The 3 Types Of Crypto Users
I was inspired to write this by the recent moon event we saw with FARM. Price shot up nearly 300% in a 7 day timespan due to a bevvy of updates from the devs and a surprise Coinbase listing that has brought all sorts of new eyes to the Harvest Finance platform. With that notoriety has come a wave of new faces in the Harvest Community Discord. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/harvest-finance
Some of these new faces have brought with them positivity and may result in a net gain for the community and others, not so much. In those new faces I believe they can be summed up in three main categories - Moon Kids, Traders and Long Term Investors. None are inherently bad or good they just all come with their own perspective and unique strategy (or lack thereof) when it comes to crypto. So without further ado, let's get into it.
1. Moon Kids
Moon Kids, another name might be retail investors or the buy high, sell low crew. By the time Moon Kids show up, the profit has already been made. These are typically the group of people that flood in to pump up and shill a coin, long after the traders and long term investors have made their profit. In the case of Harvest, Moon Kids started showing up when the correction from the pump had already begun.
Obviously the goal with investing is to buy low, sell high but Moon Kids are a different breed. Due to their lack of experience in investing or crypto in general whenever they see a coin start to hit it's All Time High they instantly ape in as much money as they can hoping it continues to pump from there. Once consolidation or a price correction begins they sell off, now bored by the sideways action. Failing to realize that after every pump corrections must occur so the next pump can be greater.
The core motivation of the Moon Kid is to make lottery-type money as quickly as possible. Unfortunately most must be taught the hard way. That money that comes quickly tends to leave just as fast if the proper skillsets haven't been developed to keep it. So if you don't wanna be a Moon Kid, do your research and learn as much as possible about crypto. With that being said, there is power in the Moon Kid. Moon Kids pumped SHIB into the top 30 and DOGE into the top 5. So keeping them interested can be a key to a momentary pump.
2. Traders
The second type of crypto user I saw was the Trader. Traders come in many shapes and sizes - Day Traders, Arbitrageurs, Scalpers, Swing Traders, Degen Farmers, Momentum Traders and the list goes on. The thing that identified them most was their knowledge of Harvest/FARM, in spite of being brand new on the server, and infatuation with talk of order books, resistance levels and technical analysis.
These types of crypto users are what the Moon Kid wants to be. They're in the project just before the pump happens and just prior to the correction. The successful trader has deep knowledge of how crypto works, the markets tend to move and when to jump out of a project. Outside of just trading assets I believe traders can also be degen farmers, as long as they're not getting rekt by staying in too long.
The successful trader is hard to come by in crypto. They generally don't stay long term in any project Discord or Telegram community but instead stick with their fellow traders in private chats. So getting the opportunity to speak with one is a rare experience.
3. Long Term Investors
The final type is the Long Term Investor. These are also a rare breed but were very present in the Harvest Discord prior to the moon. Generally speaking they're not easily rocked by big upswings or downswings in price. Choosing instead to carefully choose their projects and stick with it until the end. The Long Term Investor tends to choose their projects as wisely as they can, living by the adage of Doing Their Own Research. This group profited the second most (trading probably being the most) from the recent FARM moon.
The downside to Long Term Investors is they can sometimes get themselves into an echo chamber or become so convinced the projects they're a part of are the future. Failing to see the writing on the wall. This can be a tricky place to be as crypto is a very volatile space. What can be mooning today can go to the dumpsters tomorrow because of an unforeseen exploit in code.
In my opinion the best thing to do if you're already a Long Term Investor is to keep your mind open. Don't become so closed off to other projects or other opinions that you fail to see the flaws in what you're already a part of. It's good to have a few critical people in every now and then to ruffle feathers and keep innovation going.
Final Thoughts
You can probably tell what group I'm most partial to here. However seeing the wide range of people come into the Harvest Discord, what their backgrounds were, how they learned about FARM and the project in general really opened my eyes to just how many people fall into the Moon Kid category.
And how few people really want to learn more about how crypto works but just think they can hop into something and make a quick buck. Looking at prices now the majority of those Moon Kids earned their stripes by buying high and selling low. So if I can implore you to do anything, it's to do your own research and really learn about crypto/DeFi before jumping into anything - and doing your own research doesn't mean asking other people for their opinion, it means forming your own! With that being said I hope you enjoyed and got something out of this post. Happy Earnings!
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Top 5 DeFi Projects On Polygon You Need To Try
Have you ever seen My Strange Addiction? It's a TV show based around profiling people with strange compulsive behaviors that range from a woman who likes to eat sand for "the crunch" to a man who is sexually attracted to his car. Sometimes I feel like my personal strange addiction is DeFi. That's not to say that I'm sexually attracted to DeFi or want to chomp into it for some weird pleasure, I just really really like seeing my money stack up and DeFi fulfills that interest for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqxWOJTovOE&ab_channel=TLC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06BFsQ_28Co&ab_channel=tlcuk
Polygon, to me, is the perfect place for smaller investors to get their feet wet in the world of DeFi. They have insanely low gas fees, with the average transaction cost to add LP tokens on Polygon being only $0.000248 (according to Polygon Gas Station), while on ETH it can cost upwards of $50. These low transaction costs even rival that of BSC, where fees for a similar transaction tend to lie between $0.30-$0.50. Throw in a plethora of projects to invest in and Polygon is a DeFi user's dream. https://polygongasstation.com/
I've spent the last few months exploring the Polygon ecosystem and I've found five projects I find myself using everyday. I'm not going to say the projects I use are the only ones you should be using, everyone has a different perspective, these are just the five that I like. As always I recommend you do your own research, this is just my opinion! Let's get into it!
1. FarmHero
Probably the most unique project I have on this list. FarmHero is a novel protocol that mixes NFT, gaming and DeFi concepts. Users can earn in a variety of ways, by yield farming, single-sided staking, NFT farming, NFT trading, playing house games, rebasing rewards and I'm sure more earning methods to come. They have had an audit by CertiK completed, as well as employ the use of CertiK's SkyNet to monitor their website real time. https://www.certik.org/projects/farmhero
I've been in FarmHero for the last couple of weeks now and have been very happy with the results. I staked/vested most of my HONOR, then claimed the free NFT to stake for additional HONOR rewards. The APRs are pretty nutty, being over 1,000% APR for vesting rewards, I by no means use FarmHero as my primary money maker but it certainly is a fun addition to my portfolio. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/honor-token
**Website:** https://farmherio.io/ https://farmhero.io/?r=absoluteunit
2. Firebird.Finance
A "one-stop" DeFi platform, Firebird provides a swap aggregator service (similar to 1inch), liquidity pools, vaults, governance staking and farming as a service. They've had a few audits completed, more info here, and have some really quality partnerships setup. Being the only vault certified for use by Kyber's DMM and the first to be in on the Iron Finance relaunch. https://docs.firebird.finance/security-safu/audits
Their dev team runs quite a few weekly promotions to increase engagement, from incentivizing swap users to retweeting their content. Personally I'd use their swap anyway, as it tends to find me better rates for some of my smaller bags, but the added benefit of potentially winning cash is nice. I also use their vaults to stake my Kyber DMM pool tokens, I've been pretty happy with the results and additional HOPE I've received for doing so. Which HOPE is their governance token that can be staked to have a share in the project's profits. All in all I'd say it's worth checking out.
**Website:** https://app.firebird.finance/ https://app.firebird.finance/?utm_source=referral&utm_campaign=oref&aff=2pwfBUtzq64MAqqSC8EDkKPMVfKr&net=137
3. Harvest.Finance
In my opinion Harvest is the DeFi project with the best fundamentals out there. They've had several audits done, with four on record completed, so security from that perspective looks pretty good. Harvest also recently launched three Polygon strategies with more being teased to come soon.
I've personally been sitting in the ETH-USDT and iFARM-QUICK farms on Quickswap and have been pretty impressed with rewards. My iFARM is already earning roughly 25% APY in it's underlying FARM assets, plus now compounding with LP fees and additional FARM rewards. Not a bad deal for an asset I plan to long term hodl anyway!
**Website:** https://harvest.finance/
4. DinoSwap.Exchange
According to the DinoSwap docs, DinoSwap is..
...a cross-chain infrastructure project that builds liquidity for layer-one blockchains, AMMs and partnering projects
For me DinoSwap falls more into my degen farms. They've got over $350M TVL as of writing this but I'd be willing to bet that's fairly inflated due to current DINO token prices. They're currently listed by DeFillama as one of the top 6 biggest DeFi projects on Polygon.
There are several different pairs to farm on DinoSwap, while the highest APR is on their native token pairings, I like to sit in the xMARK-USDC farm. It still offers 350%+ APR on what's essentially a stablecoin pairing. I've made a pretty good amount in DinoSwap that I then funnel over to Harvest or other long term projects on Polygon. I'm not sure how long DINO price will remain as high as it is so best to get in soon and safely!
**Website:** https://dinoswap.exchange/
5. Dfyn.Network
Dfyn is a cross-chain Decentralized Exchange (DEX) with a built-in gassless mode and farms. And let me tell you, Dfyn's gasless mode has saved me many a time when I accidentally swap all my MATIC over to some coin I want to farm. Dfyn's initial launch was on Polygon with plans to expand to BSC, HEC, Avalanche, Polkadot, Algorand, and more.
Like I said above I tend to turn to Dfyn when I need a gasless transaction, but I've also found quite a bit of use in their Luna and UST pools. As far as I know they're Terra's only partner on Polygon and rewards from their UST-USDT farms are quite good for a stablecoin pairing. Definitely worth have Dfyn in your back pocket for when mistakes are inevitably made!
**Website:** https://dfyn.network/
Final Thoughts
It seems every week new projects are springing up on Polygon, and that's the beauty of it! What can be profitable today can be absolute trash tomorrow, so when the gems out there are found it's that much more satisfying. What I tend to do is farm the degens (FarmHero, DinoSwap) so I can funnel more funds into my longer term investments (Harvest) without having to add additional fiat. However what works for me may not be best for you so finding your best strategy for asset management is the true challenge here, I just hope sharing some of my favorites may lead you better down that path.
As always do your own research on all of this, don't believe anyone on the internet - especially me lol. Let me know if there's any you think I missed or should check out! Happy Earnings!
**If you made it this for thank you very much for reading! Have a great day.**
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The Most Underrated Instant Swap Service - SwapSpace
I don't think I have enough appendages to count the number of times I've heard of a new coin or farm launching, realized all my funds were locked up elsewhere and panicked to onboard some additional fiat so I could get in on the moon. It seems like every single time this happens I buy USDT on Ethereum when what I really need is USDT on BSC, or Tronix or whatever side chain I'm buying for. What follows is 30 mins to 1 hour of me trying to remember how I fixed it last time.
I've been in crypto for 8+ years so you would think this wouldn't be an issue anymore. In the past my go to play was to head over to some other, unnamed, instant swap provider so I could get the right tokens in my wallet through 3-4 swaps. While I don't think I'm going to stop making the mistake of buying the wrong USDT, how I go about fixing it has gotten a whole lot easier.
I'd be lying if I told you I'd heard of SwapSpace prior to Publish0x's writing contest. I already mentioned in the past I used another, unnamed, swap service that I now plan to shove under the rug. When I found out SwapSpace offers swaps of ERC-20 tokens to TRC-20 or BEP-20 tokens and vice versa, it now eliminates half the steps I usually have to take when token purchase snafus are made. So even though I found out about SwapSpace through a writing contest, me writing this post has just as much to do with it filling an actual need I have. https://swapspace.co/?ref=56840bc6ef325135f3901417
Before I get too far ahead of myself though, lets get into what SwapSpace is and a few of their core features.
What is SwapSpace?
SwapSpace is a cryptocurrency exchange aggregator that integrates several swap services and exchanges to find the best rate for it's users. This means instead of searching through all the swap providers out there, trying to find the best rate and if it provides swaps for the coins you're looking for, SwapSpace takes care of that for you by identifying both the best rate and the swap service that will offer the coins you're looking for.
A few of the basic benefits SwapSpace offers are -
**No Extra Fees** - SwapSpace charges no additional fees for the swaps it aggregates. You would think since they aggregate the swaps for over a dozen services there would be some sort of hidden fee charged here, however there is none. Instead they opt to share the fees with the swap services they aggregate.
**No Signup/KYC** - No additional data needs to be shared with SwapSpace outside of the wallet addresses for the swap. This is particularly useful for US based customers as SwapSpace also aggregates swaps through Shimbo, who go through Binance. This is usually not possible for US based customers.
**No Limit Exchanges** - While there's a lower limit for swap amounts, there is no upper limit. If you want to swap 100,000 ETH, you can go right ahead and do that.
**Over 450 Coins Supported** - There's a huge range of coins supported on SwapSpace, some I've never even heard of. This is particularly useful though if you're wanting to ape into a lesser known coin or out of one where a swap would traditionally be difficult to find.
**24/7 Support** - Huge as well, I'm sure we've all been there where something in crypto doesn't go according to plan and we have to wait 2-3 days to receive a response (or if you've ever used Binance, 6-8 months). With SwapSpace they have 24/7 support so if something goes wrong at 2am on a Sunday, someone will be there to help you out.
**Lucrative Affiliate Program** - For all my referral kings out there SwapSpace has your back. For every swap that goes through your affiliate link with SwapSpace you get a 50% kickback of SwapSpace's share. Pretty nutty rates if you ask me. https://swapspace.co/?ref=56840bc6ef325135f3901417
How to SwapSpace
Yes I will teach you to SwapSpace. For my example I'll be swapping 90 USDC on Ethereum over to BUSD on BSC. Why am I doing this you might ask? Because I can't resist jumping in even harder to that DEC pump due to the upcoming Splinterlands Airdrop. So let's get into it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z3YiWWwHJg&ab_channel=Koari https://splinterlands.com?ref=longboi
Step 1:
First input the amount of token you'll be exchanging, this goes in the first box. You'll then be shown your expected outcome in the second box. In this case I input 90 USDC (ERC-20) and in exchange I should receive ~87.76 BUSD. The difference here is due to the exchange fee and any differences in token price. Next you'll click "View Offers", this will show a list of exchange services with the best offer at the top.
In this case I chose the top offer since it offered the highest reward by clicking "Exchange". These are some pretty good rates too for a stablecoin swap between chains.
Step 2:
Next you'll enter your recipient address, this is where the swapped funds will go, as well as a refund address in case the swap get's canceled for some reason.
In this case I did block out my addresses because yes, I'm weird about privacy.
Step 3:
You'll then transfer your funds to the exchange address indicated. You'll have 30 minutes to make the exchange, unless you use extremely low gas that should be ample time for all the major blockchains out there.
As a small warning I did choose a swap that has a floating rate. Meaning I could potentially get back more or less BUSD then what was shown depending on the rate at the time of swap.
Step 4:
Wait for it to process, all in all it took me around 15 minutes to complete. In my case I actually received roughly $1 more than expected from this swap, always better to get more than less. This is significantly faster then when I used to have to perform multiple swaps to eventually get the token I was looking for.
If you prefer a video tutorial, there's a great one on their YouTube channel here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o8WeI4AjKs&ab_channel=SwapSpace
The Future of SwapSpace & Comparisons
I love me a roadmap. While snooping around the SwapSpace website, in their About page, I found a nice roadmap for what their future plans are regarding SwapSpace. Currently they're at the Fiat Offers step but what I'm excited about is the Telegram swaps bot and further exchange listings. They already have the most exchanges integrated I've seen out of an exchange aggregator so adding in more is pretty cool.
As for comparisons it's not even close. In the past I used Changelly, ChangeNow and SwapZone. SwapSpace has them beat in just about every category:
I knew nothing about SwapSpace before writing this and coming out I have to say I'm definitely impressed. They have a huge range of tokens they perform swap services for and a good number of exchange partners they work with. Going forward I don't think I'll need any other swap provider.
**Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed.**
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How to Maximize Your Publish0x Earnings Part 2 - Ampleforth
As a continuation of my series on Maximizing Your Publish0x Earnings, I'd like to focus in on the second token Publish0x has integrated for tipping, Ampleforth (AMPL). AMPL is an algorithmic stablecoin that uses rebases to hold it's peg, meaning supply expands or contracts every 24h in response to it's value deviating from a 1 USD target. https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/how-to-maximize-your-publish0x-earnings-part-1-ifarm-xglpzre?a=4oeEnVKa0B&tid=inArticle https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ampleforth
This differs greatly from a traditional USD stablecoin in that there is no fiat backing AMPL, just an algorithm that expands token supply when over peg or contracts token supply when under peg. The logic behind this is when over peg, the expanded token supply incentivizes holders to sell their AMPL at a premium while conversely incentivizing holders to buy at a discount when under peg.
When I first learned of AMPL and it's rebasing mechanic I was a little confused and scared of what effect that would have on my earnings here. However the more I've learned about it and some of the ways I could utilize it to gain even more profit, that fear turned to excitement. In an effort to once again share some of my findings, I'd like to go through three different strategies to maximize your AMPL earnings from Publish0x ranging from beginner difficulty to advanced. Without further ado, let's get into them.
Beginner
This strategy is purely for beginners or those with a low risk profile. If you consider yourself a bit more advanced you can continue to the next sections below, but before anything else you will need to decide how you'll be storing your AMPL.
There are a few options to choose from but I personally like MetaMask, Trust Wallet and Atomic Wallet. If you have the money you could choose to get a Ledger hardware wallet for added security, however this should not be necessary unless you're holding a large amount of funds. Lastly you could also choose to withdraw it to your KuCoin account. https://geckogovernance.medium.com/how-to-setup-metamask-wallet-account-a185681e5ab5#:~:text=After%20installing%2C%20click%20on,for%20a%20new%20Ethereum%20account. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b https://www.kucoin.com/ucenter/signup?rcode=rJAJPZS&lang=en_US&utm_source=friendInvite
For a beginner the number one thing about AMPL that needs to be understood is no matter the rebase, you will always hold the same percentage of the total AMPL supply. So if you hold 1% of the total token supply and AMPL rebases negatively, you will still hold 1% of the total token supply. If AMPL rebases positively then you will still hold 1% of the total supply, you'll just be holding more AMPL. This is particularly attractive for long term investors.
