The Cryptocurrency Investing Discussion

[steelandchrome]

Try upping the gas/GWEI on the transactions, especially if you're using MetaMask. That seems to help sometimes. Also, if using MetaMask, make sure you don't have any pending transactions in the queue -- you can initiate a transaction and just hit "Reject" when it asks you to sign the smart contract. That works sometimes as well.

EtherDelta just sucks...unfortunately, for early trading before these things hit the exchanges, it's the best we have right now...

Btw, how much MTH are you looking to pick up? I may be able to find someone to sell you some directly (I may know others who want to sell who would like to avoid ED as well).

I'm not using metamask, just the platform and the wallet there and it doesn't give an option to increase gas that I'm aware of at least.. just looking to add another 2 ETH worth of MTH or so since I'm a bit light on ETH right now. I am hoping for the same pop once it hits better exchanges as well. I got in at a great price the other day and should have bought more then

Edit: found gas price option and increased it but doubt it will help the pending transactions. Hopefully better from here...

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[bigbaby]

Would love to get other's thoughts on my hypothesis:

If you believe that crypto investing and trading has a future, then it makes sense that Bitcoin and Ethereum still have a huge amount of potential growth as the primary means of trade. So it further follows that hodling 80-90% in ETH/BTC and only trading 10-20% of your crypto portfolio is worth considering?

I'm not an active trader. I've just made a few learning trades over the past few weeks.

 

[bigbaby]

A couple things:

- I wouldn't lump BTC and ETH together, just because they are both popular now. That would have been like saying back in 1950, "If cars have a big future, then it makes sense to own stock in both Ford and Studebaker." Just because both of them are big names now doesn't mean that one won't end up dominating while the other stagnates or goes away (or perhaps they both go away). It's so early in this industry that it's quite possible that both of these coins will be supplanted by something else.

- BTC and ETH are solutions to different problems. One is a currency. The other is a platform (with an associated currency). I'm a lot more bullish on Ethereum, simply because it's a solution to MANY problems, whereas Bitcoin is a solution to essentially one problem.

- If your goal is long-term appreciation, I think a portfolio with BTC, ETH and several other "blue chip" coins makes sense -- I would add ZEC, DASH, LTC to the list, and diversify a little more than 80-90% BTC and ETH.

- While I agree that long-term the blue chips will serve you well, if you're willing to speculate (and I'm not suggesting you should!), you could be giving up some big profits by not playing the market inefficiencies on the smaller coins. But again, this isn't for everyone...and is just a form of gambling.

All in all, I see nothing wrong with your strategy of holding some big name coins long-term, though like I said, add a couple more for diversification, as we have no idea where the industry is heading. Personally, against the advice I'm giving here, I'm a big believer in ETH, and basically every small coin trade I do is in order to try to acquire more ETH. I'm converting very little back to cash these days -- everything that isn't a long-term hold in other coins goes back to ETH.

Thank you! Great insight as always. I'll definitely diversify my holdings by looking into the the others you mention.

I feel long-term bullish on both BTC/ETH specifically because they are the primary means of translating fiat currency into the exchanges from what I've seen. Do you feel differently? Or would you care to speculate on what circumstances might upend these 2 as the preferred currency of exchanges?

 

[steelandchrome]

Would love to get other's thoughts on my hypothesis:

If you believe that crypto investing and trading has a future, then it makes sense that Bitcoin and Ethereum still have a huge amount of potential growth as the primary means of trade. So it further follows that hodling 80-90% in ETH/BTC and only trading 10-20% of your crypto portfolio is worth considering?

I'm not an active trader. I've just made a few learning trades over the past few weeks.

Welcome to crypto! I am heavy into ETH and think it has more room to run personally than BTC and think it's solid strategy to hold both but I would definitely diversify into some solid alt coins as well as you will get some bigger gains. I am in ETH, LTC, PAY, MTH, and OMG in that order and would like to add at least 2-3 more coins to further diversify. I am hoping to follow the ICO strategy of @JScott soon and play with the houses money.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wNb9ZbPRYY
is a link to a video showing the gains of some of the top alt coins from just a year ago that if you invested $1k each into the top 10 coins that you would now have $204k or something like that. Notice how ETH, BTC, and LTC had solid gains but the alt coins were where the real pops were made. I doubt that same thing could be accomplished with the top 10 from today to next year but if selcetive could get much better returns than the stock market. I would shy away from sub penny coins and focus more on ones where there is a solid technology or use behind them. Reddit is an easy way to get lost in pump and dump coins but also can be used to check the subscriber counts and quality of info the company is putting out I have found.

