Crypto oldies, you still remember this
If you're part of the crypto class of 2021/2022 then you most probably don't know about these predictions that rocked crypto world at the time.
On the 21st January 2019, an anonymous user on 4chan predicted that the price of Bitcoin by April would be $5,300 and crazily enough it came true. He/She also predicted that by July of 2019 Bitcoin would then be trading at $9,200, funny enough this also came true and at this point many who doubted had begun to believe and see this anon as the next best thing after octopus Paul.
The next prediction in the line was for October 2019 and people were setting long bids and buying up waiting for Bitcoin to hit the predicted $16,000. This was however not the case and the price tanked and needless to say a lot of people who were waiting on this price lost money, but they were ready to forget this as the predicter had gotten two right.
The next prediction was for February 2020, and the prediction was that Bitcoin would be valued. This was also a big fat failure and many again lost a lot of money.
The final two predictions are for July and November 2020. He/She predicted that by July price would be $56k and by November 2020 price would be at $87k. After an almost 20 month bull run between 2020 and 2021, Bitcoin still didn't hit 87k.
There's a lesson in there, never trust online figures or fellow anons on the internet to guide you in making financial decisions. I believe that even the most expert technical analysis gurus many times don't know what they're doing especially in a highly manipulated market like crypto is. Stay safe out there guys and hope you're holding strong through this dip.
Indicators to help your trading.
When going into Cryptocurrency trading, the goal is to be profitable. Everyone knows the risk involved of losing your capital can lose your capital, but the allure of making money far outweighs the risk. To further contain these risks and make your trading more profitable, there are some basic indicators that can help make your analysis more accurate and increase profitability. In no particular order, these indicators are:
1) The RSI: The RSI is a momentum indicator that shows the trader whether an asset is being overbought or oversold. It performs this function by measuring the level of recent price changes in the market.
This means that when momentum is increasing and at the same time price is rising, then the uptrend is strong and more buyers are coming into the market. Inversely, if momentum is decreasing while the price is rising, it may show that sellers are soon to take control over the market. A simple way many people interpret the RSI is that when it’s over 70, the asset is overbought, and when it’s under 30, it is oversold. When it's overbought you can expect a reversal as traders might begin to sell off for profit and when it's oversold you can also expect a pullback as many will begin to buy. It is a great forecasting tool and shows key points to get in or exit a trade.
2) BOLLINGER BANDS: Bollinger Bands are used to measure the volatility in the market, as well as the rates at which the markets are overbought or oversold. Bollinger Bands are made up of three lines - an SMA (the middle band), and an upper and lower band. The settings may be a bit different, but typically the upper and lower bands in most are two standard deviations away from the middle band. As volatility increases and decreases, the distance between the bands increases and decreases as well.
One way you can interpret Bollinger Bands is that the closer the price is to the upper band, the closer to being overbought the Cryptocurrency you are monitoring may be (and you can expect a reversal). Inversely, the closer the price is to the lower band, then the currency is likewise close to being oversold conditions and at this point you can look to buy as it might increase in price. Another way in which traders read Bollinger Bands is what is called the squeeze. This is a period of low volatility, where all the bands come very close to each other. This may be used as an indication of potential future volatility. Conversely, if the bands are very far from each other, a period of decreased volatility may follow.
3) SIMPLE & EXPONENTIAL MOVING AVERAGES: The Moving average unlike the other two we have looked is a lagging indicator. The previous two we have examined (the RSI and Bollinger Bands) are indicators that shows you the market as it happens presently, while the Moving Average is based on past price data. It helps the trader to smooth out price action by filtering out the market distraction and highlighting the trend direction. There are two commonly used Moving Averages and they are; the simple moving average (SMA or MA), and the exponential moving average (EMA).
The Simple Moving Average is simply plotted by taking price data from a specific period and from therein producing an average. For instance, the 30-day SMA is plotted by calculating the average price over the last 30: days. The Exponential Moving Average, on the other hand is the opposite of the Simple moving Average, it is calculated based on the recent price data. This makes the Exponential moving Average more reactive to recent price action as opposed to the SMA which is a fully lagging indicator.