So the strategy here is to hold and accumulate when price is below peg and sell when it's far above peg. This has happened quite a few times in AMPL's existence, each time the rewards for holding during down times have been well worth it. If you're adverse to timing the market like this there are alerts you can setup through CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko or a bevy of other applications that will let you know when AMPL's price goes above or below a certain threshold.
Intermediate
For those a bit more experienced in crypto and DeFi in general, you can put your AMPL to work. Currently the best way to do so on Ethereum is to provide liquidity on Uniswap, Balancer or Sushiswap then stake those LP tokens in Ampleforth's "Geysers". https://www.ampleforth.org/geyser/trinityV1-balancer-wbtc-weth-ampl
These Geysers reward AMPL for staking your LP tokens, to the tune of 2-21.2% additional APY. It's currently unknown how long these Geyser programs will run. However they've already been running for some time now so I expect this to continue for at least the next few months.
If you'd rather support the BSC ecosystem you can bridge your AMPL to BSC (guide here), provide liquidity on PancakeSwap to the AMPL-BUSD pair and earn roughly 90% APY paid in cake. I personally like this farming method a bit better, not only because the APY is higher but it's essentially a stable pair. https://www.publish0x.com/canuhodl/how-to-bridge-dollar-ampl-to-bsc-beginner-friendly-xnxegzm?a=4oeEnVKa0B&tid=inArticle
As a small warning, you will experience impermanent loss (IL) no matter which pair you choose due to AMPL's rebasing mechanics. IL is best offset in the Balancer LP or on BSC due to the stablecoin pairing but you will experience it nonetheless. https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/impermanent-loss-explained
Advanced
This is only for the advanced Crypto/DeFi user so I do not recommend you try these unless you have quite a bit of experience in this space and that would be using your AMPL as collateral to take out a loan. You can supply or take out a loan in AMPL on Yield.Credit and a partnership with Aave is currently in the voting phase but I do expect it to pass with how the vote is going.
If you're in this category I don't need to explain exactly how this works but I can share with you that Rari Capital has taken notice of how the proposal is going down with Aave and recently reached out to the AMPL team for partnership. So pretty soon there will be quite a few more options for utilizing your AMPL holdings. https://rari.capital/index.html
Bonus Information
This doesn't really fall into any of the info above, but I think could potentially be included in the future. The Amplesense DAO is working on elastic vaults that would help protect users from negative rebases and allow them to earn yield on their AMPL. There's also been talk of a protocol similar to Maker developed by Ampleforth as well as an elastic wallet and AMM. I have no idea when those would launch but they all seem pretty bullish for AMPL's future. https://amplesense.io/
Final Thoughts
Ampleforth seems to be in the process of building an entire ecosystem around it's elastic supply and rebase mechanics. When I first looked into AMPL it did not have nearly this amount of development and future projects on it's radar while today it seems the crypto community at large has come a lot more to terms with rebasing tokens like AMPL. I look forward to being a part of several of these projects and what's to come.
**Let me know if there's anything I missed in Ampleforth's ecosystem, thanks for reading!**
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How To Maximize Your iFARM
As soon as Publish0x announced they were implementing iFARM as a new tipping token I knew the Publish0x Bump was incoming (see LRC, when implemented as a tipping token it was trading at $0.005, today it's has been holding steady trading between $0.20-$0.70). I quickly went to work investigating exactly what iFARM was, the potential benefits and how I could best utilize my rewards for maximum gains. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ifarm https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/loopring
What I found was pretty impressive. If you're unfamiliar with Harvest.Finance, there's a pretty good writeup here that can go through the basics of what they do. In a nutshell though, Harvest is a yield aggregator and FARM is their profit share token. https://harvest-finance.gitbook.io/harvest-finance/general-info/what-do-we-do https://harvest-finance.gitbook.io/harvest-finance/general-info/what-do-we-do/profit-share-pool-and-farm-tokenomics
iFARM is an interest bearing token that acts a receipt of FARM staked in the profit sharing pool on Harvest. As of writing this, one iFARM can be redeemed for ~1.165 FARM. APY can vary, but holding iFARM gives between 30-55% APY, which means if you bought iFARM today, if price remains the same than that same iFARM could be worth 1.3-1.5x what you bought it for in a year's time.
In my research I came across three main ways someone could maximize their Publish0x iFARM earnings. Today I'd like to share all three of those with you. I think it's easiest to break them down into three expertise levels, with the starter level being friendly to a crypto newbie and the advanced for those who are already very familiar with DeFi and crypto in general. So without further introduction, let's get into it.
Beginner
As I said above, this strategy is for complete crypto/DeFi beginners. If you're not a newbie you can go ahead and skip along to the next strategies. This one is pretty straightforward. The number one thing that needs to be understood about iFARM when you're a crypto beginner is that you're already earning.
Just by holding iFARM in your wallet you have access to Harvest's profit sharing pool, which sits between 30-50% annual percentage yield (APY). If you would rather swap out your iFARM for another asset, you could do so by going to Harvest.Finance and unstaking your iFARM for FARM then selling on Uniswap or Bancor - but you might be hard pressed to find better yields in something respectable. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/what-is-apy/#:~:text=When%20opening%20a%20bank%20account,a%20measurement%20of%20interest%20rates.
I know this is pretty easy to do, just hodl and chill but if you're brand new to DeFi or crypto in general, I don't recommend doing anything else besides hodling and learning. Harvest is one of the premier yield aggregators out there so holding onto their token isn't a bad idea while you learn more about DeFi.
Intermediate
This strategy is for those who are more familiar with DeFi and crypto at large. Rather than just hodling your iFARM, you can put it to work. There's a couple different ways to do that but I'll focus here on one that's a little bit simpler and should be common place for any regular DeFi user, providing liquidity.
Unfortunately there's not a large amount of liquidity for iFARM on Ethereum, at least not enough to make any money. However if we head over to Polygon, Quickswap has ample liquidity for us to make some money. If you're unfamiliar with how to connect your wallet to the Polygon network, there's a pretty good guide here made by the Polygon devs. https://quickswap.exchange/ https://docs.matic.network/docs/develop/metamask/config-matic/
This is particularly attractive as you're not only earning interest on your iFARM but also liquidity provision fees on top of that. Plus potentially getting a head start for when Harvest opens up their Polygon farms :).
Advanced
Last up are the advanced strategies. This is definitely not for everyone, this is only for those people that have a strong understanding of DeFi and are willing to add some additional risk to what they're already holding. I've found two main options here, number one is to use your iFARM as collateral on Ruler Protocol. Number two is to use it as collateral to mint fCASH. https://rulerprotocol.com/ https://harvest-finance.gitbook.io/harvest-finance/general-info/what-do-we-do/fcash
Originally I was using my iFARM as collateral for loans on Ruler, since the release of fCASH I've shifted my focus there. There's nothing wrong with Ruler either, I just like the flexibility fCASH can provide. fCASH is a synthetic asset developed in conjunction with UMA Protocol. Users can lock their iFARM as collateral to mint, there is no peg but at a known expiration date fCASH will be redeemable for $1 of iFARM.
There's a lot of different options of what can be done with your fCASH, I won't go into all of them here. But there is a nice infographic that Harvest made that goes through a few of them. Personally I like to buy up fCASH when it's trading around $0.90 or less. With expiry on the 30th of Sept it's like getting an extra 30% APY on iFARM I plan to redeem in Sept (which is also earning 50% APY). Harvest also has a Uniswap v3 vault for the fCASH-USDC pair that receives additional UMA rewards that might be worth using as well. https://i.imgur.com/QNnO7Wu.jpg
If you have questions regarding fCASH I highly recommend checking out that infographic I linked above or heading over to the Harvest Discord. There's a ton of info and people you can bounce questions off there. https://discord.gg/ZqjyY4ztCV
Closing Thoughts
That's about all I got. I know there are some other ways to maximize your return on your iFARM that might involve unstaking it for FARM and using it to farm other pairs (such as FARM-ETH or FARM-GRAIN), but I wanted to focus primarily on using the token we get from Publish0x. Next up will be a post about ways to use Ampleforth. Let me know if you have any thoughts!
**Thanks for reading, hope you got something out of it!**
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3 Play-to-Earn Blockchain Games You Need To Try
In the face of a generally down trending market, blockchain gaming has been on the rise. While the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap are down an average of 5% over the last seven days, the top ten blockchain games are trending up in users by an average of nearly ~10% according to DAppRadar. Blockchain, Play-to-Earn gaming, is on the rise. While Alien Worlds, Axie Infinity and Upland have already attained massive user bases and popularity, I'd like to focus on three other games with smaller userbases, that could be the next big thing. https://dappradar.com/rankings/category/games
Today I'd like to cover three already released blockchain games with some form of a "play-to-earn" element to them that allow you to earn money for playing them. For every one game on the list I likely checked out another 2-3 that I didn't think made the cut, so this won't simply be a breakdown of the top three games on DAppRadar by userbase. Let me know if you think there's any I missed and let's get into it!
1. 0xUniverse
0xUniverse is a space themed strategy game built on the Ethereum blockchain. Players can build spaceships, explore the galaxy, and colonize planets. Development for 0xUniverse initially began in November of 2017 so it's been around for quite some time. Initially the game was launched on the Ethereum blockchain, but development has since expanded to Polygon - which is quite nice for the significantly lower transaction costs.
There's a finite amount of planets available in game so as the game sees higher rates of play those planets should see a subsequent rise in value. I personally picked up a couple common planets for 1.5-2 MATIC ea ($1.5-$2) so they are still pretty cheap at this time. They recently also released their "War of Corporations" update, that allows for more gameplay features aside from acquiring planets and searching for new ones. All in all I'm excited to see where this one goes.
**Website:** https://0xuniverse.com/
2. Aavegotchi
I'm usually not one for collectible critter games but Aavegotchi's DeFi aspects make it significantly more attractive to me. From their website Aavegotch is...
...a DeFi-enabled crypto collectibles game developed by Singapore-based Pixelcraft Studios that allows players to stake NFT avatars with interest-generating aTokens and interact with the Aavegotchi metaverse. https://wiki.aavegotchi.com/atokens
So not only do players get to collect NFTs that have and will see a rise in price due to rarity, but they can also attach interest bearing tokens to them to double dip on those rewards. Players can level up their Aavegotchi's by playing mini-games, participating in governance or attending meetups. There are a number of traits that determine the rarity and value of an Aavegotchi, if you're interested in learning more I highly recommend checking out their wiki as it will probably do a better job than I ever could with that. https://wiki.aavegotchi.com/
Aavegotchi price is rather high at this time, with the lowest one listed on their Bazaar going for roughly $500. However if you don't want to pay this price you could pick up and stake some GHST for raffle tickets to potentially win an Aavegotchi. I already had an Aavegotchi that I picked up earlier this year when I initially looked into this and prices were significantly lower. With the introduction of minigames and a variety of activities to participate in Aavegotchi has been a fun game to get re-introduced to! https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/aavegotchi
**Website:** https://aavegotchi.com/
3. Sorare
What better than a game based around the most popular sport in the world? Sorare is a fantasy football game, where players can buy, sell, trade, and manage a virtual team of five players with NFT based cards. Development for Sorare started in 2018 and is built on the Ethereum blockchain, however cards can be purchased on their website by linking a credit/debit card. The exciting thing for me about Sorare is that it has official licensing contracts setup with many of the largest Football clubs in the world (Real Madrid, Juventus, AC Milan, etc.).
Each week there are tournaments with prizes for thousands of dollars up for grabs that are free to enter, so there's never any limit to the amount you go into. In my opinion the best thing to do is complete all the steps on their getting started checklist for the free packs, enter rookie tournaments then continue to acquire cards as you go. The cheapest cards I saw available on their marketplace were going for around $6, with the highest going for as much as $9,000. Due to the massive popularity of football globally, I can see Sorare being huge in the near future.
**Website:** sorare.com
Final Thoughts
As I've said in a previous article, Blockchain gaming has come so far over the last couple of years. What was once just glorified cookie clicker style games has turned into something so much more. In my opinion, Blockchain gaming is going to be one of the biggest catalysts for future adoption. As Blockchain gaming continues to progress I believe we'll continue to see more AAA style games implement blockchain technology into their games. Pretty soon people will be using crypto products and not even know they're doing it. With that said I hope you enjoyed reading! https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/top-6-play-to-earn-blockchain-games-to-keep-your-eyes-on-in-xnqvpmo
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ShibaSwap Bursts Onto The Scene With $1.3b+ TVL in First 24 Hours
ShibaSwap, the much anticipated proprietary DEX for the popular memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB) was launched on the ETH mainnet early yesterday (6th June, 2021). The release was announced via their official Twitter account and a blog post from their dev's calling yesterday their "Shibapendence Day". The new platform will allow SHIB owners to do more than just hodl their tokens. Users can stake their SHIB or provide liquidity for additional rewards in the form of BONE and LEASH. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/shiba-inu https://twitter.com/Shibtoken/status/1412334569903304704 https://etherscan.io/token/0x9813037ee2218799597d83d4a5b6f3b6778218d9?a=0x94235659cf8b805b2c658f9ea2d6d6ddbb17c8d7 https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/doge-killer
Just eight hours after launch the Total Value Locked (TVL) on the platform had exceeded $480m and one day after launch $1.3b. At the time of writing this, ShibaSwap's TVL would put them in the top 20 of DeFi platforms on Ethereum, just ahead of Alchemix and behind Cream. ShibaSwap's launch caused a minor pump in SHIB's price, up 7% a few hours after launch and a massive bump in a ShibaSwap exclusive token, BONE.
#SHIBArmy
For Shiba Inu fans this news is huge. Ever since DOGE mooned earlier this year, a new crop of dog-related memecoins have cropped up vying for their piece of the memecoin market share. Up until now the promise of ShibaSwap and additional use cases for SHIB have been a fantasy. With the launch of ShibaSwap some of those fantasies have been made a reality.
On the platform users can currently provide liquidity and earn rewards (in the form of BONE) for staking their LP tokens on the platform. As of writing this, the APR for providing liquidity then staking BONE-WETH LP tokens is sitting at a cool 3,022.80% APR. ShibaSwap also shows the potential to release single-sided staking, so users can stake their SHIB/BONE/LEASH for additional rewards, and a user dashboard with analytics tool to track said rewards.
Consequences
If your a fan of SHIB, yesterday was a great day for you. If you were any other user of the Ethereum blockchain, not so much. Mass trading on ShibaSwap sent the the ETH gas prices through the roof, from an average of 10 to 44 gwei the last two days. The ShibaSwap contract also remains in the top three of gas guzzlers across the entire ETH mainnet.
Apes truly went wild yesterday, sending the price of BONE well over $25, only to come crashing down today to sub $11. Personally I would advise anyone to be cautious when aping into something like ShibaSwap. High TVL and user's does not always equal SAFU funds, as evidenced by the recent Iron Finance fiasco. Valentin Mihov pointed out on Twitter yesterday a serious design flaw, that would allow all of user's funds to be rugged at any moment by ShibaSwap's devs.
Since that tweet the devs have transferred funds to a multisig wallet, but a timelock would make things significantly less rug-able. Personally, even though I'm not a fan of memecoins - especially in a space where we're trying to get more credibility - I would hate to see a rug pull or exploit happen here. ShibaSwap is probably many SHIB user's first taste of DeFi and having an exploit taint that experience would be bad for the industry as a whole. DeFi, while being a $100b+ industry, is still mostly unknown to the outside world.
Final Thoughts
As I said above it was a great day if you're a part of the ShibArmy, for everyone else - maybe not so much. Cryptocurrency and DeFi are already fighting for legitimacy and pumping a coin like SHIB, with no actual value outside of making a profit, seems counter-productive to me. But that's the nature of Crypto. We take a few steps forward to occasionally take a few more back. What's the difference between someone investing in SHIB and me investing in projects I know are ponzi schemes for a short-term buck? So I guess we all have some growing up to do.
ShibaSwap appears to be a decently made product design-wise, however I'm not convinced of their security just yet. They delayed putting the product out due to security concerns then on the first day had to patch a potential security issue. Either way though it's a great day for the ShibArmy, ShibaSwap has been promises since early this year and has finally been released. Hopefully it's everything the people wanted!
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Is It Worth Checking Out Fantom (FTM)? Reviewing the Blockchain Built for DeFi
Fantom (FTM) is once again on the rise. Over the last 3 days it's Total Value Locked (TVL) has gone from $130m to $200m, drawing near to it's all time high of $256m. This sudden spike in TVL didn't come out of nowhere. Curve, the vastly popular stable swap, launched their Curve Reward APY incentives on Fantom earlier this week. And they are juicy.
Before I get too ahead of myself, if you're like me a few weeks ago, you might be asking yourself - What is Fantom? From their website Fantom is...
...a high-performance, scalable, and secure smart-contract platform.
Which if we're going to be honest, sounds like every blockchain out there. The exciting part about Fantom is their mainnet, Opera, is Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible. Meaning dApps and smart contracts can easily be ported over from Ethereum, similar to Polygon and Binance Smart Chain, two other EVM compatible chains that have recently seen a large increase in usage.
The Opera mainnet uses Fantom (FTM) for gas, similar to how Polygon uses Matic and Binance Smart Chain uses BNB. FTM is currently trading at ~$0.22 with an all time high of $0.94 which was around the same time that every crypto reached it's all time high (pre 19/5/21). Price tends to closely follow ETH, which also closely follows BTC so no real need to show a chart here of their price, if you've seen any crypto price chart you've seen FTM's. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/fantom
Why Check Fantom Out?
It seems there's a general lull in new projects being released on Polygon, at least for the next couple of weeks, which means that it's a perfect time to solidify your strategy there and dip your toes in a new blockchain. Fantom offers all the familiar trappings of an EVM compatible chain, a few early adopter blue chip platforms (Curve, Cream, SushiSwap) and a few early on the scene native platforms (SpookySwap, SpiritSwap, Tomb).