 

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[steelandchrome]

@JScott

DOVU <- I would put this from first impression as a competitor to uber and don't see the bigger potential on this one. Users can use tokens to pay for rides, renting bikes, etc.. I suppose if a big enough roll out was made and enough people bought on all at once it would make sense but I think it's pretty far off from mass market acceptance to buy tokens to trade for rides when Uber and Lyft are pretty easy already. What's your draw to it, maybe I missed it?

Sense <- I commented on this one in the web 3.0 thread outside and am of the same opinion now that anything AI will be huge for the future of the world and chatbots are frustrating to use so if they have a better execution then they could be used mass market quickly. They already have a functioning business and are looking to better monetize the chat portion of that which is a fantastic idea. https://sensetoken.com/pdfs/sense-token-one-pager.pdf spells it out pretty well for anyone else interested in this one. I've signed up for info on their site multiple times but haven't heard back yet and website shows 19 days to sale? Are you invited to a pre-sale personally with your group? They also show no bonus or incentive to pre-sale purchase on the site so are you expecting just the big demand when it hits open exchange vs normal process of getting bonus tokens for early investment?

SCIENCE <- Love the idea of this one with company expected buyback of tokens and redistributing successful business ICO with a portion of tokens going to SCI holders. Any and all tokens with dividends or buybacks will garner a big support from investors and this is as close to a "stock like" company I have seen so far that is bringing blockchain forward in business applications. They are already in business and not a "startup" so an added benefit of experience and results. I would be in on it for 4-5 ETH if I could but has a $25k minimum buy in (even if you get around the minimum $250k min US investor minimum)

 

[throttleforward]

What are your thoughts on the need for a cryptocurrency lobbying group? I've thought about doing an ICO to raise money for a crypto super PAC.

 

[steelandchrome]

My draw here is that my group is considering putting in 7-figures to this one pre-sale to get a 50% bonus...

(Btw, please don't take that as bragging -- I'm most certainly one of the smaller fish in the group, and also one of the least knowledgeable about crypto, in general. To them, I'm the equivalent of the old guy in the group who asks the dumb questions about how the remote control thingie works.)

It's interesting that there are several smart guys who are planning to put a LOT of money into this one who haven't put a lot of money into previous sales -- it's partially the big bonus, but they also really like the team and the company. We have a call with the CEO tomorrow to get more information about their hard/soft caps, product plans, unannounced partnerships, launch dates, list dates for the tokens on the exchanges, etc. Depending on how the discussion goes, the group will either go big on this one or not do it at all.

Personally, I don't plan to put a lot into this one, but will definitely buy some...



We're in the pre-sale here...at least we think we are. Like with you, the communication hasn't been great and we haven't yet gotten confirmation about the pre-sale amounts, discounts, etc. Which is pretty frustrating given that it's only a couple days away. For us, this would be a quick flip, as we think there will be enough pent-up demand that the price should increase as soon as the tokens are made available to trade.



I'm a big fan of this one. This is another where we are considering a very large purchase (as a group), as a lot of us really like this one. Certainly, there are some additional risks with the raise (they have already raised a couple VC rounds), the fact that the tokens are almost certainly considered a security and the business model of the company (which I love, but is different from any other ICOs we've seen).

We need to raise 7-figures to hit the minimum for a pre-sale, and if we can't raise it, there's no other way I'll be able to get in. So, while I'd love to get into this one, it may not happen...though if we're close to hitting the target, I may figure out a way to get your 5 ETH in there!

If serious on the Science ICO let me know, I just added more and could be in for maybe as much as 10 ETH worth. Glad to see I wasn't too far off on not seeing the value in DOVU and that you guys didn't waste any money on it.

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[steelandchrome]

Wow, after digging into the DOVU whitepaper, the phone call and other basic research, I've changed my mind. Total crap all around. Perhaps others will believe the hype and there will be a money-making opportunity here, but I'm not putting any money into this one...and I have a feeling my friends who were bullish on this one are probably going to ditch it as well.

Still looking forward to Sense and Science, though!

So did you guys decide to go in on Science? Just got the emails that they open in 3hrs or so... didn't see this one offering any discounts or incentives on the final emails which I figured they would unless I missed it.

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[steelandchrome]

We couldn't raise the $1M needed within our group, so we didn't do the pre-sale. And since I'm a US citizen, I couldn't do the ICO. I'm hoping to piggyback an investment off an overseas friend, but don't know yet if she got in.

Yeah, they have huge minimums. I'll watch it when it comes to open market on etherdelta and try and pick up 2k tokens or so.