As I have previously mentioned, the Moving Average are lagging indicators but the EMA is a slightly more recent rice based of the two. While using the Moving Averages, traders look at past price action and by so doing predict how the prices will swing next.
It will however be worthy of note that no indicator is perfect all the time. They might give false and misleading data so it’s not advisable to depend on only one indicator for market data. I personally use the Exponential moving Average, the RSI and the Bollinger bands to better understand what direction the market is moving in. you also should learn not to depend on just one indicator alone.
NOTE: This does not in any way constitute technical analysis advice. Pls always endeavour to carry out research before entering a trade. Trading is risky and should be approached with caution.
Are your investments in great projects?
At this stage we're all down significantly, I personally am down about 50% in my entire crypto portfolio holding and well it isn't a nice feeling at all. If you were able to sell the top and avoid the dump, I honestly envy you . I was able to sell top on a one or two of my altcoin holdings but nowhere near enough.
But while it does hurt to be down, I reassure myself that it will all come back if I don't become a forced seller. This is because all or well a very large majority of my investments are with great projects. Projects that I believe in their vision and I know are going to do really well. So while we can't predict the future we can hazard to take educated guesses on what's to come after carrying out thorough research. So I guess the question really is; "Anon are your investments with great projects, or did you invest in dog shit"?
Whatever your answer is that's for you to live with. If it is with great projects, then congrats because in the long run it will come back. In spite of all the craziness in the market, do stay strong guys. Do other things you enjoy, take walks, spend time with your families, get jobs to occupy your times and don't spend it all staring at charts and the likes.
The market is choppy right now and it'll get a lot of people rekt. I have given up trying to time the market but if you can do a better job then good luck. I hope everyone is alright and wagmi hopefully. Happy Chinese New Year and cheers to a big 2022.
In market conditions like these
It wasn't about the money we made, it was really about the friends we made along the way xD. The market truly gave us one of the greatest bull runs in the history of bull runs and now we are going through some similar tribulations. While many believe that it is the start of a bear market I am not quite of the same opinion just yet. I believe that there was too much money in the market and it was definitely meant to implode at some point but I also believe that most definitely in the long term we will be alright.
In my time in the space I have witnessed some crazy drops and I would say I have grown a thick skin to crypto drops. The May 2020 drop is perhaps one that will linger with me for the longest. It honestly looked like it was the end, with COVID still new and everyone scared, the stock market was a mess and everything conspired to look like shit and it felt like the end had come. The market really looked like it was going to zero and that was one of the worst cases of dread I have ever known. However we came out of it unscathed and I understand that we all need a coping mechanism, no matter what sort of thick skin you have, seeing your investments drop by over half isn't a good sight to see.
That's why I only invest in projects I believe in. I believe very strongly that when you invest in strong projects the money does always come back to you. When the market is right they will show their strength. I have been investing a lot in other chains. I strongly believe in the potential of Avalanche, Harmony, Dusk and a few others. While I have also experienced losses in these drops like every other person, I know that my investments are in strong projects and they are fine. I had a bit of my portfolio in stablecoins, but not as much as I would want. I was still quite exposed and the drop took a hit.
I will be the first to state that I am no expert and all this is not in any way financial or investing advice, do please carry out your own research, but I do believe this is the time to be buying. It is truly in times like this that wealth is transferred. If you have alternate sources of earning and can afford to put some into crypto be sure to do that. I personally am waiting on my paycheck and I'll be buying soon. Cheers to becoming the new Elites.
Are we still early?