My opinion is if some of these more blue chip DeFi platforms are developing on Fantom, it's worth me checking out as well. Even if it's only a small portion of my funds. It's extremely difficult to predict what the next "big thing" will be in crypto, my mentality is to try to capture as many early adopter gains as I can.
While Fantom is certainly not new, and has already hit a bit of it's own moon, I believe there's still some good ground to gain with it's DeFi capability and dApps.
Using Fantom Opera
If you're already familiar with BSC, Polygon or xDAI, using Fantom is very similar. Funds can be bridged over from Ethereum, BSC, Polygon or xDAI via a number of bridges. I personally used AnySwap but xPollinate and Multichain offer similar solutions.
Unless you're specifically moving over FTM, when you bridge over assets you will have no gas to move your funds. That's where SpookySwap comes in, they offer a monthly faucet that will send you 0.1 FTM (enough for several transactions) for free via their Discord. It's no wonder they're the largest AMM on Fantom.
For my test I setup my MetaMask to be compatible with the Fantom Opera Mainnet. Which I just found out SpookySwap will do for you if you connect to their exchange.
**Farming.jpeg**
Because I'm a filthy degenerate the first thing I did after getting funds bridged over and my wallet setup was start looking for some ridiculously high APY farms. That's when Tomb caught my attention. Tomb is the first algorithmic stablecoin on Fantom. Just not in the traditional sense. Their goal is to be pegged to the price of FTM as opposed to the typical algorithmic stablecoin that attempts to be pegged to the USD.
How Tomb attempts to maintain that peg is through a multi-token protocol, with Tomb, Tomb Shares and Tomb Bonds. To be honest though, in this case I was much more drawn to that ridiculous 972% APR (or about 1.5 million APY).
There were a few other options out there, with APYs of up to 500%. I figured though, if I'm going degen, I might as well go full degen and chase the highest yields on Fantom. So I jumped into the FTM-TOMB LP on SpookySwap and dropped my LP tokens in Tomb's cemetery.
So far yields have been as advertised. If you're not as excited about a high risk profile, Curve's rewards on Fantom are also very good. Especially for stablecoin pairs. Personally I also jumped into the BOO-FTM pool. BOO is SpookySwap's token and I believe has some good room for growth. So far there aren't an insane amount of platforms on Fantom but interest in the Blockchain is starting to grow, especially with the recent success of BSC and Polygon. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/spookyswap
Final Thoughts
Coming from BSC, Polygon and Ethereum, Fantom is certainly not quite at that level of development/use yet. However the basics are all there. Easy to use bridges, blue chip DeFi projects and solid native platforms all make for a nice experience on Fantom.
Now do I think Fantom will ever achieve the same level of popularity/use of BSC or Polygon? Probably not, only time will tell. But that was never their goal. Fantom markets itself as the Ethereum Helper, as opposed to how some blockchains have titled themselves "Ethereum Killers", with varying results. https://fantom.foundation/blog/fantom-the-ethereum-helper/
The majority of my DeFi assets are still on Polygon, BSC and Ethereum but what I do have on Fantom I'm glad is there. Getting to be relatively early to a growing blockchain and exploring a new ecosystem is fun. Until very recently I'd never ventured into Fantom but I'm very happy I gave it a chance.
Thanks for reading! Obviously I'm no financial advisor, all the above is my opinion and personal experience. If you enjoyed don't forget to like/follow so I know to keep making more content. Happy earnings!
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I'm Addicted To DeFi On Polygon
The first step to beating an addiction is admitting you have a problem. And I would like to say, I have a problem. DeFi on Polygon is too much fun. I've always had a little bit of a problem with degen farming but it was always kept in check due to gas fees on Ethereum being just a little too high. Now that DeFi on Polygon has officially hit it's stride, all bets are off.
My addiction started manifesting itself with Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Fees were low and profits were high. BSC speed ran last year's DeFi summer over the course of just a few months; absolutely exploding and going from a little over $1b Total Value Locked (TVL) in March to nearly $30b TVL in May. But just as all good things in crypto, it had to come to an end.
A series of exploits and flash loan attacks put a damper on BSC's flame and just like many others, I lost trust in the chain itself. TVL plummeted to a third of it's peak. But while BSC was destroying itself, DeFi platforms on Polygon were buidling. Dev activity on Polygon exploded, with big name players like Aave, SushiSwap and Curve making the jump over to the fledgling chain.
These moves did not go unnoticed. From May to June TVL on Polygon went from less than $500m to over $5b in the span of just a month and a half. With BSC lagging, I needed a new outlet for my degen farming addiction. That's when I noticed Polygon. Many of my favorite DeFi platforms had already made their intentions of moving their products over. https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/top-3-defi-projects-to-watch-on-polygon-xnxlxgg
Degen Farming
While I'm very excited for my favorite blue chip platforms to make the move over to Polygon, I wouldn't exactly call these degen farms. Harvest, Badger, Kyber and many others have proven themselves to be safe places to store my long-term assets and earn a respectable yield. Degen farms offer something juicier. Something with a bit more risk involved.
In traditional finance (TradFi) getting 8% APY on your assets is insane. On blue chip DeFi platforms 50-100% APY is more than acceptable. With Degen farms, if you're not pulling 1,000%+ APY, you're doing it wrong.
Obviously the above meme is in jest. It's irresponsible to only yolo your funds. I do however set aside a portion of my portfolio specifically for degen farming. Historically that number varies from 10%-35% depending on the market season we're in. However, thanks to Polygon's extraordinarily low fees and insanely high yield farms, that number has crept up to 50% for the first time ever.
It didn't help that I had moved about 25% of my portfolio into stable coins awaiting a few projects I was looking forward to. I figured, while I'm waiting for these to launch I might as well put them to work. All it took was one dip into a few Polygon degen farms and it was off to the races. In one day I went up 30% on FISH, on what was honestly a luckily timed buy and the result of 10,000%+ APY. https://polycat.finance/?ref=0k831P58p7O3N81Rn97P88p8Sq013p984o4691pnsq
Now I can't stop, I check every degen farm that comes out on Polygon and jump in at least for a taste. That's the beauty of Polygon. The infrastructure and dev support of Ethereum with none of the nasty gas fees to hurt profits. On Ethereum if you were to invest $1,000 into the Harvest UniswapV3 vault for ETH-USDT, at a respectable 151% APY you would be earning $2.52/day. At average gas prices it would take almost 15 days to recoup the gas fees before you're profitable.
On Polygon if you were to invest $1,000 into a pool with 151% APY, it would take less than one day for the profit to start coming in. The only costs you would need to overcome would potentially be swap or deposit fees. This is the beauty of Polygon. If you're feeling squirrely and a pump is incoming you can jump into a degen farm or shitcoin project for the day and go into a stablecoin position before going to bed. All without losing a cent of profit.
Final Thoughts
Obviously some of the above is hyperbole or sarcasm but the core sentiment is true. Polygon has proven itself to be a fantastic platform for actively managed DeFi assets. Thanks to extremely low gas prices, Polygon makes it incredibly easy to zap into any project and zap out with minimal losses. Just because it's cheap to move funds, basic security tips should not be disregarded. I do recommend always checking your approvals on DeBank or Polygonscan and revoking anything you're no longer using. https://debank.com/ https://polygonscan.com/
But with that being said if you haven't taken a look at DeFi on Polygon I highly recommend you do. Just like with anything in crypto there's a large number of scam projects and ponzi schemes but if you can wade through the muck there's quite a few opportunities for some real money to be made. Some good starting places are Polycat, Quickswap and Aave. All three were early on the scene in Polygon and have proven they're in it for the long haul. Obviously though do your own research on all of them. https://polycat.finance/?ref=0k831P58p7O3N81Rn97P88p8Sq013p984o4691pnsq https://quickswap.exchange/#/swap https://app.aave.com/
**I hope you enjoyed reading. I think I've shown I certainly need some help. I'm obviously not a financial advisor and recommend doing your own research on everything I've mentioned. If you enjoyed don't forget to follow and like the post! Happy earnings!**
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Top 3 DeFi Projects to Watch on Polygon
You know what they say, once you start using DeFi on Polygon you ain't never going back. Well I don't think anyone's actually ever said that before but maybe they should. Hardcore DeFi users and retail investors alike have been flocking to Polygon due to it's low transaction cost, high throughput and wide range of DeFi products. Many of those DeFi products made usable by the Polygon Bridge, which allows for easy transfer of assets from the Ethereum mainnet to Polygon. https://wallet.matic.network/bridge/
This rise in usage is reflected in Polygon (MATIC)'s token price. Which in spite of the recent market downturn, is still up nearly 5,000% over last year's figures. DeFi apps on Polygon have similarly shown very high usage, with this being exemplified by Aave on Polygon showing nearly 3x the users than it's Ethereum counterpart.
I was a little sluggish getting into Polygon, not jumping in until early March. In spite of the late start, the rewards have been worthwhile. Today I'd like to cover three DeFi projects I'm either currently using or am anticipating using in the near future. So let's get into it!
1. Polycat Finance
There's been a rash of Poly(animal) DeFi protocols that have sprung up as of late, but Polycat is the one that takes the cake. Polycat is a self-described "Value-oriented, economically sustainable hybrid yield aggregator on Polygon.". Launched on May 02 of 2021 Polycat was an early player in the Yield Farming scene on Polygon. They've currently been audited three times with a fourth in progress and have yet to experience any hacks or exploits. https://polycat.finance/?ref=0k831P58p7O3N81Rn97P88p8Sq013p984o4691pnsq
Yields are pretty nuts on Polycat, with ranges between 12%-8,700%. Their native token, FISH, can also be used similarly to how CAKE is used on Pancakeswap. FISH can be staked and either more FISH earned, or tokens from a sponsored pool such as GBTS or GNFT. I currently have a decent amount of the FISH/MATIC LP tokens locked up and am earning a pretty hearty reward daily thanks to the insane APY. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/polycat-finance
With the fall of TITAN I've been using Polycat for my degen farm related needs. While there's certainly a possibility Polycat makes it long-term I highly recommend doing your own research here and not getting too greedy. https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/ironfinance-gets-rekt-on-polygonmatic-xrnlvqd
**Website:** https://polycat.finance/
2. Honeyswap (1Hive)
The (anime) crossover I've been waiting for. Honeyswap is a Automated Market Maker based Decentralized Exchange, similar to a Uniswap or SushiSwap, built on xDAI. And that's the only issue, Honeyswap has a great team and product it's just on a not so active chain. But I'm not here to talk about xDAI, I am here to talk about an already fantastic product making it's way over to Polygon. https://www.xdaichain.com/
With a launch date of July 1st Honeyswap will be airdropping tokens to their current LP holders from xDAI and I personally will be snatching up some of the dumped tokens on launch.
**Website:** https://honeyswap.org/
3. Kyber
In an announcement made on 16 June, Kyber announced it will be expanding to Polygon on 30 June. In addition to the launch they will also be doing their first liquidity mining program, "Rainmaker", with over $30 Million in rewards for LP'ers on Ethereum and Polygon. This is yet another big name, proven product making it's way over to Polygon. https://blog.kyber.network/kyber-partners-with-polygon-to-enhance-defi-liquidity-31d3b9769b03
Kyber will be bringing over it's Dynamic Market Maker (DMM), a new product in Kyber's liquidity hub, which includes additional benefits over the typical AMM used in DeFi. With $30M in rewards up for grabs this could be a good opportunity for people to jump into. https://blog.kyber.network/kyber-dmm-beta-is-live-b6bdd18d0dde
**Website:** https://kyber.network/
Bonus: Harvest.Finance
Harvest has been a staple of my DeFi portfolio for a little bit now. Their main focus is on making DeFi easy and simple for the average crypto user. They're currently one of the most undervalued projects in DeFi, boasting a ridiculous P/E. There's no set date for their Polygon release, with a major UI/UX update taking priority, but early-mid July is what I'm hearing. When that happens I'll certainly be there. https://mobile.twitter.com/Publish0xD/status/1392179337005346817
**Website:** https://harvest.finance/
Final Thoughts
That about wraps up the top 3 DeFi projects to watch on Polygon. Unfortunately with lower fees and high volume of users comes a large variety of scams and rug pulls. That's exactly what we've started to see on Polygon. I'd highly recommend you do your own research before apeing into any project. RugDoc.io is a great resource for DeFi newbies to help better asses the risks of a project.
Something that I did, that may help you if you're a newbie, is to asses new DeFi projects on your own. Don't jump in, just watch how they go with no investment. If something you thought would be a home run ends up rugging it's users, I'd examine the reasons why that may have happened and some of the warning signs that presented themselves.
Also joining discords of popular projects is another great learning source. Tons of experts are more than willing to share their knowledge with you if you just ask.
**Thanks for reading, let me know if there's any projects I should look into. The above is also just my opinion and meant for informative purposes. I always recommend doing your own research. Happy Earnings!**
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The Ultimate Guide to Stacking Sats
Many people I know, myself included, when first introduced to Crypto think that making one massive trade is the key to wealth creation. That by jumping in at the perfect time they'll be able to 1,000x their initial investment and finally be able to get that Lambo they've always wanted. While that may happen from time to time, it's usually not how massive amounts of money are created and sustained.
*Stacking Sats* has been a term commonly used in the Bitcoin community that describes building your holdings through small, incremental increases. The mentality of Stacking Sats isn't based around making one big break, but by building your wealth the sustainable way, slow and steady.
The issue is slow and steady isn't sexy. It isn't glorified by movies or television. Everyone is in awe of the trader who makes a massive gain on one risky investment, nobody gets excited about the trader who makes 100 smart, tiny wins. Well today I'd like to be that boring guy. Rather than tell you about the next low market cap gem that will 10,000x your investment, I'd like to share with you the 1,000 tiny things you can do to help grow your wealth and get that Lambo...Eventually.
Cut the Unnecessary Spending
For most young people it's coffee or eating out. I see all sorts of stats come out about this, with average spending for Millennial/Gen Z'ers ranging between $18-$30/day on coffee and eating out. For me it was candy. I've got a little bit of a sweet tooth and spending can quickly get out of hand. What looks like a few dollars a day quickly adds up. $18/day = $6,570 a year. If that $6,570 was invest into BTC a couple years ago, even with deflated prices as they are now, you'd have 300x what you had initially put in.
There's a lot of really good tools out there to help you with spending. What worked well for me was to just write it down. With so many transactions today being digital I can quickly lose track of spending. So when I was forced to write down each time I spent money during the day, I got a little bit disgusted with myself. I saw very clearly why I thought I didn't have money.
Since then I've adjusted my own personal budget so I live off about 30-40% of my income and invest/save/donate the remaining 60-70%. I started with just cutting out a little and have become addicted to seeing how low I can go and still live a comfortable life. I recommend you do the same! Take a look at your budget and really find out where the money goes.
Get Cashback on Necessary Expenses
After cutting your expenses you'll be left with just what's necessary. And since you'll be spending the money anyway, you might as well earn some cashback for it! There's a lot of really good crypto cashback options that have come out recently, I'll just share what I use here -
Lolli - Up to 30% cashback paid in BTC when you shop. Over 1,000 brands supported. I like using this for purchases I'd be making online anyway, from groceries to shoes. https://lolli.com/share/RLPPZXoyZu
Fold - Similar to Lolli, cashback paid in BTC when you shop. You can choose to get also get their prepaid debit card which further rewards users in BTC. I like using this if what I'm looking for isn't included on Lolli. https://use.foldapp.com/r/Mu9RLJWM
Credit Cards - Between 1.5%-3.5% cashback on all purchases. BlockFi and Nexo are my favorite. I use them to double dip my rewards with Lolli and for other expenses. https://blockfi.com/credit-card-waitlist/?r=kqBsO https://nexo.io/nexo-card?referral=3225gCm&refSource=copy
I've also been able to setup my monthly rent payment and all utilities to be paid via my BlockFi and Nexo credit cards. It's not a crazy amount in cashback but it's money I have to spend anyway, getting BTC back is a great benefit.
Set an Investment Plan
Another common misconception I see is a lot of crypto newbies think they need to jump in at exactly the right time. They will be rather upset if they jump into Bitcoin when it's at $40,000, then a dip happens and they could have bought at $38,000 if they'd just waited a few more minutes. This effects people in one of two ways, either they mourn the 5% they could have saved by being patient, or are frozen in fear and neverinvest again - waiting for the perfect price. Well I've got news, there's never a perfect time.
For me the way I was able to overcome this paralysis by analysis was to set a daily/weekly/monthly investment plan. Where no matter the price of my favorite projects I was going to invest money. There's a term for this, it's called Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) and the premise is, by investing a set amount each day/week/month, with a volatile asset such as crypto, you'll get a price that's on average lower than just throwing your money in at one price point.
DCA is a common long-term investment strategy outside of crypto, it's been commonly used in the stock market for decades and has proven results. I personally like to use a DCA bot for this to make sure I get the best price and don't forget to do it, there's a lot of great ones out there but I prefer DeltaBadger. Since they work on most exchanges and support all coin types I'm able to spread out what I buy and where, so my funds aren't subject to any one exchange getting hacked. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
The Power of Compound Interest
Compound interest is one of the most important principles in the world when it comes to wealth creation. Albert Einstein called it the "eight wonder of the world" and Warren Buffet once confessed his wealth came from "Lucky genes, living in America and Compound interest". Once you've cut unnecessary expenses, started earning cashback on what you do spend and set a solid investment plan, putting your crypto to work is the next step. Crypto has generally been an appreciating asset since it's inception, but if you want to do more than just reap the benefits of price appreciation, putting compound interest to work in your favor is vital.
Today there's many different ways to utilize compound interest in crypto. I like to break them down into two categories, Decentralized and Centralized. I use both some I'm not going to make a case that one is better than the other. Each inherently hold their own benefits. A quick breakdown would be:
**Decentralized** - Any platform where the power does not lie with a single individual or entity, but throughout a distributed network.
