of What and Why, followed by How.

One way only from fiat to crypto

| roger nunn

When you want to buy crypto (probably bitcoin) you can create an account on any of a number of exchanges and simply transfer fiat currency straight into the crypto of your choice.

This might be more difficult in a jurisdiction with monetary controls but it works easily for me, being based in the European Union.

Once you have the crypto on your exchange account you can trade it for other cryptos or transfer it easily either to another exchange or to a wallet.

It’s seamless, easy, usually cheap and very fast and of course it operates 24/7.

Returning the crypto to fiat feels slow and heavy by comparison, with banks taking some time to make the money available. It really feels like a step backwards in time, like returning to writing cheques for bills and then waiting 3 days for the funds to clear.

I can wait for universal adoption of crypto, easy transfers without the cost and time lost using fiat

What does FOMO mean?

| roger nunn

FOMO is Fear Of Missing Out. It refers to the feeling that everyone else is getting something and you are missing it.

Fomo creates a need to take action to join in. Fomo has always been part of life but the immediacy of social media and the strong snowballing effect on anything shared has accentuated its effects.

Fashion has always been affected by Fomo but it’s a much slower effect that sharing of ideas online. The strength of online Fomo is because of the geometric effects of its growth, hence the phrase “going viral”.

Once you link the speed of online trading of crypto currencies with Fomo you get fascinating results, where a single news item can create a movement in a coin’s value which then escalates because of Fomo.

When you add 24 hr trading to the mix you add huge volatility to the price. It gets exaggerated because the professional traders has automatic trading setup to take advantage of price changes far faster than a human can.

So there are lots of people getting richer just by hooking into the power of Fomo.

I’m now looking for the best way to use AI with a trading bot. When I find it I will start it off and watch it earn my living for me.

DEFI, a name that builds on crypto

| roger nunn

When I first saw the word DEFI, I thought it was some kind of computer game. It sounds as though you are Defying someone or breaking some rules.

DEFI comes from Decentralised Finance, and is a way of giving and getting access to finance without having to go to a financial institution (a bank). So perhaps DEFY is a good explanation of the message that the crypto community is sending to the current fiat based financial system.

Bitcoin is well known as a store of value, currently valued at around $40,000 each. However, it is too slow to be used for small payments and does not earn any interest. Other coins, such as ethereum based tokens are more suitable for small payments but do not themselves earn interest either.

DEFI is a development (there are many) that uses existing coins as collateral to make loans, meaning that the owner can use the value in the coins without having to sell them first. It is an extra layer that builds borrowing and lending into crypto currencies.

I am writing this to be as simple as possible, just to make sure that I understand what crypto is and how it works.

The crypto market has many other facets that will be covered separately, such as trading on exchanges, the use of stablecoins, the development of new coins through ICOs and Decentralised exchanges. There are coins and tokens that are single purpose, there are a multitude of scams and thieves trying to get your coins and the all important question of your wallets and how they work.

Coin trading is becoming a sophisticated profession that requires constant work even to follow and there are developments in autotrading programs that buy and sell on your behalf (known as bots).

The more I look at this the more complicated layers that I see, the good point being that as things are changing so fast anyone can get involved.