This is an everlasting debate on Crypto Twitter and there seems to be no satisfactory answer yet. The question is; “Are we still early to crypto”? Those for the argument believe that with the adoption already happening there’s definitely still more to come and that can only positively affect the price. Last year we saw the first country in the world accept Bitcoin as legal tender (El Salvador), we saw another country just this year (Tonga) accept donations in Bitcoin. We have seen some of the biggest brands and companies like Pepsi, Nike, Adidas, Rakuten and so many others all exploring with blockchain, crypto, NFTs and the Metaverse. We’ve seen some of the biggest hedge funds and institutional investors pivot on their stands on cryptocurrency and add crypto to their investments and balance sheets. All of this feels some market players with confidence that we are still early and there is still more upward movement to be attained.
These signs however to some mean that we are no longer as early as we think. With more institutional investors and big-name brands coming into the space, it means that there will be more regulations and maybe we’re really not as early as we think. To these people, before these brands come into the industry they must be convinced that it is in their best interest and they are not staunch believers in the technology. There has been an enormous growth of Venture Capitalists in the space, and it’s easier now more than ever for projects to raise funds. To this set of people, this sort of culture is not sustainable it is definitely going to implode and the entire crypto market will be worse for it, to this set we are setting up for an extended bear market the likes of what was seen between 2018/2019.
In deciding what side to pitch my tent with, I believe that we must assess both arguments and they are both sensible and logical arguments. While there has been an influx of institutional investors and some of the biggest brands in the world has been something to celebrate as a crypto enthusiast, it also raises concerns. The fact that these ‘smart investors’ are pivoting to crypto and see blockchain technology as one that has a future is something that anyone who has been in the space is most definitely happy for.
However, there are also alarm bells as every day we see more and more reasons why there might in fact be a very extended bear market. The market has proven that it goes in cycles and we just witnessed the greatest bull run ever. We watched Bitcoin grow from $20,000 to over $69,000 in just over a year, we saw alts go ballistic and make so many people life-changing money, we saw 6 figure airdrops, we saw projects raise insane amounts of money, we saw an influx of so many noobs, we saw some of the biggest scams and rug pulls in the industry. It all begs the question that when does this end? The market has been choppy for a while now and to many, this might be the signal to an upcoming bear market. I for one do not think we are going into a bear market, but it does call for caution, the market is just unreal right now and it calls for caution and a bit of worry.
My hedging strategy
Every player in the crypto game knows that as much as there are enormous gains to be made, there is probably the highest volatility to be found, one that can wipe you out very quickly. As someone who is very active in a bunch of markets, from the crypto market to the stock market, Forex and even Indices trading, I understand volatility a lot. Crypto volatility however is a crazy game on its own.
I stopped trading futures and crypto generally when I figured out it wasn't for me. I majorly buy bags I'm confident in and hold for a while for decent profit before selling. However I have learnt that the most gains are gotten from the most volatile of assets.
In bull markets altcoins make you the most gains and in bear markets they give you the most losses. While in bull markets Bitcoin and Ethereum give you the least gains and in bear markets they bring you lesser losses. These two are the biggest and will remain the biggest projects for the foreseeable future, and while they are also volatile and speculative, they are in some ways "safe".
And so my strategy is pretty simple, I buy altcoins and when I want to sell I convert them into Ethereum and Bitcoin. So I am constantly growing my Bitcoin and Ethereum portfolios. This is not to say that I do not keep stable coins or have a USDT portfolio, I allocate maybe too much to stable coins in fact, but you are always sure to find $ETH and $BTC heavily in my portfolio.
I'm situations where there is a dump my altcoins portfolios might drop 50% while my BTC and ETH portfolios drop 10 to 15%. When prices show signs of recovering I can then go back into those altcoin portfolios and they are usually still always way down from their previous prices so it makes for good entry points and I'm up in my ETH and BTC bags. At that point I'm up in BTC and ETH holdings, I'm also usually back at either break even it back in profit and to cap it all up I'm back into my altcoins at cheaper prices.
I will also admit this is incredible. Timing the market is almost impossible and doing this negates the whole buy, hold and forget strategy as it requires a bit of time to monitor prices. But doing this will give you great entet points and help increase your bags.