**Centralized** - A platform where power/control is maintained by a single entity.
As far as decentralized options go I'm a big fan of Harvest.Finance for anything that isn't Bitcoin. The whole premise behind Harvest is to make farming simple and easy for the average person and they do a great job of that. Yields can vary between 3%-600%+ APY, but have recently made a move for more blue chip style yield farming, releasing Uniswap V3 and updated Curve/Convex stablecoin strategies. For Bitcoin related needs Badger.Finance is great. They're a yield aggregator similar to Harvest but their main focus is on maximizing returns on Bitcoin. They have a built in bridge where you can deposit BTC and get an interest bearing token in return as well as a few other nifty features for Bitcoin maxis looking to put their holdings to work. https://harvest.finance/ https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/put-those-stables-to-work-harvestfinance-adds-convex-xjoeqkp https://badger.finance/
For centralized I like BlockFi and Nexo. I used to enjoy Celsius but some of their rate cutting has been quite painful. Both offer interest rates from 4%-12% depending on the type of crypto deposited. There are some benefits to using them over a decentralized option, mostly that there's a level of "security" for your funds. Although I'm not sure how much security there actually is, nothing in crypto is truly safe. I like using them as a way to spread my funds out, so if an exploit or hack were to hit one platform or even two platforms I'm earning interest on it hopefully wouldn't take all my funds. https://blockfi.com/credit-card-waitlist/?r=kqBsO https://nexo.io/nexo-card?referral=3225gCm&refSource=copy
In the end the platform(s) you choose are up to you. I use all the platforms I described above but I'd highly recommend you do your own research before jumping into any of them.
Bonus: Earn Sats for Free
From faucets to play to earn games to crypto based work there's a plethora of ways to earn free crypto in this day and age. While I usually think faucets are a waste of time during a bull market, they can pay off in dividends during a market downturn. Some of my faucet earnings from the crypto winter are worth thousands of dollars today. Some of my favorites are Pipeflare and GetZen. Both are 24hr timers and support instant payouts with a robust referral program. So I don't have to spend all day clicking a button every 5-10 minutes. I've also done a few articles on Play-to-Earn games, you can read about them here. https://pipeflare.io/r/12jh https://getzen.cash/auth/register?ref=284280 https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/top-5-play-to-earn-blockchain-games-you-need-to-try-in-2021-xdrgmzl
For crypto based work there's a ton of options here. I personally enjoy writing and reading crypto-based content so Publish0x/Read.cash/LeoFinance are all great platforms to do so. If you're into art there's a clear need for graphic artists out there on a variety of platforms, all you have to do is ask (usually in their Discord or by checking GitCoin). In my opinion though creating some type of valuable content that pays in crypto during bear markets is one of the best ways to supplement your investments as that payment will grow when the market does.
Closing Thoughts
During volatile times in the market I like to re-evaluate my investment strategies so this is as much for me as it is for you. Many people I know that got involved with crypto near the top have since dropped out, likely to only return when crypto hits it's next peak. This allows quite the opportunity for us to become mini-whales in our own right, but only if we stay persistent and continue to Stack Sats.
**I hope you enjoyed reading. If you did don't forget to like/follow so I know to create more content. As a reminder the above is not meant to be investment advice, simply a laundry list of my own opinion of things I've learned. Thanks and happy earnings!**
Also follow me on Twitter, where I'm regularly shilling my favorite crypto projects. https://twitter.com/AbsoluteUknit
Iron.Finance Gets Rekt On Polygon/MATIC
We all knew it was going to happen. The phenomenal run Iron Finance and Titan were on had to come to an end at some point. And oh boy, what an end it was. Shortly after TITAN reached it's all time high of $64.19 one of the most spectacular dump offs/bank runs in recent memory happened with TITAN dropping to $0 in just a few hours and effectively stalling the Polygon network out for a few blocks.
Before I get too ahead of myself, lets do a quick rundown of just what Iron Finance and TITAN are for those who don't yet know.
Iron.Finance
I was going to try to explain what Iron Finance is but I think this excerpt from Iron Finance's doc page is better than any explanation I can do - https://docs.iron.finance/
Iron Finance is a multi-chain partially collateralized stablecoin soft pegged to the USD, available on both Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and the Polygon (MATIC) network. The protocol aims to maintain IRON's peg by storing enough collateral in time-locked smart contracts. This collateral is used for redemptions, helping to maintain the peg. https://iron.finance
The collateral consists of two tokens. On Polygon, USDC and TITAN, while on the BSC it uses BUSD and STEEL. The USDC or BUSD token is deposited into the protocol when a user mints IRON token, while the TITAN or STEEL token which is used for minting is burned. When the user redeems IRON, the protocol pays back USDC or BUSD and mints the required amount of TITAN or STEEL.
The ratio of USDC or BUSD and TITAN or STEEL used by the minting and redeeming function is determined by the Target Collateral Ratio and by the Effective Collateral Ratio respectively.
Users could also stake their STEEL/TITAN and print USDC or BUSD. This created what was essentially a money printer for STEEL and TITAN holders, with APYs of 50,000%+. Due to the fact that IRON was holding it's peg quite well in the beginning, more and more users were attracted to TITAN. As evidenced by the chart I included above, this created quite the run on TITAN, pushing it all the way to $60.
I jumped in myself around $4 after a tip from a friend but got scared and jumped out at $15. However I do know some people that stayed in, and even bought in more after TITAN's initial dip to $60. For them there would be only pain ahead.
Attack on TITAN
Not long after TITAN hit it's all time high, whales dumped causing some panic. Then a $200,000 transaction was made and people instantly started to sell off their stacks. This caused a massive decrease in the price of TITAN which resulted in IRON losing it's peg. Due to this situation an arbitrage opportunity presented itself. You could now redeem a token worth $0.90 for $1.00 ($0.75 USDC, $0.25 TITAN). Whales started exploiting this arbitrage opportunity at a ridiculous pace. Minting thousands of fresh TITAN tokens and dumping them on the market, further dumping TITAN's price. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arbitrage.asp
This, coupled with others still panic selling, caused the price of TITAN to drop down further, resulting in IRON losing it's peg even more. A vicious cycle was created causing the price of TITAN to drop all the way down to $0 due to IRON being unable to regain it's peg. Iron.Finance has since warned its users to remove all liquidity while they can and not invest in IRON or TITAN.
Due to the mass printing of TITAN tokens and panic selling on the market the Polygon network saw levels of congestion not seen before. Fee levels were reported as high as 2,000 gwei and there was even a point where congestion was so high that transactions simply would not go through.
Many users lost out on their chance to sell out before losing everything, this certainly was not a good look for MATIC.
Final Thoughts
Another algorithmic stablecoin bites the dust. For a currency known to fail spectacularly, this one certainly takes the cake. Iron Finance and Titan were rising stars on the Polygon Network. Exploding to nearly $2 Billion total value locked and a seemingly "always up" token price; subsequently dumping to $0 over the course of just a few hours. I'd be lying if I said I was surprised Iron failed but I never expected anything like this.
As far as we know Iron was not subject to any sort of exploit or hack, just a case of extreme FUD and a stampede of sellers (post mortem from Iron crew is set for tomorrow). I think I'm most interested to see how people react to MATIC not being able to handle the massive amount of transactions that occurred. What was essentially a failure of the blockchain itself. More than anything though I hope you learned something. No token is ever always up and degen farms like Iron, while a huge possibility for profit, are never a sure thing.
**I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed putting this together. Don't forget to like/follow if you enjoyed. Happy earnings!**
Keep your funds secure with the leading hardware wallet on the market, Ledger, and get a $25 voucher through this link. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b
And here's a solid Crypto Trading Bot I use - DeltaBadger, 10% off through this link. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
Get $10 of BTC when you deposit $100 or more on BlockFi and early access to the NEXO Crypto card through this link. https://blockfi.com/?ref=e980d269 https://nexo.io/nexo-card?referral=3225gCm&refSource=copy
Top 6 Play-To-Earn Blockchain Games to Keep Your Eyes On in 2021
Blockchain, Play-To-Earn gaming has come a long way over the last couple of years. What was once just a glorified faucet/cookie clicker style gaming industry has since evolved into something so much more. New games are being announced all the time with AAA graphics, immersive storylines and innovative ways to implement blockchain technology into their game mechanics.
Today I'd like to cover six Play-To-Earn Blockchain Games I'm most excited for this year. All of these games have some form of a "Play-To-Earn" element in them that allows you to earn money for playing. So if your parents said you're never going to make anything of yourself sitting there playing games all day, maybe you will with some of these games. Let's get into it and let me know if you think there's any I missed!
1. Farsite
Farsite is a space themed Massively Multiplayer Online Real-time Strategy game (MMORTS). It has reportedly been in development for years from the team behind the popular game, MegaCryptoPolis. It has DeFi and NFT elements to it and uses the cNFT model, which is essentially an NFT with ERC-20 tokens used as collateral. No official news has been announced but Farsite will likely take place on the MATIC/Polygon network, a popular sidechain of Ethereum that allows for extremely low fees and high throughput. https://mcp3d.com/
Because Farsite is a community-owned world, players can engage in a variety of jobs to earn income - jobs range from delivery to mining to governing. Players can also own entire planets and gain a portion of all materials mined. The game has seen a rise in attention recently due to their lucrative referral program but gameplay is still 6-9 months away, with early alpha only slated for release in Q4 of 2021. Either way this game has a lot of potential, what it reminds me of most is Eve Online - which has been running for nearly 20 years and still has a strong player base. If it accomplishes anything close to that I'd be excited to be a part of it.
**Website:** https://farsite.online/
2. Lightnite
Lightnite is an online multiplayer battle royale game where every specific digital interaction between players triggers a monetary reward or penalty. Lightnite seems to be very similar to Fortnite in it's gameplay and name, which could either bode well or poorly depending on people's perception here. The game is reported to have two modes, Bitcoin Integrated Mode and Non-Bitcoin Integrated Mode. The Bitcoin Integrated Mode allows users to collect rewards for killing players or picking up in game items, the Non-Bitcoin Mode has none of these features on and is meant to bring in new players with the hope they will turn on Bitcoin Integration once they understand the value.
Lightnite is built on the Bitcoin Lightning network and is already listed on the Steam Marketplace with a launch date of 30 June 2021. Developed by Satoshis.Games this looks to be a great way to drive Crypto adoption worldwide. I have a personal affinity for First/Third Person Shooter games so I'll be checking this out on launch. https://satoshis.games/
**Website:** https://lightnite.io/
3. Taurion
Taurion is another space-themed MMORTS built on the XAYA blockchain. Taurion has been in development for some time now but has managed to lockdown a solid partnership with Ubisoft Entrepreneurs lab - which has also sponsored other notable blockchain games like Splinterlands and Sorare. Similar to Farsite, Taurion boasts a fully player-driven economy allowing players to mine, refine, research, kill, ally, steal and much more. https://xaya.io/ https://splinterlands.com?ref=longboi https://sorare.com/
Taking inspirations from Eve Online, Dune 2 and Huntercoin, Taurion already has a decently developed storyline. Early access alpha is out with Beta testing slated to release this year. My only question with this game is how it will play, they have a few gameplay photos from the early access alpha, they look like early access alpha would but show some potential. I'm excited to see where this one goes.
**Website:** https://taurion.io/
4. Hash Rush
Hash Rush is an online Sci-Fi/Fantasy RTS game set in a distant galaxy. Players start on their own planet and must build colonies and mine Crypto Crystals. Gameplay trailers and videos I've seen show some pretty stunning graphics for this game. The gameplay seems to be similar to Age of Empires but seemingly smaller scale and less complex. I recently just got back into Age of Empires 2/Age of Mythology so when I saw this game I put in a request for a Beta Key pretty quick.
Hash Rush is built on the Ethereum blockchain with their own coin, Rush Coin which currently doesn't have much value outside of the game. While some blockchain games require a wallet to play and have deep crypto integration, Hash Rush is taking a slightly more accessible approach. No crypto or wallet is required to play the game, just ERC-20 Tokens are given as a reward and ERC-721 for the collectible items. This could combined with the beautiful graphics and stellar gameplay could lead to Hash Rush being one of the biggest games of 2021/2022 when fully released.
**Website:** https://hashrush.com/
5. Mirandus
Mirandus is a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) in which players can have ownership over towns, villages and local businesses. Developed by Gala Games, the same developer behind Town Star, Mirandus is also built on the Ethereum blockchain with the GALA token playing a major part in gameplay. I'm a sucker for games like this and picked up a couple small plots of land during their land sale. Some of their largest pieces of land are selling for $3 million+, I didn't purchase my land for anywhere near that price. But for a stack of money like that I'm sure they're going to be giving a return. https://gala.fan/K9CC46u0K https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/gala
Mirandus is a pretty ambitious blockchain game and I'm looking forward to see how it goes. Luckily Gala Games has some experience already in the industry so hopefully they can tackle the numerous obstacles that will rear their head during development.
**Website:** https://gala.games/
6. Ember Sword
I've talked about Ember Sword before and it's because I love the artwork and design elements I've seen. Ember Sword is a sandbox MMORPG and features PvE, PvP and a living economy. Players can engage in jobs such as farming or thievery, as well as create their own buildings. They recently concluded their land sale and like I said above I'm a sucker for this type of game so I snatched up a few cheap plots of land (which according to the land perks you now have to call me Sir Absolute Unit).
Ember Sword is built on the Polygon (formerly MATIC) blockchain. Their current planned release date is in 2022 but the Alpha and Beta releases are set to come out this year. There aren't exact details out but it seems earning will come from tokenized gear and earning the in game currency. Some of the sneak peak gameplay footage I've seen and the overall design aspect of this game look pretty good and I can't wait to see the official game.
**Website:** https://embersword.com/
Final Thoughts
This was really tough to make! There's a ton of new, blockchain games that are coming out this year and next that look absolutely stunning. I didn't even get a chance to mention Age of Rust, Space Misfits or Illuvium but I didn't want to turn this article into an hour long read. It's not even a question how much Blockchain gaming has grown and there's only more to go. Let me know if you think I missed any and thanks for reading!
**I hope you enjoyed! Don't forget to spank that like/follow button if you want to see more.**
Keep your funds secure with the leading hardware wallet on the market, Ledger, and get a $25 voucher through this link. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b
And here's a solid Crypto Trading Bot I use - DeltaBadger, 10% off through this link. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
Get $10 of BTC when you deposit $100 or more on BlockFi and early access to the NEXO Crypto card through this link. https://blockfi.com/?ref=e980d269 https://nexo.io/nexo-card?referral=3225gCm&refSource=copy
Put Those Stables to Work - Harvest.Finance Adds Convex
Farmer Chad has been busy. On June 9th, Harvest launched their first Uniswap V3 vaults - in arguably one of the most interesting ways, allowing users to deposit funds and Harvest fully managing their assets. Even auto-balancing the pool if you only deposit one type of asset.
Well Farmer Chad wasn't done, on June 10th the highly anticipated Convex strategies for Curve vaults were announced. They have since rolled almost every Curve.fi strategy into the high yield Convex vaults, allowing users to earn not just CRV, not just CVX but also some juicy iFarm rewards. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/curve-dao-token https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/convex-finance https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ifarm
Curve & Convex
If you're unfamiliar with Curve or Convex, let me do a quick run down because implementation of these two is a huge boost to Harvest.
Curve is a an Automated Market Maker based Decentralized Exchange, similar to Uniswap. Unlike Uniswap Curve's main focus is to swap between assets that are meant to have the same value. This allows for a very low swap fee and slippage. With nearly $10 billion in total value locked, Curve is one of the biggest players in DeFi. The only issue, at least for me, has been trying to boost my earnings by maintaining my veCRV balance - it can be rather daunting to do. https://curve.fi/
Convex is a protocol that was built to boost rewards for CRV stakers and liquidity providers in a simple to use interface. No veCRV needs to be staked or maintained by users, just liquidity needs to be deposited on the Curve.fi platform and those LP-tokens deposited at Convex - yield boosting is then taken care of by the Convex platform. https://www.convexfinance.com/
Launched on May 17th, Convex has already achieved over $3 billion in total value locked (TVL). Needless to say Convex is filling a huge market need here.
Now that Harvest has rolled most of their Curve vaults into Convex, yield has only increased for Curve liquidity providers. Pictured below is a comparison of the USDN vault on Convex (left) vs. Harvest (right).
These higher yields on Harvest remain a constant throughout all the Curve/Convex strategies. Boasting increased yields by 1-10%+ over just going through Convex and 20%+ higher than the Curve APR.
What Does This Mean for Harvest Users?
Harvest.finance is already considered by some to be one of the most undervalued projects in DeFi. I'd have to agree with that sentiment. While some projects have floundered during this bear market, Harvest has continued chugging along putting out new strategies and features at a fast rate without sacrificing security.
This is another notch in Harvest's belt. Word has also trickled out that a Polygon/MATIC set of farms is on its way as well as a new, professional UX. Both these things bode very well for Harvest's future. With FARM/iFARM at an all time low, this might be a good time to start accumulating. :)
**I hope you enjoyed reading, a quick reminder that the above is just opinion and not meant as financial advice! Always do your own research!**
Keep your funds secure with the leading hardware wallet on the market, Ledger, and get a $25 voucher through this link. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b
And here's a solid Crypto Trading Bot I use - DeltaBadger, 10% off through this link. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
What if it is a Crypto Winter?
Does the prospect of a Crypto Winter change your involvement level in this space? It's easy to be in during a Bull Run, the euphoria is strong and wrong decisions seemingly can't be made. It's easy to have a positive attitude and continue to learn when everything is going right. I had a lot of friends and family get involved with Crypto when DOGE was starting to moon. They thought they could jump in for pennies and come out as millionaires overnight. 90% of those that got involved have since stepped away. So that begs the question, where do you stand?