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[carlos_]

Let me see if I have this straight (Apologies if this is obvious)

Each new cryptocurrency is that - a currency - the differentiating factors are the features built directly into the code of the currency. (i.e. Ethereum has SmartContracts ability coded into the currency 'I'm imagining a $100 bill that features the ability to burst into flames if the recipient fails to uphold his end of the handshake agreement', is that right? (money goes back to the payer))

an ICO is like an IPO for a brand new currency - generally, it's expected that a new currency will try to differentiate itself by writing certain features directly into the currency that solve certain problems (I saw real estate mentioned earlier, and Planet Money did an episode on one currency that was supposedly impervious to a certain type of hacking/theft)

Investors plow their money into ICO currencies the same way they plow them into IPO companies - they expect the currency/company to succeed based on the information available and the problem that is claimed to be solved or the value that is claimed to be delivered. eventually the stock/currency should be worth more than what was paid in the ICO/IPO.

A lot of the talk I see right now of how to make money is speculative investing, (however your portfolio is balanced) My cousin has a mining rig and he explained to me his strategy is to mine the most profitable coin by day (most profitable for miners) and trade it into a balanced portfolio to be held over time.

I've seen a handful of claims that it's also possible to build a business on top of a currency like ETH, which is why I see it mentioned as a "Platform" instead of just a really cool currency with some added features.

Let's say I'm interested in helping a family friend branch out with his legal practice, I pitch that he could facilitate deals between clients by using ETH for their transactions to guarantee and services delivered and payment rendered.... where is the money made here for me and for my friend? are we paid in ETH or $

 

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[ZCP]

So when does the Amazon coin come in?

 

[carlos_]

Let's step back a second...

The penny dropped, Thanks for that detailed answer, I think a lot of my confusion came from the incorrect assumption that all coins were currency replacements, each competing to gain a critical mass of users buying their pizza from a techie restaurateur (for example). Now I see that, while a coin may have some monetary value, many coins are created to solve a problem, the value of the coin itself is not necessarily the goal of the creation (although one benefit of a valuable coin is the incentive it provides to miners to run the blockchain on their PCs).

So when does the Amazon coin come in?

Not sure about Amazon coin, but I heard of SiaCoin which was created to compete with AWS storage offerings.

And now I want in!

 

[ljean]

As of this AM I am officially an owner of Bitcoin, Etherium, & Litecoin purchased thru GDAX.

 

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[steelandchrome]

Rough time to get started or a great time to get started with all this China panic going on. Been debating on selling off half of my positions and buying back as we find a bottom or just holding out...

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[MarekvBeek]

There seems to be resistance at $3.600 for BTC now, which was the last support (as of august 22nd). According to Goldman Sachs, price could go low as $2.935 or even $2.221 which I'm still holding on.

Of course I try to make my own analysis, but with Goldman Sachs being correct a few times before, it's hard for me to ignore their analysis.

 

[Hyrum]

A couple big investors on my team weren't thrilled with the Science team, and pulled out their investments. I still like the company, though I trust those guys and their opinions...

Did they give specific reasons why they weren't thrilled with the team? For what they're trying to accomplish, it seems like they have the experience, and have listed advisors in both blockchain and venture capital (and Olympic speed skating). The only thing I can think of is that this is more of a long-term play, and the value of the SCI token is directly related to the companies in their incubator. If they choose dogs, the coin is worth very little, but if they choose a unicorn or two, its suddenly very valuable.

 

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[steelandchrome]

No, it wasn't discussed in detail. Since there were two people who were contributing near 50% of the investment necessary to make this one happen -- and they both backed out -- it just wasn't going to happen. Again, I like the team, and I'll probably buy some when it hits the exchanges...

Here are a few of the companies we're currently looking at:

Sense: Working on this one for a while...waiting for them to get their act together and start their pre-sale
AirToken: Couldn't get a pre-sale, but planning to buy at ICO
ChainLink: We opted out of the pre-sale because the team wasn't marketing well, but will probably buy at ICO
Omega One: Another DEX...I like this one
Polka Dot: Like this one just because it involves Gavin Wood
ICON: Don't know anything about this one, but folks in my group are talking about it

Over the past week, I purchased Enigma (ENG) and Kin (KIN), and invested early in companies run by two of my friends...

Hoping to get some Kyber tomorrow as well...

Kyber should be a great one! I'm honestly surprised a few of these aren't putting off or delaying the ICOs until all the China news shakes out. I saw Monetha announced they were going to sell off 2 years worth of operating expenses of the ETH they raised due to the volatility of the prices right now. I believe they will end up with just regulation as well but who knows how low it will drop if/when they announce the closing of the other major exchanges in China. I have added LTC, BTC, PAY and am expecting to add more ETH but not until the tides turn back positive for a day. I went in a bit too heavy at the higher prices so have to buy more and cost average down to get back to even. Thats why I was kicking around selling off 1/2 and buying back in lower but now hoping it only has a small enough drop left in it before they turn and would make that a waste of time.