Top 5 Crypto Hacks!!!
Any one who has been into crypto for at least 2 years has most probably experienced more than one hack or loss of funds. For all the life changing money that crypto can make you, it can also take away that money in the blink of an eye. Either through hackers constantly targeting these exchanges, protocols and projects that control massive amounts of user funds, or by the users themselves falling for scams, phishing hacks or rug pulls. Today we examine 5 of the biggest hacks (monetary wise) that have happened in crypto. They are;
**5. BitGrail**: $146m was hacked from BitGrail, an Italian exchange in Feb 2018. It’s estimated that 230,000 users were affected and around $140-$195 million was lost. The hackers were reported to have begun siphoning funds in January but it was until February 10 that Francesco Firano, BitGrail’s founder, ceased operations and notified authorities. It was too late, and to make it worse the police found evidence of Firano’s involvement in the attack. He was charged with computer fraud, fraudulent bankruptcy and money laundering. As of August 2021, the case remains unsolved and the exchange has been ordered to refund users' stolen assets ASAP.
**4.** **KuCoin:** Kucoin, one of the leading crypto exchanges was attacked Sept 25th 2020 and is estimated to have lost around $281m in the hack, but the exchange was able to recover most of the funds and refund users. The attack is suspected to have been carried out by North Korean hackers. Kucoin however was able to recover 84% of the stolen funds by partnering with blockchain data firm Chainalysis to track stolen funds, and cooperating with law enforcement agencies and fellow exchanges. The rest of the stolen funds were refunded to users from the exchanges’ capital and insurance fund.
**3. MtGox:** MtGox at some point was the biggest exchange in the world, handling over 70% of all Bitcoin transactions. However, the development of its backend stagnated and it made the exchange an ideal target for hackers. Hackers kept stealing Bitcoin from the exchange from late 2011up till Feb 24 2014, by then they had stolen 744,408 Bitcoins valued at $460 million then, but today worth $35 billion. MtGox filed for bankruptcy soon after though there has been victim claims’ processes, funds have never been fully returned to the affected users. It remains one of the most significant crypto hacks.
2. **Coincheck**: On Jan 26 2018, $534m was stolen from Japanese exchange Coincheck. 523 million NEM (XEM) valued at 530 million at the time were stolen after they were stored in a hot wallet by the exchange. The exchange admitted that they were hacked because they had technical difficulties and shortage of staff resulting in poor security practices. Coincheck eventually reimbursed all customers with their own capital and they did not shut down. They are still in operation to this day.
1. **Poly Network:** The hack of Poly Network, is the largest confirmed crypto heist in history. $610m was hacked from the Chinese platform on Aug 10, 2021 in various coins. A hacker, or group of hackers, found a way to release funds stored on the Network without receiving legitimate permission from another blockchain. The Poly Network team were able to reach out to the hacker and established communication soon after the attack and the total stolen funds was returned.
The story in this is that no platform or exchange is 100% safe and the best advice one can give is to store your digital assets in a cold wallet and try to diversify them in case funds are stolen so all your holdings don’t get cleaned in one move.
How to get rich off crypto airdrops!!!
Crypto airdrops have grown to become a real thing and make very good money off these airdrops. In a lot of countries around the world right now getting $10,000 for free off an airdrop is a lot of money especially considering the inflation and the difficulty in earning. There have been some big-name airdrops this year like the Paraswap airdrop and the ENS airdrop amongst a host of others. Lots of other projects touted to have airdrops to reward early adopters and users. The question however is, in the sea of crypto projects how do you find projects likely to have airdrops.
Airdrop farming has grown to become a real thing and staying on top of potential airdrops can be tedious. However, the game is one that is won only because of the information you have. The Defi industry still promises to have a lot of airdrops in the future.
MetaMask is touted to have an airdrop soon, same for Zapper, same with OpenSea, you would do well to try others like Phantom wallet, Sequence wallet, and games without tokens like Skyweaver and lots of others.