Are you in Crypto for a quick buck, or do you plan to build a future here? I know for me personally bear markets are where I ply my trade, they're the best for learning how to actually get good at evaluating projects and trading. During Bull Runs everyone is a genius. During Bear Markets only the truly strong projects survive. Bear Markets are also where true wealth can be created, when everyone is jumping into a Bull Run they're getting Crypto at a premium, while those who have been investing wisely got it a discount by staying committed and focused. https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/bear-markets-make-you-rich-dont-get-spooked-xergpdx
Diamond Hands
Now I want to clarify something. It's absolutely foolish to hold your bag indefinitely. If you're DCA'ing into your favorite coins and resolve to hold them no matter what the market conditions are you might be misled. You should absolutely take profits along the way during a Bull Run. Diamond Hands are sticking in the market during the downturns, resolving to continue and learn even when things don't look the best. https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/how-i-made-35-dollars-000-cents-last-year-with-deltabadger-a-xnqogln
That's not to say there aren't times to cut your losses, if your favorite meme coin got railroaded by VB - maybe you should sell out asap as meme coins aren't exactly known for their resiliency (save DOGE). Learning market trends and experiencing the ups and downs of Crypto are essential to surviving and thriving during the tumultuous times we currently find ourselves in.
I don't do Technical Analysis, never have. I enjoy reading other people who are good at it but for me, I just don't want to. But the more I look at the long term Bitcoin price chart, the more I see incredible similarities between the 2017-2018 run and the run at the beginning of 2021.
A meteoric run up to a new all-time-high, a sharp decline followed by a moderate recovery - which I believe we're in now, BTC may get to $40-$50k before continuing the downward slide. Then a couple years of accumulation at a level that was equal to the previous ATH. Followed by another boom in a couple years. This analysis could be just pure stupidity, like I said I don't do technical analysis, or it could be what's going on here.
This brings me back to my original point. So what if it is a Crypto Winter? Does that effect your involvement or will you stay the course? This is one of the best times to be in, as the next bull run will be astronomical. And if it's just a dip on the way to the peak of the mother of all Bull Runs, thank God you got in when you did.
**I hope you enjoyed reading, would love to know your thoughts on what the market condition is right now. Don't forget to spank that follow button and drop a like. Happy earnings!**
Keep your funds secure with the leading hardware wallet on the market, Ledger, and get a $25 voucher through this link. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b
And here's a solid Crypto Trading Bot I use - DeltaBadger, 10% off through this link. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
8 Tips to Protect Yourself from Crypto Scams/Hacks
Crypto is and always has been infested with scams and hacks. According to the FTC, from 10/20-4/21, more than $80 million was reported as lost to Cryptocurrency scams by 6,800 consumers. This is a 10-fold jump from the same time period last year. Now do I think Crypto Scams are up? Maybe slightly but I really think Crypto adoption is up which leads to a larger number of new affected users. One of the best ways we can help slow down these scams/hacks is proper education.
Forewarned is forearmed. So today I'd like to go through with you eight of my favorite tips for securing you Crypto from Scams/Hacks. If there's any you think I missed or should have included please let me know, I just wrote down what I thought were top tier. Hope you enjoy!
1. Choose a Secure Wallet
There are two main types of wallets, hot and cold. Hot wallets are connected to the internet, therefore they are very convenient in that they can easily be used for dapp browsing or transactions. The downside to hot wallets is they are vulnerable to compromised or hacked machines. The security of a hot wallet is largely dependent on it's user. Examples of hot wallets are - MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Atomic Wallet, Web wallets, etc. https://metamask.io/ https://atomicwallet.io/
Cold wallets on the other hand are not connected to the internet. These cannot be compromised as they are not connected to the internet. Not all hot wallets are non-custodial, but all cold wallets are. Which non-custodial means you own the keys to your crypto, with services such as Coinbase/Binance/etc they own the keys. So at anytime they could walk away with with rightfully theirs. Examples of cold wallets are - Paper Wallets, Ledger, KeepKey, Trezor, Ballet, SafePal, etc. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b https://trezor.io/?offer_id=12&aff_id=7691 https://store.balletcrypto.com/?ref=ggsf-rhefS3Tuj
Choosing a wallet (or suite of wallets) for long term hodling your crypto is a bigger deal than the average person realizes. In a space where every transaction can be seen and searched having proper security is paramount. I personally use a couple different exchanges for inflow of fiat, then convert over to stablecoins, perform trades in hot wallets or exchanges then the crypto I plan to long term hold I store in three different cold wallets - Ledger, Ballet and Trezor. I'm probably a little weird in having three but I have this recurring nightmare that I'll lose one so I mildly spread my funds.
2. Avoid the $5 Wrench
There’s a common saying in Crypto about the old fashioned $5 wrench attack. What this means is that someone can threaten your life with a wrench that costs $5 from and get you to give them your private keys.
Nobody needs to know how much Crypto you actually hold. Not everyone online wants to be your friend, there are quite a few bad actors out there looking for their in. No amount of internet points or clout is worth potentially sharing too much info and putting a target on your back. There's a reason I created a secondary persona for Crypto writing, I don't want anyone to be able to trace this account back to my actual real life information.
3. Refresh that Address
This runs down the same vein as the above but with an additional benefit. By creating a new address for each farm/contract interaction you use you're #1 adding another layer of identity protection and #2 potentially protecting yourself from any exploits that may occur related to permissions through various farms.
4. Revoke Approvals on Frequently Used Addresses
This is something I admittedly can be pretty poor at doing but doing it could be worth its weight in gold. While doing the research for my piece on **The 5 Biggest Hacks/Exploits in DeFi**, one exploit that didn't quite make the list caught my attention. https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/the-5-biggest-hacksexploits-in-defi-xjmkwry
Furucombo lost $14M to some faulty code that allowed a hacker to exploit users who had given the protocol "infinite approval". Something I forget I even do 90% of the time, but if the exploit for Furucombo taught me anything - it was to remember to always revoke approval for infinite transactions on some of my more used addresses. Debank is a great website to do so - I posted a picture above of what the "Approval" area looks like on their website. It includes how much you could be potentially risking on each exchange/for each token as well as total risk. https://halborn.com/explained-the-furucombo-evil-contract-hack-feb-2021/ https://debank.com/
5. Secure Passwords/Use a Password Manager
According to a recent study by NordPass, the most commonly used password in the world was "123456". For the security freaks out there this is more than a little triggering. Passwords that consist only of numbers or a single word are more easily guessed, usually the more words in a password the better. According to some security experts the best passwords consist of either sentences with numbers or random mixes of digits, numbers and special symbols. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_common_passwords
Personally I like to use password generators for a portion of my passwords. There's some pretty good ones out there like DashLane and LastPass. It's also best to avoid using the same password for multiple locations, data is leaked all the time and hackers will take that data and try it at a variety of websites until the password works. https://www.dashlane.com/ https://www.lastpass.com/get-premium?gclsrc=ds&gclsrc=ds https://haveibeenpwned.com/
6. Avoid Windows
Windows is like the BTC of OS systems, just with far less security. Currently they hold an almost 80% dominance of all desktop OS systems as of July of 2020, this dominance is both good and bad. Good in the way that if you run a desktop with Windows, everything will likely be catered to you. Bad in the way that if you run a desktop with Windows, all viruses will also likely be catered to you. https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/#:~:text=Microsoft%20Windows%20is%20the%20dominating,in%20the%20desktop%20OS%20market.
Linux is a great alternative, not only because it's significantly less used but also how programs are installed. With Windows you install a executable files and cannot necessarily see each line of code contained. With Linux programs are installed via a command-line interface from a public repository where viruses are more easily spotted by the community. If you're not convinced there's a pretty good writeup by a Linux homer here. https://medium.com/swlh/13-reasons-why-linux-is-better-than-windows-6fa304454ae#:~:text=System%20Performance,are%20pretty%20organized%20in%20Linux.
7. Use Multiple Addresses to Spread Risk
If you're deeply into DeFi or Crypto in general, using multiple addresses is another essential to keeping your funds safe. They don't necessarily need to be in separate wallet providers (although that won't hurt) but having separate addresses setup can help lessen the blow if your favorite exchange or yield farming platform gets hit.
8. Do Your Own Research
This is definitely become a meme in Crypto as a whole but it's an absolute must for long-term success. The emphasis here is on doing your ***own***research. Watching a video of someone else's opinion or reading someone else's opinion is not doing your own research. One of the greatest assets to have in Crypto is learning to read the smart contracts/whitepapers and accurately identify a fishy project. So even though it's 100% a meme, please take it seriously and exercise it liberally.
**Well I hope you enjoyed reading, if you did don't forget to drop a follow/like so I know to keep taking the time to write! Hope you have a great day. Thanks!**
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The 5 Biggest Hacks/Exploits in DeFi
DeFi is still in it's infancy and with that infancy comes growing pains. What was once a small idea on ETH a few years ago has since blossomed into a $150b+ industry across multiple chains and platforms. That new inflow of money has brought in a huge number of developers to DeFi; some with big dreams and the programming skills to back them up and others that are more akin to Script Kiddies aka developers who happen to be real good at copy-pastin. https://defillama.com/home https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_kiddie#:~:text=A%20script%20kiddie%2C%20skiddie%2C%20or,the%20programming%20and%20hacking%20cultures.
Over the last few months DeFi exploits/hacks have been all over the news. Seemingly every few days another protocol was hit. To gain a better understanding of why this, today I'd like to go through the top 5 biggest hacks/exploits that have occurred on DeFi and see if there's anything we can learn.
5. Meerkat Finance - $32M
This one was not a scam/exploit, even though the Meerkat team claimed it as one initially, but I'd still like to include it for what we can learn. Meerkat was a fork of Yearn.Finance that was launched on Binance Smart Chain in early March. Just one day after launch, the protocol was rugged for $13M BUSD and 73,000 BNB. At the time this came out to $32M.
Shortly after the rug pull occurred, Meerkat's website/Twitter/Github and any other evidence of it's existence was removed. Many said a rollback on Binance Smart Chain would be eminent but no such rollback has occurred. The exploit was performed by using a backdoor built into the code that allowed those with access to the vault to "upgrade" it to set the withdraw location to their wallet address.
**Audited:** No
**Team:** Anonymous
4. Alpha Finance - $37.5M
Audits are usually a sign of good faith in DeFi but don't always mean full trust can be put in the platform. Alpha Finance was likely attacked from within due to the complex nature and insider knowledge that would have been required for the exploit. According to Alpha's official post-mortem the attacker would have needed to know about HumoraBankv2's sUSD pool on contract level that was not available at that time in the UI and detailed knowledge of a rounding miscalculation that only affected pools with zero liquidity. All signs point to an inside job on this one although no person has been named. https://blog.alphafinance.io/alpha-homora-v2-post-mortem/
Sometimes all the right signs can still be exploited from the inside. Alpha Finance had been audited twice and their team was fully known and doxed but that still didn't protect it from an insider attack. You'd be happy to know Alpha Finance has continued on and made a recovery since this incident, so chances are whoever did this doesn't work there now.
**Audited:** Yes - Quantstamp, Peckshield
**Team:** Fully doxed https://www.linkedin.com/company/alpha-finance-lab
3. PancakeBunny - $45M
The biggest loser from the BSC Flash Loan epidemic. I personally was holding some BUNNY when this went down but luckily I hadn't spent a dime of my own money on it, I had earned all of it by farming the CAKE pool. 8 flash loans were used to manipulate the price of various PancakeSwap pools, creating a skewed price of BUNNY from the VaultFlipToFlip vault. This caused 697,000 BUNNY tokens to be minted, thus crashing the price from $145 to $6.
PancakeBunny has been taking all the right steps since this incident with a pretty extensive plan set in place in an attempt to help recover the price of BUNNY, which has since done so mildly. I personally plan to keep staking my CAKE here since it's earning some pretty solid rewards in spite of BUNNY's price dump. https://pancakebunny.medium.com/go-forward-plan-e29e58bc375f
**Audited:** Yes - Haechi
**Team:** Unknown
2. Uranium Finance - $57.2M
This was not the first time the Uniswap clone has imploded. This exploit occurred on 28 April 2021, earlier in that same month Uranium had suffered an their first exploit when they introduced vulnerabilities into the MasterChef contract. The exploit occurred when a single line of code contained an error, transposing 1,000 for 10,000 which allowed 1 wei of an input token to be swapped for 98% of the total balance of the output token.
The following funds were taken from the exchange - 34,000 WBNB, 17.9M BUSD, 1,800 ETH, 80 BTC, 26,500 DOT, 638k ADA, 5.7M USDT and 112k U92. All in all totaling $57.2M. The crazy thing about this exploit was that the code was slated to be fixed that very next day, but the attacker (whether internal or not) got to it just in time. Further proof that copy-pastin ain't gonna cut it long term.
**Audited:** No
**Team:** Unknown
1. EasyFi - $80M
The only hack to take place on Polygon (MATIC) on this list and unfortunately the largest. This happened when the private keys to the owner's MetaMask account were compromised by the hacker. No fancy flash loans or loopholes in code were found for this one, just poor security measures led to the largest hack in DeFi history. It's crazy to me that a hot wallet (no multisig, no hardware wallet) was all that stood between a potential hacker and $80M.
After the attack the hacker held 30% of the EASY token supply (~$75M) and $6M of stablecoins. The EASY token's were not...*Easily* liquidated but the stablecoins were. A hard fork has since been put in place and compensation for token holders has begun. I had not heard of EasyFi prior to writing this, but based on the owner's security I'm going to go ahead and never touch this project as well.
**Audited:** No
**Team:** Partially known and doxed
Honorable Mentions
**Value DeFi** - Hacked three times (twice in one week) for a total of $28M. I'm not sure if they'll ever learn their lesson.
**Merlin Labs** - Hacked two times for a total of $1.23M. Two separate exploits on the same day.
Final Thoughts
The biggest thing I learned from this was that audits and doxed teams don't always mean safety when it comes to DeFi. As I stated above DeFi is still in it's infancy so experts/auditors are still finding out ways DeFi can be attacked. On top of that audits are designed to protect from external threats but as evidenced by some of the above examples, internal threats can sometimes be even more damaging. However the common knowledge of "Anonymous Team/No Audit = Rug Pull" tends to remain true in Crypto.
I think what I plan to do coming out of this is if the team is known pay more attention to their level of knowledge/experience in Crypto. Outside of technical exploits the other most common thing I saw was internal team members leaking valuable information. Whether it be info on an unreleased liquidity pool or storing funds in a hot wallet. This certainly hasn't and won't discourage me from investing in DeFi but it has encouraged me to take even more precautions when determining a project to invest into in the future.
**I hope you enjoyed reading, if you've been a part or victim of any Rug Pulls/Hacks/Exploits in DeFi I'd love to hear about it in the comments. Thanks for reading!**
**Thumbnail credit to* *CryptoPotato* https://cryptopotato.com/
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Avoiding Market Fluctuations with Stablecoin Yield Farming
I think anyone can agree right now - the Crypto Market is currently in a state of extreme volatility and even by Crypto standards. With volatility comes both incredible opportunities for profit and incredible opportunities to have a massive blow out. One of the easiest ways to avoid volatility and day to day market fluctuations is to invest in stablecoins. However there's just one issue with stablecoins, they don't increase in value. Stablecoins are just that, stable. Generally pegged to the value of a US Dollar there's not too much room for value fluctuation (depending on how they peg the value, see AMPL). Typical options here are to send your stablecoins to a centralized lending application like Celsius or BlockFi for paltry returns varying between 8.6-12% or to a DeFi application like Venus Protocol or Aave and earn between 3%-13.85%. But as I stated above these returns tend to leave something to be desired. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ampleforth
Enter Nerve Finance. Nerve is the first StableSwap AMM on Binance Smart Chain that allows trading of stablecoins and pegged synthetic assets. Nerve was launched March 1st of 2021, during the epic bull run that took place the first quarter of 2021. Their first pool consisted of 3 stablecoins: BUSD, USDT and USDC and have since added UST, anyETH and anyBTC pools. Since their launch 3 months ago they have already achieved $432M TVL and over $3.85B of trading volume. Returns for providing Liquidity on Nerve are much more impressive than typical lending platforms. APY varies from 35.36%-54% for provision of stablecoins. https://nerve.fi/
Not Another PancakeSwap Clone
Due to the rise in popularity of PancakeSwap and DeFi on BSC as a whole there's been a ridiculous amount of PancakeSwap clones that have hit the market over the last couple of months. Most of the clones offer little to no additional features/benefits over PancakeSwap save a reskin.
Nerve does not fall into this category. Nerve was built specifically for the swapping of stablecoins and pegged assets. In addition to swapping they also operate the largest trustless bridge on BSC, capable of swapping up to $30M in ETH/BTC or $5M in USDT into or out of BSC. Trading fees on Nerve are relatively low, only 0.04%, and slippage tends to be minimal.
Like most AMMs out there they have a governance token in NRV. Rewards for providing liquidity for the stablecoin pool or providing ETH/BTCB for the bridge. The NRV token can be used like many other governance tokens, to vote on community proposals and for multi-sig. It can also be collateralized to secure a non-liquidatable stablecoin loan via Ruler Protocol. https://rulerprotocol.com/
NRV hit an all time high of $6.65 on 3 May 2021. Personally I think it has a lot of room for growth, especially once the bull market kicks back in. NRV has a few more use cases than the average governance token and need is certainly there for a stablecoin swap/BSC bridge so it should only be a matter of market conditions for it to take off once again.
Last two things to note about Nerve is they did complete their audit and their transparency is quite good. Their roadmap, team and second-by-second transactions are all easily accessible on their site. These are all things that personally help to set me at ease when looking into something I may put my money into. The roadmap lists out creating an EVM compatible sidechain as well as expansion to Solana, two things that I absolutely love. I can't say it enough that interoperability is huge right now, as is connecting to Solana. https://github.com/nerve-finance/contracts/blob/main/audits/Certik%20-%20REP-Nerve_Finance_Core_Contracts-06_04_2021.pdf https://docs.nerve.fi/fundamentals/roadmap
Final Thoughts
Usually the hallmark of yield farming with stablecoins is shit returns. Which makes sense as it is the "safest" way to earn in DeFi. The trade off here with Nerve is you get significantly higher returns by staking your stablecoins, but you only earn those returns in NRV. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing if you plan to sell it off or believe in and want to participate in governance of Nerve. However if you're skeptical of the whole thing or are looking to earn in kind rewards it may not be for you.