 

[Jake]

For example, MJ could create a Fastlane Token (let's call it FLT) that would replace speed points here in the forum. You like my post, you send me some FLT. I like your post, I send you some FLT

Here's an example of something similar in action. I'm not overly familiar with the platform but if you like a post the author receives some coins based on the "likers" strength. I.E if MJ likes your post you would receive a lot of coins where as if a new poster did you would receive $.01 or $.02..

Pretty neat concept and I think something similar will probably make big headway in the future.

https://steemit.com/hot

 

[steelandchrome]

No, it wasn't discussed in detail. Since there were two people who were contributing near 50% of the investment necessary to make this one happen -- and they both backed out -- it just wasn't going to happen. Again, I like the team, and I'll probably buy some when it hits the exchanges...

Here are a few of the companies we're currently looking at:

Sense: Working on this one for a while...waiting for them to get their act together and start their pre-sale
AirToken: Couldn't get a pre-sale, but planning to buy at ICO
ChainLink: We opted out of the pre-sale because the team wasn't marketing well, but will probably buy at ICO
Omega One: Another DEX...I like this one
Polka Dot: Like this one just because it involves Gavin Wood
ICON: Don't know anything about this one, but folks in my group are talking about it

Over the past week, I purchased Enigma (ENG) and Kin (KIN), and invested early in companies run by two of my friends...

Hoping to get some Kyber tomorrow as well...

So did you get in on Kyber? Couldnt get whitelisted myself

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[steelandchrome]

I thought you still had to be whitelisted for day 2? Is that not correct? 14k ETH only left to 200k ETH hardcap including the presale.

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[steelandchrome]

Yes, I have several friends who are overseas and whitelisted. They wouldn't give up any of their small day one allocation, but they can try to buy as much as they want on day two and will try to add some for me...

Ahh.. that makes sense. You are right there won't be much available or I'd try and talk you into getting me in for 5-10 ETH worth as well. Looks like day two opens up at 11pm tonight according to the countdown on the Kyber website.

BTW anyone else using tapatalk not getting notifications? I use mobile mostly and haven't been getting notifications for a few days and have to manually come check which is frustrating....

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[steelandchrome]

Didn't get any...

What a bummer, How good are you feeling about getting in on Omega One? That's the most exciting one I would be looking at getting in on if i knew someone with whitelist approval. Also on a side note are the two friends businesses you invested in in the crypto space? If so curious what problem they are solving if safe enough to say here..

 

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[steelandchrome]

I'm very much looking forward to Omega One...

As for my friends' companies, one is a community that vets and gives private investors access to ICO pre-sales (they haven't launched yet). It's called Collective21 (Collective21 - Pre-ICO Investor Community). The other is a pet project run by a friend that owns a Silicon Valley tech incubator -- it allows people in underdeveloped nations to transfer value via cryptocurrency using a fee-free network (OruMesh).

I'm absolutely not suggesting that anyone invest in these companies -- they are both awesome in different ways, but I don't necessarily expect either to make me rich...just supporting my friends in developing some cool stuff...

Awesome. If you find any space for some spare ETH in Omega let me know [emoji6]. Love that you are able to help out some friends get rolling, I know thats a fastlane goal for a lot of people to assist friends and family.

On a side note I see MTH announced thier first exchange today on some small exchange Tidex (not familiar with them at all and noone to excited about them on Reddit at least). Hopefully they announce a better exchange in the next week or two as they make more announcements.

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[MJ DeMarco]

So I've been trying to "trickle" myself into more knowledge about Crypto stuff while trying to get a feel for it's legitimacy.

However when I see stuff like this, it just screams "dot com bubble" level of foolishness.

GoldMint - ICO rating and details

Am I suppose to take this seriously? (I mean, the woman unsnapping her bra, OMG, how do I invest??)

 

[MarekvBeek]

So I've been trying to "trickle" myself into more knowledge about Crypto stuff while trying to get a feel for it's legitimacy.

However when I see stuff like this, it just screams "dot com bubble" level of foolishness.

GoldMint - ICO rating and details

Am I suppose to take this seriously? (I mean, the woman unsnapping her bra, OMG, how do I invest??)

Haha thanks for the nuance!