For me personally I always have a portion of my portfolio in stablecoins so getting to put these to work with Nerve is a nice benefit. Especially since it's on BSC I don't have to pay an arm and a leg to move them around when need be. But it's obviously up to you what you do, I found Nerve the other day and wanted to share it what you all since after looking into it it seemed to be a solid project! Hopefully though you make your own decisions and do your own research here to determine if it's a good fit for you. Either way I hope you enjoyed reading.
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How to Spot a Shill - What is Shilling? Why do People Shill?
Crypto and Shilling, name a more iconic duo. Shill's come in all shapes and sizes. From the small scale Twitter accounts with just a few followers promoting the Crypto flavor of the week to the large scale John McAfee's and Elon Musks attempting to influence the market at large. Shilling is nothing new in Crypto. I've recently come to the opinion there's just two types of Crypto investors. There's the profiteers and the believers. Profiteers (see: Degens) don't truly believe in Crypto, they're just out to make their money and move on. Profiteers aren't interested in learning about why Crypto was created or the core beliefs behind it, they just want to make a buck. Then there's the believers, they fully buy into Crypto being the future and truly believe in it's core values. The fact that they're making a profit is usually a by product of them investing in projects they believe in. https://gbv.capital/what-does-shill-mean-in-crypto/#:~:text=A%20shill%2C%20or%20shilling%2C%20refers,%2C%20he's%20a%20total%20shill!%E2%80%9D https://dyor-crypto.fandom.com/wiki/Degen
You might expect me to say that Shills fall only into the believer category or only fall into the profiteer category but that's not the case. Shills are on both sides of the aisle here. As a believer the Shill can be so blinded by what they believe is the next big thing that they can't see the problems with the project at hand. Then profiteers just want to make a buck so they don't mind throwing those they may influence under the bus so they can get what's theirs. Before I get too far ahead of myself, let's get into some examples of both and how we can avoid them.
The Profiteer
Profiteers tend to show themselves most on Twitter by replying to Crypto Influencers with a couple word reply talking about the most recent Crypto flavor of the week (example below) in hopes that they will take notice and pump the price of the coin.
Now this isn't the only way they show themselves, sometimes they can be the influencer themself. The most recent example of this would be Soulja Boy, who accidentally tweeted that the project SafeMars would give him $24,000 if he promoted the pre-sale and it reached $240,000. Small side note, I took a look at SafeMars and it is 100% a scam project, do not invest. Another example would be John McAfee, who during the ICO craze of 2017-2018 was reportedly taking $100,000 per tweet and a large supply of the coin for any project that wanted to promote through him. https://twitter.com/CryptoCobain/status/1397642843347431431?s=08
For those of us that are old timers in the Crypto space this will likely come as no surprise. There's always been people in it just for the money but newbies can easily fall into the trap. Seeing a hashtag start to trend on Twitter or a person with some level of real world credibility talk about a new up and coming project can make the FOMO start to set in. But as I've said before no project is ever moving too fast that 30 minutes of doing your own research isn't worth.
The Believer
These can be a bit more difficult to avoid. Believers tend to have a bit more to say than the profiteers and can sometimes be more convincing. Believers generally have a few good points about their chosen project but fall into the same types of traps. I personally may have even fallen into this boat many times in my life but hopefully have been learning from my mistakes. A good high profile example of this would be Elon Musk and Dogecoin. As dumb as it sounds I do think he believes in Dogecoin but I think it comes from a place of complete ignorance.
With this type of Shill I've found it's best to think, is there wide use case for this coin? Is hype from this influencer promoting it the only reason it's going up right now? If that's the case you might just be gambling and that's always a recipe for disaster. The markets may be in favor of you one or two times but they will always come to collect their dues.
Final Thoughts
Whether you're a long term investor or day trader I believe the skill of being able to wade through the muck to determine what constitutes an undervalued Cryptocurrency and what's just hype is a very valuable skill.
Profiteering shills and fanatic believers are rampant today in Crypto. Learning to think for yourself and do your own research can pay in dividends if practiced faithfully. I highly recommend never trusting anyone in Crypto. People are flawed so even the most well meaning person can still be blinded by their beliefs or perspective. So please for the love of God do your own research and don't buy into the Shills.
**I hope you enjoyed reading, if you did please slap that like button and follow so I know to keep producing content. Thanks for reading!**
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Bitcoin on DeFi: How the Oldest Coin is Getting in on Crypto's Newest Thing
Bitcoin, the OG Cryptocurrency, founded in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto and later handed over to Gavin Andersen, has successfully brought in a new era of decentralized digital currencies and blockchain technology. Bitcoin's original purpose was to be a decentralized peer-to-peer payment network and store of value that could rival gold. With global adoption rising and a price that blows Gold out of the water - one could argue they succeeded on both objectives. Today DeFi is currently the next frontier in blockchain technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Andresen
As I've outlined in a previous post, DeFi and interoperability are the two places blockchain developers today are putting the majority of their time and effort. As of writing this Bitcoin still holds a 42%+ dominance of the crypto market. But if you look at the majority of DeFi applications today, they are almost exclusively located on Ethereum and deal in ERC-20 tokens. Some would argue that WBTC is making it's stake in the market and that is partially true, but with only $6.8b of the total $711b Bitcoin market cap currently there I think it's hard to make that case. This leaves nearly 40% of the market that goes untouched in one of Crypto's hottest spaces. Today I'd like to take a look at three projects that are trying to bridge the gap and bring more Bitcoin to DeFi. https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/the-fall-of-the-ethereum-killers-xwqdoyy
Badger DAO
Badger DAO is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) that has a single purpose in mind - *"build the products and infrastructure necessary to accelerate Bitcoin as a collateral across all blockchains."* Badger DAO was designed as a community-led initiative first, any decisions are made through a governed vote that determines what, how and when Badger DAO products are created. Community members can propose new product ideas to the DAO, pitch it to the larger community then take it to the official vote if it passes. If it passes the Badger DAO ops team will then collaborate with them to build it, fund it and market it.
As for the product side of it Badger DAO has two main pillars here, Sett and DIGG. Sett is an automated DeFi aggregator focused on tokenized BTC assets, similar to Harvest.Finance. Users deposit assets to earn a yield then smart contracts put those to work with a variety of strategies on DeFi protocols. Then DIGG is a non-custodial synthetic Bitcoin on Ethereum. It's supply is elastic and pegged to the price of DIGG vs BTC so when DIGG's increases above that of BTC wallet balances would increase - if lower than wallet balances decrease. Their code has been fully audited and boasts a large array of contributors, with 60+ since their launch a few months ago. Their Setts (vaults) have ROIs between 2.3%->113%. I've watched a few interviews with the founder and looked into this pretty heavily and have already deposited into a few of the Setts.
**Website:** https://badger.finance/
Cake DeFi
Cake DeFi is a platform that allows users to generate cash flow through pooled masternode staking, liquidity provision and lending. Built on DeFi Chain (DFI) Cake aims to be a one-stop shop for all crypto related services. On top of their current crypto-related services Cake plans to implement a variety of assets in the future and allow users to diversify their assets in a simple way. https://defichain.com/
The blockchain Cake is built on, DeFi Chain, was made specifically with DeFi in mind. DFI also anchors it's block to Bitcoin's blockchain every few blocks to help protect it from a 51% attack and maintain it's decentralization. According to their founder, U-Zyn Chua, multi-purpose blockchains like ETH and TRX can get congested with all the additional unrelated DApps that share the environment with DeFi and due to their multi-purpose nature may open themselves up to vulnerabilities similar to some we've seen in the last couple of weeks with BSC. On Cake current APY for LPs vary from 20%-95% and staking returns from 5.4%-92%. They also have one of the best referral programs in crypto, offering up to 1% on referral's investments and $10 when a referral deposits $50 or more ($30 goes to the one getting referred).
**Website:** https://app.cakedefi.com/
Sovryn
Sovryn is a non-custodial and permissionless smart contract based system for Bitcoin lending, borrowing and margin trading. In a nutshell Sovryn is the decentralized answer to platforms such as BlockFi, Celsius and many of the centralized exchanges today. Sovryn is built on RSK, a sidechain of Bitcoin that allows users to host smart contracts for the Bitcoin Network similar to how Ethereum does. Currently they offer the ability to do spot-exchanges, margin trading, a lending pool and use of the FastBTC Relay. https://www.rsk.co/ https://wiki.sovryn.app/en/sovryn-dapp/fast_btc
Currently Sovryn only supports BTC and USD stablecoin pairs but plans to implement more currencies and derivatives in the future. Current lending APY is between 0.07% and 9.2%, these APYs will likely go up as Sovryn sees more adoption. Liquidity mining is currently an unknown APY due to how new the platform is, but they have been running periodic SOV airdrops to those who are providing early liquidity so it may be a good reason to get in early. I usually wouldn't include something as new as Sovryn in a list like this but their team is fully doxxed and extremely experienced in DeFi/Bitcoin and the code has already been audited. This is also probably the hardest one to get into as you need to download a wallet specifically for the RSK sidechain but it's one to definitely keep your eyes on. There's also a very interesting AMA the founder of Sovryn did here, if you're interested in learning more I'd definitely check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iYzOtQkfnA&ab_channel=Bankless
**Website:** https://www.sovryn.app/
For me personally I think I'm most excited for Sovryn and Badger. Both projects have extremely experienced teams and a very interesting way to implement DeFi for Bitcoin. I invest in a lot of different cryptocurrencies, like I'm sure many of you do as well, but Bitcoin is still a large portion of my portfolio. Having a place to put my BTC to work that isn't just WBTC is extremely exciting for me. Do you currently use any yield farms or platforms to maximize the BTC you hodl? Or do you just let it sit and wait for the next market pump to sell off? Let me know in the comments I'd love to know!
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**DeltaBadger** - Simple to use Crypto DCA Bot, 10% off through this link. Great for long-term investing. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
Bear Markets Make You Rich - Don't Get Spooked
If you are employed in economics for any of the major governments today the following statement may be triggering - *Market corrections, depressions and recessions happen and they are a* ***good*** *thing*. We can try to avoid them and slow them down all we want but they will occur. Excess weight and greedy investors will eventually get what's coming in the form of a red profit/loss sheet. When outside forces come in to bail out an investor who's made poor choices it only elongates and magnifies the coming market correction.
The Problem
I'm a Millennial (or Gen Z depending on the website you look at) and I grew up similar to how many Americans did during the mid 2000's. We saw the 2008 recession, the massive government bailout that followed, the declining markets caused by a variety of market conditions and most recently hyper inflation due to a central reserve system that refuses to slow down it's money printing. During this time the wealth divide between the ultra rich and ultra poor has achieved levels never before seen in my country's history. And like many of my compatriots I ask myself, why?
Every time the economy looks to be on the edge of a massive recession/depression the Government swoops into action to quickly bail out the market segment(s) affected. I've seen this play out many times in my life - from housing to banking to oil. What this effectively does is save the investors who got greedy or made poor decisions from the punishment they had rightfully earned. When the market correction is allowed to play its course, these investors start to divest their assets, sell out of their poor positions and/or go out of business. This effectively opens up room in the market (initially for a painful correction in the form of a minor dip, recession or full blown depression) for new people to come in and profit from making new, correct decisions.
Bear Markets & Crypto
So what does this have to do with the most recent bear looking Cryptocurrency market? Everything. Cryptocurrency is effectively the last remaining, currently unregulated, market left in the world (to my knowledge). We are free from the trappings of crony government entities coming in and saving their friends from having to face the music.
When bear markets occur those with the future in mind and wise investment choices get the opportunity to profit from the greedy investors who sold out of their positions or were forced to find a new line of work. If we look at March last year due to COVID - LINK, ETH, BTC and essentially every currency fell to lows not seen for many years. Those who knew that this would only be temporary were able to swoop in and buy up a large portion of the market that had been divested at cut rate prices. I remember reading dozens of articles here at that time about how LINK was *extremely* undervalued. Dipping to around $2 when just prior to March it had been looking to be set for a big run.
I wish I could say I jumped in heavily on that but I did not. Although it's price is dipping with the rest of the market (but still up 1,000%+), I see another opportunity similar to last year. Due to China, Karen Musk and a few other factors Crypto is looking to enter a strong bear market this year. But that doesn't mean that there's not massive opportunities for profit. And I'm not just talking about LINK here. https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1241594640532897792
Since a large section of the market is selling out, it opens up room for a new class of whales to step in and make bank if they can see the trends to come. Take this time and learn about what makes a project good and proper market rules. Be disciplined and invest in those projects you can believe in, cultivate a diamond handed mentality and sell in chunks as the bull market hits. It can be good to hold on to your earnings during the bear times but don't forget to sell off when profit season hits. You can always buy back in during a dip or the next bear market. https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/diamond-hands-lead-to-long-term-crypto-profits-xvwkmrw?a=4oeEnVKa0B&tid=inArticle
Final Thoughts
So what will you do during this dip/market correction/crypto winter/bear market or whatever you choose to call it? Will you jump out of Crypto all together or choose to stay in, look for the gems and stick with it? I can't be the one to tell you what to do but I can tell you that when things look their most grim - that's usually where the most profit lies. I personally had to ask myself, was I feeling the urge to sell out of my position because I no longer believed that Crypto would recover or was it because I was just afraid of losing my money? For me, I had to calm my own nerves and remind myself of all the other bounces and volatility I'd seen the markets face. But whatever decision you make is your own and I respect that, please let me know what you plan to do below!
**As a reminder, do your own research. Never EVER trust someone on the internet just because they have a blog or website or made a nice looking YouTube video - myself included. There will never be an opportunity that 30 mins of due diligence isn't worth. So I hope you enjoyed, thanks for reading. Happy earnings!**
**---**
**Three Products I Trust and Use to Grow/Maintain My Crypto Earnings**
**Cake DeFi** - Get $30 in DFI when you deposit $50 or more. 30-200% APY, auto-compounding. https://app.cakedefi.com/?ref=267303
**Ledger Wallet** - Get a $25 voucher and Crypto Beginner Guide when you purchase through this link. Best wallet for long term storage. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b
**DeltaBadger** - Simple to use Crypto DCA Bot, 10% off through this link. I've made over $35,000 using. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
Building Your Financial Future, One Block At A Time With Defibox
DeFi has had an insane coming out party over the last year and a half. Going from just under $700 million Total Value Locked (TVL) in January of 2020 to over $140 Billion TVL according to Defi Llama. However, this has not come without it's share of growing pains. Due to the popularity of DeFi applications, gas fees on Ethereum-based networks have skyrocketed. What used to cost in gas fees $2-3 to swap and $10-20 to perform smart contract interactions - has ballooned to $30-$500+ to perform the same interactions. https://defillama.com/home
Not to mention the large knowledge barrier many of the most popular DeFi protocols face. Most newcomers to Crypto simply don't understand the purpose of DeFi or how it works. Not only do they have to setup an additional wallet (ie MetaMask), separate and away from the one that likely introduced them to Crypto (Coinbase, Robinhood, etc.), they also need to enable it with the exchange, pay the gas fees then finally get involved in either providing liquidity or swapping for the token they wanted. This is all a piece of cake for those of us that have been involved in Crypto for a long period of time, but newcomers can certainly struggle.
Well in comes Defibox and the EOS blockchain they're built on. Due to the way the EOS ecosystem has developed, many of the first wallets newcomers get introduced to when coming to EOS (Wombat, TokenPocket, etc.), are specifically designed with DApp browsing and ease of use in mind. Then due to how EOS operates and the feeless nature, it can certainly help ease many of initial frustrations and misunderstandings newcomers have. But before I get too ahead of myself, let's get into Defibox, one of the best DeFi applications I'm most excited about today. https://defibox.io/
What is Defibox?
You could probably guess by now but Defibox is an Automated Market Maker (AMM) based Decentralized Exchange built on EOS. Launched in July of 2020, Defibox is part of the Newdex Seed program, a program that is used to promote the incubation and development of EOS-based DeFi protocols. Despite it's young age, Defibox has already positioned itself as the top dawg of EOS-based DeFi protocols with $195 million TVL. Defibox operates similarly to how typical AMM's do with a few extra benefits.
Decentralized Token Swap with Liquidity Provision
Decentralized Stablecoin Generation with USN (more info here) https://support.defibox.cc/hc/en-us/articles/900002530146-About-USN-Stable-Coin
Decentralized Lending
According to their V3.2 Whitepaper (found here), they are also working on launching a "satellite protocol" to help with the functionality of the three protocols I listed above as well as cross-chain compatibility and other protocols such as derivative trading and traditional financial asset trading. https://support.defibox.cc/hc/en-us/articles/900006898123-Defibox-Whitepaper-V3-2
Defibox, much like many AMM DEXs today have their own token, BOX, which can be used to vote on features/changes to the Defibox platform.
BOX can be mined by providing liquidity, USN mining and Decentralized Lending mining. I currently hold a small amount of BOX that I've mined from providing liquidity to the EOS-USN pair. I'm pretty happy with the returns so far and will likely increase my holdings there.
Why I Use Defibox
Several of my co-workers recently got involved in crypto. They asked me all the typical questions - what wallet to get, where should I buy my crypto, when should I jump in the market and how. I answered them all willingly but as soon as I tried to tell them about DeFi I could see their eyes start to glaze over. They already had a hard enough time understanding cryptocurrency as it were and the thought of applications being built on a blockchain was just too much.
I tried to show them the most popular AMM/DeFi platforms in Uniswap or SushiSwap but they just couldn't get it. There was already too much info getting thrown at them. That's where I believe the value of the EOS ecosystem and Defibox come into play. There is no extra steps to complete or seemingly complicated wallet to download. Once someone downloads either Wombat or TokenPocket they can navigate through the built-in dapp browser to explore the DeFi apps at their own leisure and test them out without getting completely burned by gas fees. The EOS ecosystem, whether purposefully or not, was built with newcomers in mind and that in and of itself is one of it's greatest strengths. That is why I'm very bullish on Defibox.
Now don't get me wrong, they also have a very strong whitepaper and roadmap. Interoperability and more types of asset trading I believe are the future of DeFi. But with rising crypto adoption rates and increased interest in crypto as a whole, the next wave of people to jump in are going to be looking for the easiest place to get a return on their investment. With the addition of the satellite protocol and additional types of asset trading, I believe that place could be Defibox.
**Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed don't forget to drop a follow and like so I know to write more. And for the obligatory "I'm not a financial advisor", duh I'm not a financial advisor, please Do Your Own Research. Happy earnings!**
**Two Products I Trust and Use to Grow/Maintain My Crypto Earnings**
**Ledger Wallet** - Get a $25 voucher and Crypto Beginner Guide when you purchase through this link. Best wallet for long term storage. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b
**DeltaBadger** - Simple to use Crypto DCA Bot, 10% off through this link. I've made over $35,000 using. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
Crypto Social Earnings Report - First 30 Days (Part 1)
The number of Crypto Social Sites that do some form of revenue sharing as grown greatly over the last couple of years. What was once a space occupied by just Hive/Steemit has since grown to well over ten websites offering profit sharing via crypto for their users. Since returning to Crypto Social Media after an almost 8 month hiatus on 4/19/2021 I've decided to start keeping track of my earnings across all platforms I'm currently active on so you can get an idea for how you can earn and what to expect. Here I'll share those total profits as well as some opinions and metrics on each site. Let me know if you have any tips or info on how I should be doing better! https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/11-sites-like-publish0x-crypto-social-media-sites-xomejdx?a=4oeEnVKa0B&tid=inPost
Publish0x
Publish0x, the site that started my journey into Crypto Social and a new found love for writing. As I've detailed before, Publish0x is the best platform to learn a ton about crypto and how to write/build your own brand. Publish0x has also been the true workhorse of the sites listed, I've had the majority of my earnings and reader base grow here. I really enjoy how Publish0x is a crypto-agnostic platform and the writing contests that are occasionally put on here. I also love how Publish0x works and the userbase here. Publish0x is certainly and will likely remain my favorite Crypto Social site for some time. https://www.publish0x.com?a=4oeEnVKa0B https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/why-publish0x-is-the-perfect-platform-to-learn-how-to-write-xwjjeg
**Metrics:** +440 Followers, removing the glitch day roughly 85,000 views
**Earnings: $116.74** earned in FARM, ETH and AMPL (could have been more if not for market crash)
Minds
I joined Minds late into the month but the earnings have been solid. While Publish0x was the site that started my love for Crypto Social and writing, Minds has provided me an outlet and place to share the 100s of Crypto/Life related memes I consume each day. As I've said before there's a political nature to some posts on Minds but if you just avoid it you don't ever have to see it. I personally know enough and have heard enough about politics over the last couple years, I don't need to read more. All that to say I've had a steady increase in Minds Followers/Engagement, their payment structure focuses around engagement and if you have a Minds+ or Pro subscription. I personally have Minds+ and have already gained a bit of income from that. https://www.minds.com/register?referrer=absolute_unit
**Metrics:** +61 Followers, +6,100 views
**Earnings:** 31.11 MINDS tokens @ $1.57 ea = $49 + $7.80 revenue share = **$56.80**
Read.Cash
Read.cash has been one of my slowest growth sites, as far as Followers/Engagements, but the earnings have been pretty steady. The RandomRewarder there has really been keeping it all afloat as I've only received one tip outside of that account. I think the majority of the content that does best there is either posts Marc De Mesel finds interesting, Bitcoin Cash related posts or if you were able to carry over a large readership from other platforms. I don't think I've done any of those so I'm content with the slow growth as long as the RandomRewarder keeps it up! https://read.cash/r/AbsoluteUnit
**Metrics:** +17 Followers, 505 page views
**Earnings: $81.15** in BCH
LeoFinance
LeoFinance is a side chain of Hive that is focused on Crypto/Finance related topics. I really enjoy some of the other content here but my posts tend to do quite poorly. I think due to some of my posting times and the lack of having many followers at this time. However I think with a few of my most recent posts I've figured out the posting time issue and will be correcting that. All in all LeoFinance is a pretty solid platform with a good community. https://leofinance.io/@absolute.unit
**Metrics:** +14 Followers
**Earnings:** 21.2 LEO @ $0.69 = **$14.63**
Den.Social
Den.Social could be best described as Reddit x LeoFinance. Rewards for upvoting good content or creating good content are dished out in MTR. Lairs, essentially communities where specific content is posted, can be community owned with rewards being shared between owners each day. Very cool concept, really enjoying my time there. https://den.social/p/051ecd09ac594441ba37834146686de7/
**Metrics:** +2 Followers, following seems to be irrelevant here
**Earnings:** 29.4 MTR @ $0.694 = **$20.40**
****Total Earnings:**** $289.72, likely pre market crash earnings were closer to $350-400 but it doesn't really matter in the end.
Final Thoughts
Crypto Social can certainly provide a nice side income and potentially career level income for anyone that's willing to put in the time and effort. Since my return to Crypto Social I've seen some solid growth across all platforms. It's by no means a huge side income yet or probably even compares to the high earners on any of the platforms but earnings for me from just writing have been nice and show the potential for huge growth to come.
With my wife expecting our first child and me refusing to make her return to work (she wants to be a stay at home mom) I plan to continue to grow my Crypto Social earnings as well as launch some other side projects to help compensate for the lost income (be on the lookout for those). One thing you can expect from me is I'll never write about something just for a pay check. I find it extremely tiresome to write about something I don't believe in. So if you read through this whole semi-ramble, thanks for being on the journey with me!
**Well I hope me sharing this info with you was helpful and hopefully not detrimental to your dreams lol. Let me know what you thought in the comments below and if you use any of the sites above! Don't forget to like, follow and tip if you enjoyed. Happy earnings!**
**Three Products I Use to Grow my Crypto Portfolio**
**Ledger Wallet** - Get a $25 voucher and Crypto Beginner Guide when you purchase through this link. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b
**CAKE DeFi** - Get $30+ of DFI when you deposit $50 and earn 35-150% APY https://app.cakedefi.com/?ref=267303
**DeltaBadger** - Easy to use automated DCA Bot for Crypto, 10% off the link here. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
Seven Years Ago Today - What Can We Learn From The Crypto Market on 17 May 2014?
*"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it"* - Winston Churchill. It's become a cliché but the original wisdom of the statement still rings true, from Hitler and Napoleon disastrously invading Russia to the market trends of BTC and ETH. The lessons we can learn from history are both profitable and potentially life saving. Today we'll be taking a look back in time, seven years ago today, at the top 100 coins by market cap and try to figure out why some projects failed, why others have stagnated and why the top are still going strong today in an attempt to learn from our mistakes and figure out what really makes a top project succeed. Let's get into it! https://historyofyesterday.com/why-did-hitler-and-napoleon-fail-in-conquering-russia-6215058ffd2f?gi=ac02ae01db23#:~:text=The%20period%20of%20Napoleon's%20Russian,22%20to%20December%205%2C%201941.&text=Napoleon%20and%20Hitler%20believed%20that%20they%20could%20conquer%20Russia%20very%20quickly.
The Top 10
The first notable thing about the top 10 is that DOGE was hitting it's stride even seven years ago. All ten projects remain active, however only half remain in the top 50, those being Bitcoin, Doge, XRP, Litecoin and Dash. The other half fall anywhere from 215-1300 in market cap size.
While researching the first big fail for this list, Peercoin (current rank #554 by market cap), it seems the #1 reason it fell off was lack of development and activity within the community. It's a great idea, the first cryptocurrency to really implement the Proof-of-Stake model, but seemed to fail the same way I see many technology-rich coins fail today. They relied too much on their technological achievements and not quite enough on the marketing, promotion and community building aspects that come with any new crypto. While building a great cryptocurrency technologically speaking is fantastic, if you can't get people to understand why or the value behind it the project will ultimately fail. There simply aren't enough techno-literate people out there to sustain it going to the moon. As I took a look at the rest of the top 10 that have fallen off to below rank 215 in market cap, it was a similar story. Great technology, inability to build community and popularity.
The Complete Failures
Next are the complete failures, these are the projects that went either completely inactive or have less than $1,000 trading volume in the last 24h. There were 70 projects in this category. I took the time to look into each one of these projects, because I guess I have to much time on my hands. The reasons for their failures can be summed up into four categories -
Another cryptocurrency came along and could do the same thing, but easier to use and cheaper
Major project that failed, something that was driving the project that didn't work out
Lead developer/s leaving, inability to keep up the project
A scam/rug pull project
Pretty straight forward here. A lot of crypto projects from this time were not serious or were scams, so they don't quite have the same level of commitment as projects today. Others had only one major technological achievement to warrant them being a coin so when something came along that was easier to use or cheaper people jumped on that bandwagon.
The Winners
These are the cryptocurrencies that didn't just stand the test of time, but came out still in the top 100 seven years later. There were honestly less than what I expected in this category. There are six total projects, with five being in the top 10 from 2014 and only one, DigiByte, coming from outside the top 10. There were three things I could glean when trying to figure out how they stood the test of time, while so many other projects failed, and they were -
Community of developers and users that care about the project
Evolution of use case and how it works
Solid marketing, adoption
The other interesting thing to this is four of the five in the top 10 from 2014 are still there today, those being BTC, LTC, XRP and DOGE. Dash and DigiByte however both holding on in the top 81.
Final Thoughts
I came into this with the hypothesis that at least 25% of the top 100 would still be there today and the leading causes of failure would be due to lack of marketing and community. I came away with that hypothesis only partially true. Only 6 of the top 100 from 2014 remain in the top 100 today and a major project failing or scam/rug pull incidents were also major factors in projects going inactive.
If you were to pick a project to succeed in 2014, unless it was in the top 10 you had only a 1.11% chance of it being a hit and a 78% chance of it being an inactive project in seven years time. Pretty insane odds. Now I think the incorrect judgement to make from this would be to not invest in anything but BTC/LTC/XRP or DOGE. Seven years ago was a very different time for crypto, it was still a young community rife with shitcoins and half baked ideas. The crypto market we live in today is a very different beast. With institutional money at play now and professionally run projects half of the stuff that mooned then would not fly in today's market.
But I think the lessons that can be taken from this research are still valid. Don't invest in a potential moonshot unless your dang sure it will be a hit. As even though today we live in a much different crypto market, most projects will likely be a fail in seven years time. I like to think of each new project like a potential business I'm looking at investing in. What are some of the things you'd like to see if you were going to put your hard earned money into a new business? Certainly a quality team, maybe a good marketing strategy and probably a good use for it's product. So I just say all that to say, do your own research. Don't ever invest in something unless you've really vetted the whole thing out. The way we grow this whole crypto thing is by investing in things that actually matter. Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed slap the like button and don't forget to follow. Happy earnings!
**Three Products I Use To Grow/Maintain My Crypto Portfolio**
**Ledger Wallet** - Best hardware wallet on the market, great for long term hodling. Get a $25 voucher and Crypto Beginner Guide when you purchase through this link. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b
**CAKE DeFi** - Simple to use DeFi program with high APY. Get $30+ of DFI when you deposit $50 and earn 35-150% APY https://app.cakedefi.com/?ref=267303
**DeltaBadger** - Simple to use Crypto DCA Bot, 10% off through this link. I've made over $35,000 using it. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
Diamond Hands Lead to Long-term Crypto Growth
I can still remember the first time I dropped a significant amount of money into Bitcoin (BTC) - at least significant to me at the time. It was in early 2015, BTC was around $250 and I was STRESSED. I had recently dropped out of college and taken a portion of my remaining "scholarship money" to buy into this whole crypto thing in hopes of making it big. What followed was 6 months of nervously checking CoinMarketCap every 10-15 minutes just to find out that, yup, the price is pretty much the same. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin https://coinmarketcap.com/
Around mid-late 2015 I ended up selling out, the market had taken a mild increase up to around $280 but looked poised to decrease again so I could not hold it anymore. Come to find out if I had waited even 6 months later I could have increased earnings by 100%, one year later and it could have been up 4,000% and today (with BTC @ ~$50,000) the amount I had bought would be worth $600,000. I was a victim of Paper Hands. https://www.cyberdefinitions.com/definitions/PAPER_HANDS.html#:~:text=PAPER%20HANDS%20means%20%22someone%20who,break%20with%20the%20slightest%20pressure.
The Two Mentalities
There's a couple different ways to interpret the above experience, the first way is what I like to call the "Uncle Rico" mentality. It's the mentality centered around what could have been. While it's always fun to look back and talk about/reminisce on past experiences there's certainly a danger zone one can enter. I know for me when I focus too much on what could have been I start getting "Rosy Retrospection" - essentially I start seeing things as better than they actually were or could have been. This is not productive for anyone as it doesn't focus on moving forward or progress, it's a mentality firmly rooted in something that's uncontrollable, the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection
The other mentality is the "Growth" mentality. Where instead of reminiscing and bragging about what could have been, you take the experience and try to draw the lessons out of it. It's the embodiment of the "Try, Fail, Adjust" approach as opposed to the "Try, Fail, Try Fail, Try Fail" approach. Now I have to admit I didn't initially adopt the Growth mentality after I saw this whole thing play out. I was very much hurt and embarrassed that I had cashed out just before a bull run of epic proportions. Once I got over my pity party and started thinking about why I had gotten out early and why I was so stressed to begin with I started to realize some of the mistakes I made.
Diamond Hands
I had gotten into the "Get Rich Quick" mindset, I was hoping that by investing in some magic internet money it would save my whole life's outlook. The result of that was stress, crazy pressure and anxiety day in and day out. The reality is that there is no get rich quick. If we take a look at some of the biggest lottery winners, most don't have a very happy ending to their story. Money's not bad but when people come into it all at once it can reveal who they truly are. So I had to get out of the get rich quick mindset and learn how to get rich slowly. I had to learn how to make wise investments and not just put it all on a hopeful moonshot, as if I could learn how to make it once I could certainly do it again. https://moneywise.com/life/lifestyle/unlucky-lottery-winners-lost-millions
For me personally I decided to never again jump out of the market when I saw all red. I decided to have Diamond Hands. The next time I would invest I would hold strong until the goal I had set previously was reached. Instead of jumping out in every dip I would buy more into every dip so on the next peak my earnings would increase that much more. I can tell you from experience it's a much more exciting way to invest, when you know that you're in it for the long haul then the small market bumps up and down have no affect on your attitude or mindset. https://www.cyberdefinitions.com/definitions/DIAMOND_HANDS.html#:~:text=DIAMOND%20HANDS%20means%20%22someone%20who,the%20potential%20risks%20and%20losses.
I've already outlined how last year I was able to make a pretty decent amount by DCA'ing into BTC/ETH with DeltaBadger. That's one example of how Diamond Hands has helped benefit me, but don't just take it from me, there's also the 461,546 unique BTC addresses (according to bitinfocharts.com) that went over the $100,000 mark due to the recent bull run on BTC. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp https://www.publish0x.com/of-faucets-and-micro-earnings/how-i-made-35-dollars-000-cents-last-year-with-deltabadger-a-xnqogln?a=4oeEnVKa0B&tid=publish0x https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html
Final Thoughts
Obviously I'm not advocating for you to simply dump your life savings into BTC or ETH and hope that it will eventually increase in price. What I am hopefully portraying here is to not just jump out at the first sign of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Find some projects you can believe in and support, then stick with them till you hit your target mark. Then either jump out or flip it into another project you can get behind. I've seen it happen too many times where a novice crypto investor/trader will get in during an upswing, make a few bucks then as soon as the market turns a little red they jump out in fear. While those who stuck around made 10x what the novice did by not just sticking through the dip but buying into it to increase their profits more.
As usual I'm not a financial advisor, these are simply my opinions and experiences above. I will 100% of the time advocate you to do your own research, don't fully believe anyone online. But with that being said I hope something above was of some value to you. If you disagree with my ideas I'd love to know in the comments, if you agree I'd also love to know why. Thanks for taking your time to read this, don't forget to follow, tip and like the post if you want more. Happy earnings!
Affiliate Links That Directly Support Me
**Ledger Wallet** - Get a $25 voucher and Crypto Beginner Guide when you purchase through this link. https://shop.ledger.com/?r=f3c8119f6f4b
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Elon Musk Reportedly Working With Dogecoin Devs Since 2019
Per a recent phone call with Decrypt, Dogecoin (DOGE) dev Ross Nicholl revealed that Elon Musk started talking to the developers of Dogecoin in 2019. Musk has reportedly "encouraged them to improve the higher transaction throughput,” provided “lots of advice and input,” and shared his vast Rolodex of contacts. Musk, who's the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, has been a key driving force behind DOGE's recently skyrocketing price. https://decrypt.co/ https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/dogecoin
Nicholl also shared that he and the three other core developers turned down an offer for funding from Musk and added they have also turned down other similar offers from wealthy would-be investors. Preferring instead to tap his brain on ways to make DOGE a cleaner, greener alternative to Bitcoin.
Insane Price Action & Good News for Doge Fans
Starting the year at $0.005 then soaring to an all time high of $0.71 before Musk's Saturday Night Live appearance, DOGE has seen some insane price action this year. Every time Musk would tweet about DOGE the price would explode, only to dip once the frenzy wore off. But recent news may show another price spike coming.
Since the Dogecoin market started heating up, Nicholl shared that interest in developing the coin has gone through the roof. Saying "We're seeing an avalanche of developers jumping in and working on it now." This news coming on the heels of Dogecoin devs finalizing their 1.21 upgrade, their biggest update since 2019.
Coinbase's CEO, Brian Armstrong, announced on Thursday during an earnings call that the popular cryptocurrency exchange would be adding Dogecoin in the next few weeks. Even more good news for DOGE fans.