 

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[steelandchrome]

Not much to update with market kinda going sideways a bit here... I doubled my LTC position to bring my cost avg down to $69 and with all the positive news on lightning network transactions working today I wouldn't be surprised to see LTC take a jump as soon as bitcoin breaks back above $4k for more than a day. I am hopeful that we will hear some official updates out of China that will allow the market to break free here as I am thinking there are a lot of people cashing out to wait and hear the news and even more on the sidelines already that would put money to work as soon as this round of uncertainty from China passes. (Everyone I keep seeing on forums/threads elsewhere has their eyes on the 30th which is the supposed crypto ban)
On a positive note I have some free money set aside in my exchange account to take advantage of a dip again since I missed out on $205 ETH this last time by being all invested and nothing set aside for extra purchasing.
Anyways, that's my update

 

[throttleforward]

@JScott Thanks for this thread!

One thought that keeps swirling around my head is who is lobbying the federal government on behalf of cryptocurrency/blockchain stakeholders? It would seem to me that a crypto-PAC might be an effective way to get crypto concerns heard and potentially forestall damaging legislation (I know there is a blockchain caucus in the House).

Creating tax parity for cryptocurrencies - U.S. Representative Jared Polis

 

[nitrousflame]

Just wanted to say THANK YOU to @JScott, @steelandchrome, and others for contributing to this awesome thread.

I got into BTC back in 2013 and have held on ever since, only adding to my position here and there. Then I kind of forgot about it for a while, until the scaling debates started to really heat up with all the segwit/2x stuff, at which point I finally started to take a real look into altcoins. A friend of mine dumped all his BTC into ETH early this year and suggested I do the same. I couldn't part with BTC, but that did prompt me to look into ETH and ended up grabbing some at $80, and have been slowly adding to that position now as well. Finally, after the BTC/BCH hardfork, I've added some more BCH since I think increasing the block size isn't such a big deal and I'm also not confident that segwit will fix everything, or even that the 2X part will even happen. Still haven't dumped any BTC though...

Anyway, that's my background. Up until now, even though I've been around the crypto stuff for a few years, I've completely avoided ICO's because I just assumed they were all shady/scams. The problem was I never actually looked into it, nor did I have a sound group of people to bounce ideas off of. Enter JScott and his fascinatingly simple and logical approach to evaluating the teams, investing pre-ICO, taking quick profits, but still leaving seeds to die, grow or potentially even flourish. Brilliant.

I got on the HERO whitelist a while back in preparation for the presale, but that has of course been delayed. You guys still planning on doing that one eventually?

Again, huge thank you for sharing. I look forward to doing the same.

 

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[steelandchrome]

Haven't been doing a whole lot either... Bought a bunch of ETH on the dip last week. As for other stuff:

Chainlink: Bought the max at the ICO earlier in the week. Up 50% since the coins were released yesterday, so I'll probably sell half today and hold the rest.

ICON: Someone in my group was able to negotiate a 3000 ETH purchase of the Pool B token (the one to be released in November). This will likely end up as the de facto network of Korea, which is a huge opportunity. At the current market cap of about $80M, this may be the best investment I've made to date. I could easily see this one going to a $1B cap. I'm buying as much as I can negotiate with the group...won't be able to do anything with it until November.

Sense: I think this team fell off the face of the earth. No contact in several weeks about the pre-sale that was supposed to be two weeks ago.

Great job on both ICO's! Thanks for the update. I haven't seen anything from Sense in a little while either (not that I can participate anyways with KYC). I'm on the lookout for one to participate in that doesn't require KYC and isn't a scam token and not having much luck. I bought some more LTC today when it dropped to $46 and will add more ETH if it gets below $245 in which case it will probably get down to the $225 range and have some buy orders in just incase that happens overnight.

 

[steelandchrome]

For those keeping score, I just bought into another pre-sale: Request Network. Basically, a PayPal for crypto. Great team and looking to be a great product. This will likely be one of the few where I don't sell any short-term.

I'll always discuss the bad with the good -- I had never lost money on an ICO until the past two weeks, but have now lost money on two: AVT and SCL.

I knew SCL was a horrible buy, but they were offering a 50% bonus in the first hour, and I figured it couldn't drop more than 50% on opening day...I was wrong...

AVT was somewhat of a surprise -- I expected it to do better. I'm still holding, waiting for it to hit some bigger exchanges. But, not overly optimistic about this one as a long-term hold.

MTH has been a disappointment as well, though I sold enough of it to almost cover my buy-in, so the rest of it is almost "free money"...

Was the request network an early investor buy in? I had looked them up but were another kyc ico and thought they weren't selling till October?
I'm disappointed in MTH as well, surprised they haven't jumped a bit even with the down eth by adding to hitbtc exchange.


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