**Short post but very news worthy! Don't forget to slap that like/follow button. Happy Earnings!**
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Anatomy of a Rug Pull - How to Protect Yourself from Scams during Altseason
Altseason is officially upon us. All it took was a DOGE shaped spark to start the next round of memecoins and shitcoins overtaking the market. While some are legitimate projects others have a more nefarious plan in play. Today we'll be taking a deep dive into one of the most recent Rug Pulls, Shikokuaido (SHOKK), and what we can learn from it so we can steer clear of the next one. https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/rug-pull#:~:text=A%20rug%20pull%20is%20a%20malicious%20maneuver%20in%20the%20cryptocurrency,run%20away%20with%20investors'%20funds. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/shikokuaido
The Hype
Telegram channels, YouTube videos and a mildly impactful Twitter campaign all helped SHOKK build the hype around their coin yesterday, claiming it was the next project from SHIB's team. Their Telegram groups disallowed inbound messages pre-launch, all echoe'd the same unverifiable claim about SHIB and warned they would ban any FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) upon launch. All red flags for sure but to get in early on the next SHIB like project would mean incredible profits. All these red flags though seemed to dissipate, as once launched the LP Token Burn was posted to the Telegram chat as well as ownership being renounced. https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/shiba-inu
The race was on, SHOKK's price action was bouncy but their trading volume was quite high. People in the Telegram chat were talking about getting in 30 minutes ago and already being up $500-$1000, things were looking quite juicy.
The Oldest Trick in the Book
All the pandemonium and the token burn disguised one of the oldest tricks in the book. The original address that created SHOKK, 0xdfd09bc459f6adb06de6ddc1fd4d38862a4ef5e2, had supposedly sent 35% to Vitalik Buterin, 5% to charity wallets, 5% to marketing wallets and 50% to Uniswap for liquidity but a quick check on Etherscan tells a different story. While 35% was sent to Vitalik Buterin, only 37% was locked on Uniswap and 28% was sent to private wallets. Which means after what was essentially a 35% Vitalik Burn, 43% is being held on private wallets and 57% was entered into circulation. https://etherscan.io/address/0xdfd09bc459f6adb06de6ddc1fd4d38862a4ef5e2#tokentxns
So the up and down price action can be explained by the fact that 43% of the token supply will be entering the market from these private wallet address. If you check any one of the addresses SHOKK was sent to pre-launch you can see periodic swaps happening for SHOKK->ETH, then an exchange to DAI and a cash out to another wallet. So not the most clever rug pull but clearly an effective one as their Telegram is still fully buying into SHOKK mooning (which could be in part to them banning anyone that dissents).
On top of the misleading supply amounts and slow drip rug pull by the developers, Reddit user lleti, found that "...this is no standard SafeMoon fork. This is a fork from one of their Charity Coins - so, while ownership was renounced, this one has a "charity wallet" which reflects a heavy percentage of tokens in to. This wallet address, and the fee that's paid into it can be changed at any time via the Contract page." Which is especially frightening as the Charity wallet address can be changed to that of a dev's or one of their friends to collect even more profit from. https://www.reddit.com/user/lleti
Similar to how USDC can blacklist an address from sending/receiving tokens SHOKK has a built-in AddBotToBlacklist(address) that would block the entered address from selling their tokens. Although it says "AddBot" the contract would not be able to distinguish what is a bot, it would only add the specified address to the blacklist and prevent it from selling.
Conclusions
Altseason offers opportunities for both huge profits and massive loss. Learning how to identify which projects are real and which projects are fake is vital to you making the most out of the time we're in. While it can look amazing to get in on a project like SHOKK early, it can be even more harmful to jump into a project without doing your due diligence first. A quick search on SHOKK's website would show they list none of their team and show no history of being involved in previous projects and a review of their contract (or in my case a review from a trusted person) shows some less than desirable functions in it.
The number one thing I gained from researching this was to do your due diligence and never think that taking the 30 minutes to 1 hour to review all the material at hand will result in you losing out on a big gain. There will be more projects in the future and more opportunities to make money. So please invest responsibly and never throw in more than you'd be willing to lose.
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The Fall Of The Ethereum Killers
Qtum, Tron, EOS and Komodo - once dubbed the "Ethereum Killer" blockchain protocols due to their high transaction throughput and low gas fees may not be the killers they were originally thought to be. According to a recent report by the crypto venture capital firm, Outlier Ventures, Blockchain developers are devoting less time to the once popular "Ethereum Killer" blockchain protocols in favor of other projects. https://outlierventures.io/
Per the report newer "multi-chain protocols like Polkadot, Cosmos and Avalanche are seeing a consistent rise in core development and developer contribution." While "Ethereum Killers Qtum, Tron, EOS and Komodo are seeing a decrease in development metrics." According to the GitHub data all the Ethereum Killers saw a 50%+ decline in development throughout 2020 into early 2021. Blockchains that focused on interoperability between protocols or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) saw the largest gains throughout the same timeframe.
Ethereum On Top
Ethereum (ETH) is still leading the way in total active development with more than double the amount of active developers (220) than Bitcoin (103) and weekly code commits ETH (866) to BTC (441). The second most actively developed blockchain is Cardano with 144 developers and 761 code commits per week. Hyperledger and Filecoin round out the rest of the top five most actively developed blockchains.
The sharp decline you see in the above photo is the decline that happens each year around the Christmas holiday season.
DeFi Protocols
2020 was a true coming out party for DeFi, as the total value locked went from under $700 Million in January of 2020 to $15 Billion in December of 2020. Today there's almost $150 Billion locked according to Defi Llama. An absolutely astronomical increase in terms of popularity and use. This sentiment was shared in Outlier's report as most DeFi protocols saw a steady increase in developer contribution throughout 2020 and into the first quarter of 2021. At the time of their report Maker, Gnosis, Synthetix, Augur and Bancor were the leading DeFi protocols by developer contribution with Maker leading the way but it's numbers were slowly decreasing. Since the release of this article Binance Smart Chain based DeFi protocols have exploded with the increased popularity of PancakeSwap, Venus and BUNNY. https://defillama.com/home
Final Thoughts
So what does this all mean? It means what you've probably already noticed if you were a user of any of the Ethereum Killer ecosystems, development has gone down markedly and developers have made a shift towards interoperability and DeFi. We've already seen the explosion of blockchains that work towards making it easier to communicate between different chains and we've certainly seen the explosion of DeFi but what I think the true value of a report like this is is that we can really see where the market is heading by taking a look at where developers are spending their time. Generally speaking the more work a project gets the better the result the higher the price of the coin. What I plan to do since reading this report is taking the time to investigate GitHub commits to a project before investing in it and definitely getting out of some of the projects that seem ready to die.
Obviously I'm not a financial advisor though, the above is just my opinion! You can do whatever you want, when I found this report I just thought the methodology and info contained might be helpful to someone else out there. As always thanks for reading and if you enjoyed lightly tap that like button and don't forget to follow. If you didn't like it I'd love to hear why!
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How I Made $35,000 Last Year With DeltaBadger - A Review
If I had $5 for every time a friend or family member of mine would ask me "Do you think now's a good time to buy 'X' Cryptocurrency?" I probably wouldn't be writing this post right now. Cryptocurrency is and always has been volatile and while it may look like the right time to buy in a dip today, that could all change tomorrow with the real massive dip in price. So usually my answer to that question is "Probably not, but have you heard of Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA)?"
What Dollar Cost Averaging is is buying a fixed dollar amount on a set interval, so you may buy a bit more when the price is lower and a bit less when the price is higher. In the end you should come out with a price that is below the average paid during that time. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp
Sounds simple in theory but rarely works that way in practice for one reason, humans are emotional. We think we're getting a great deal on something so we bend the rules a little and pay for a bit more, well whoops that day was actually a high day that month. Then on a day that seems to be priced high we don't buy any, well low and behold that was actually the low that month.
Dollar Cost Averaging works when applied rigidly and on a set schedule, it's been a tried and true long term investment strategy in the stock market for a while now. That's just the issue though, it must be applied rigidly and demands consistent effort towards it's application otherwise it will not work. That's where DeltaBadger comes into play, they're a beginner-friendly Dollar Cost Averaging Bot that works with most exchanges and can support all tokens. https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
*For 10% off your first purchase use this link -* *HERE* *or use the code* ***SPOONER*** *on signup, this 10% off remains active until your first purchase, whether that's tomorrow or 20 years from now. The nice thing about DeltaBadger is if you need to test it out before buying their first plan ($49/year), their basic plan is free for up to $500/year. Forever.* https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
Why Automate Your Crypto Purchases with DCA?
First lets make the case for DCA, and to do that I'll use this quote from the DeltaBadger website -
You buy an asset for a fixed dollar amount on a regular schedule regardless of its current price. You get more of the asset when the price is lower, and less of it when the price is higher. As a result, you achieve a lower average price.
**Example:** You decide to buy Bitcoin for **$100** every month:
In January, the price is **$7000**, you buy **0.0143BTC**.
In February, the price is **$5000**, you buy **0.02BTC**.
In March, the price is **$8000**, you buy **0.0125BTC**.
Your average price is **$6410** which is a bit lower than the average price in that period ($6666) since by fixing the amount spent, you adjust how you get more bitcoin than by spending the whole $300 in January at once.
Now I wanna make this clear, this is not a way for people to trade their way out of a declining market. This is simply a way for you to automate and get more Crypto for your dollar over the long haul. This is a great addition for people that are going to be buying Crypto anyway and eliminates the gamble of trying to buy at the right time. It also reduces FOMO (fear of missing out) and panic buying or selling by tempering your emotions knowing you have a long term strategy in play.
To highlight the long-term benefits of DCA, below is an infographic showing what a $100 weekly purchase of BTC over the course of 3 years ($15,700 investment), from 2018-2021 would yield ($115,470) - source: dcabtc.com https://dcabtc.com/
Using DeltaBadger
Setting up DeltaBadger is pretty straight forward. First you'll need an account at any one of the exchanges supported (Binance, Binance US, Gemini, Coinbase Pro, Kraken, BitBay, Bitso or FTX). For this post I'll be setting it up using Coinbase Pro but I've had it setup with Kraken and Binance US for quite some time now. Once you've got one of your exchange accounts funded with some fiat you'll go to your DeltaBadger account and click the exchange you're using. A new bit of info should pop up explaining how to setup your API Key (Binance is much more complicated than this). https://www.coinbase.com/join/swick_n3
Once you follow the instructions there it will ask you the interval you'd like to purchase and if you'd like to use *Smart Intervals,* I personally have it turned on but it's up to you. They have a pretty good explanation on the DeltaBadger site so I won't try to re-do it here.
Then that's it, once you click Start and have it setup you can forget it. As long as you have enough funds in your exchange account you will continue to place buy orders and reap the benefits of Dollar Cost Averaging!
Final Thoughts & Results
Even though it's in the title of this post I don't usually like sharing what my earnings are on projects. I hate sharing personal information like profits or income for many reasons I won't go into here. However for this I will share because I think sound investing strategies like DCA and DeltaBadger could definitely help people.
I personally have been using DeltaBadger with a $100 investment each week since March of last year and that ~$6,000 investment has turned into a little over $40,000. That's not insane money but it has kept me from buying into each dip and rise on the crypto market, allowing me to invest some of my money soundly and let it stack.
Since I have some of my funds allocated to a stable investing strategy, it frees up the rest of my funds to invest in higher risk/higher reward projects and thus further increase my profits.
As per usual I'm not a professional and this is not investment advice, this is just a tool I found helpful but I do think the results speak for themselves. If you're already having great success with whatever you're doing by all means ignore this! But if you'd like to have a steady investment into a coin you planned to pickup anyway, DeltaBadger may be for you!
***If you missed it above you can get 10% off your first purchase use this link -*** ***HERE*** ***or by using the code SPOONER on signup. This 10% off remains active until your first purchase, whether that's tomorrow or 20 years from now*** https://deltabadger.com/en/ref/SPOONER
**Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed don't forget to follow, like and tip. If you didn't enjoy still thanks for clicking in on this post and let me know what you disagree with! Either way happy earnings!**
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CumRocket is Up 1,300% Over the Last 7 Days - But Is It a Legit Project?
If you told me one year ago a crypto project named CumRocket would be gaining serious traction and actually look to be one of the hottest projects of 2021 I don't know if I'd believe you. I thought we had gotten past the early days of crypto when any coin you bought with a slightly funny name was guaranteed to go 100x at some point. Well with the recent meteoric rise of DOGE alternative (aka meme) crypto is making it's mark once again. So what is CumRocket? Is it a legit project? Is this just another Rugpull? I plan to get into all that and more below, let me know what you think! https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/dogecoin
What Is CumRocket?
According to their website CumRocket ($CUMMIES) is...
...a deflationary token that will be used as a tipping, messaging, custom request and sexting currency on our NSFW content platforms. These include our brand new NSFW NFT marketplace as well as our private content subscription platform.
The deflationary aspect comes in to play in that 2.5% of every transaction is redistributed to holders of CUMMIES in proportion to the amount they hold and 2.5% is burned which is meant to make the supply more scarce. The CUMMIES token is up nearly 1,300% the last 7 days as of writing this and already has close to a $300 million market cap. Pretty crazy for a token that was launched less than a month ago.
The Team
As I mentioned in a previous post on Finding the Next Low Market Cap Gem on BSC, the team behind the project is one of the most important aspects when evaluating a project. While there are projects that succeed with brand new teams, most of the time the people behind the most successful projects in crypto (and life in general) have a track record. Would you rather have a surgeon who's done only one surgery in his life amputate your leg or the guy who's doing his 1,000th successful surgery? I think the obvious choice would be the experience, it's the same in crypto. I'd rather have the team that has proven success in crypto and the market they're trying to hit than a completely green team that won't know how to handle adversity when it inevitably strikes. https://www.publish0x.com/of-fa?a=4oeEnVKa0B&tid=publish0x%20ucets-and-micro-earnings/finding-the-next-low-market-cap-gem-on-bsc-part-1-xryzvxn
So lets get on with evaluating their team. It seems they currently have a rather small one, at least listed on their website. For the purpose of reviewing this we'll look only at their top four listed, their CEO, CFO, CTO and CMO.
**Lydia (CEO)** - She is 100% doxxed and from the UK, which means if this is a scam she's going down big time for fraud. She has a background in being a TikTok influencer, a Software Engineer and entrepreneur. I can tell you from what I found all this is true, just seems to not have a ton of experience in Crypto. She even claims this in the AMA she did recently, she was more interested in Stocks until recently which to me is a little concerning but seemed very capable throughout the AMA.
**Chris (CFO)** - Listed as a trusted advisor for Value DeFi which is a fairly new yield aggregator with around $841m TVL as of 5/5/2021. Also worked on PSI and SLD both of which have very close ties to another partner of Cummies, DEGENR. PSI operates very similarly to how Cummies works in a 1% tax that is shared among all holders on transactions. Seems like Chris is a huge part of this project, which is not only evidenced by the projects that Cummies has partnered with but also how many answers he gave on the AMA. https://defillama.com/protocol/valuedefi https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/passive-income https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/soldo https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/degenerate-money
**Antonio (CTO)** - Has 15+ years of Python/Django development under his belt and was awarded the Best IoT based application on FIWARE. Also interestingly enough developed the launchpad and website for a familiar project, PSI. I couldn't find too much more on Antonio outside of the web development experience appears to be true and he appears to be pretty good at it.
**Barry (CMO)** - Has extensive experience in the adult industry, as both a producer and director for CatchingGoldDiggers. His main focus is on leading marketing strategies using his social media connections. Based on how Cummies has exploded on Twitter I'd say he's doing his job. I was interested to know if Cummies would be employing anybody that is an insider to the adult industry and Barry is the first one listed.
I listened to the entire AMA that was done with CumRocket on the 3rd of May (link to that HERE) and from what I can tell Chris has an extremely important role with CumRocket. There was also mention made of an audit, which has since been completed with the addition of a multisig wallet. They have some interesting ideas as well like 18+ NFTs with verified real life models as well as collectible NFTs with 18+ videos and sound - which both appear to have launched on DEGENR market. As well as mention of a CumRocket video game with Pokedex (a la Pokémon). It has all the markings of a brand new business fresh with ideas and excitement, which is a good thing, you need that early on to get through the hardships of starting a business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZA5eYv1umk
Disrupting a Market
Even though CumRocket is a very new project I really appreciate the deflationary nature of their tokens and their ideas. Especially since their primary use seems to be as a tipping token, there will be quite a few transactions going on which means quite a few 2.5%'s shared with their holders. I can also appreciate their full fledged dive into NFTs and the interesting way that they're doing so. From what I've read and heard from certain insiders to the adult film industry, the adult industry is completely archaic and in need of a shake up. Even if Cummies fails in a couple years I do believe the approach they've taken and some of the ground breaking ideas they've had will certainly have an impact on a reportedly stale industry.
With all the excitement I have above I do think there are some considerable risks here just like with any project. There's a ton of hype around the project which is good from a bullish standpoint but can also drive up the price to an unsustainable point. The team has quite a bit of experience, especially from the CTO and CFO, but the CEO is a little concerning to me at least when it comes to her crypto background. Maybe it's the fact that I've been involved in crypto for so long or maybe it's just that I'm pessimistic about outsiders but I don't know how well the CEO will perform considering her lack of experience in crypto. But that being said she does seem to rely heavily on her team to operate in their field of expertise so I'm not sure if that will be much of an issue. I have heard from some people that the adult industry is one of the most crypto-literate but will it catch on with bigger name stars? And does it even need to? Will this be another camming site with a Crypto focus? There's a lot of questions I have with not a lot of answers since this is all new ground.
Final Thoughts
All the concerns above didn't stop me from throwing a some money at Cummies once it hit a nice dip around $0.10. Even though I have some major concerns about it's future I still can't resist getting in on some 100x+ action. I'm always excited to see a market get shaken up. I love seeing old paradigms and industries get absolutely destroyed by new upstarts like CumRocket. So even though it's got one of the most ludicrious names for a legit crypto project I've ever seen I do think Cummeis has some actual use cases and is meant to be a true project. Now obviously I'm not a financial advisor, these are just my opinions, CumRocket could be a complete fail! I like exploring these new projects that come up as I believe learning to evaluate a projects is a skill. Whether Cummies has a true future or not remains to be seen but in my opinion it's worth checking out for yourself!
**Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed don't forget to follow, like and tip. If you didn't enjoy still thanks for clicking in on this ridiculous post and let me know what you disagree with! Either way happy earnings!**
Info on how to buy CumRocket here - https://www.youtube.com/embed/qFM6D36iMhA
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@AbsoluteUnit