Exploring other chains will also be very profitable in haunting for airdrops especially. Chains like Avalanche, Arbitrum, Fantom and the likes with a lot of new projects being onboarded. Many of them will not have a lot of users and will be looking for ways to create buzz about themselves and an airdrop right now is one of the surest ways to do that. The Arbitrum portal is a good place to start it contains all the DApps on Arbitrum, some projects are without a token and those are the ones to use;
**Arbitrum Porta****l** https://portal.arbitrum.one/
The Avalanche Network also has a lot of DApps to check out with potential for airdrops
**Avalanche Ecosystem** https://ecosystem.avax.network/marketplace?tag=
You can also check out Defi Airdrops on Telegram and Twitter to get the scope on projects likely to release airdrops before they go live;
**Follow the Defi Airdrops Twitter** https://twitter.com/defi_airdrops
The next wave of crypto adoption
In the past 2 years we have seen different waves of crypto and blockchain growth. There have been varying stages that brought new users into the market.
In 2020 we had Defi summer and we saw the growth and explosion of decentralized finance. Defi projects grew to crazy bounds and that attracted a lot of new people to the crypto market. Then we saw the NFTs book earlier this year. The love of Art and the earning potential that NFTs brought was absolutely crazy to a lot of people and that also attracted a lot of new people to the market. I believe that next year we will in fact witness another wave of growth.
The next wave of crypto expansion I believe we will see really kicking off next year will be the Metaverse. I believe we have already begun to see a prelude to what's to come for that industry. We have seen projects like Axie Infinity, Decentraland, Sandbox and the likes. According to Grayscale, one of the biggest Digital investment firms, the Metaverse could grow to become a trillion dollar per year industry. Facebook's name change to Meta and their continued investment in the space is one that is adding the allure of the Metaverse.
I am currently invested in a couple of sub 300 million market cap Metaverse projects and I'm always on the look out for more to get into. I believe the industry is still early and getting in right now is like getting into Defi in its early days before things skyrocketed. Growth wise I think next year will be a tremendous one for real and solid Metaverse projects to boom. As always in the face of real growth, there will be many projects which have no usecase and are just cash grabs for their founders. So do be careful as you go in the hunt for the next Metaverse gem.
You make the most money in crypto by either being early to something, or betting really big on it. And I think there's a chance we're still early to the Metaverse sector. Everyone should take advantage of that.
3 Top alts I'll never hodl!!
Just to clarify and put it out there, these are only my personal opinions and it doesn't take anything away from these projects. They are all doing big things and can be said to have achieved stuff, but you’ll never see me touching them or my money anywhere near these projects. When I first got into crypto I used to be a big Ethereum fanboy and I loved their tech, I still do, but as a small retail investor the gas fees are just unreasonable and I had to start exploring other chains and L2 solutions. There are however some projects and tokens you would not see me trying or buying.Without much ado and in no particular order, here are the 3 top altcoins that I will never buy
Ripple (XRP) :
Now this project I really don't like at all. I think their Ripple Army on Twitter really need re-orientating. They hold on to an illusion that fills them with false hope while the founder and team are robbing them in broad daylight. In my unsought after opinion, I think Ripple is a shitcoin. I don't like any project that a co-founder has been selling off his tokens for years amounting to billions of dollars. I also don't like a project that floods the market every month with 1 billion XRP all in the name of creating more liquidity. The Ripple army pride themselves that their project has a use case and is being used by big banking institutions, I think they need something to keep believing, their own hopium. I don’t hold any XRP and I stay away from it like the plague, both for trading and hodling.
Tron (TRX):
Tron I also don't like but for a whole different reason. Justin Sun, their founder, used to in my opinion be a scrawny kid that always wanted to be in the news and was latching onto Warren Buffet like a fly. His marketing style back then was just cringe and distasteful, I'm sure Twitter made a ton of money from all his crazy ads back then, publicizing his lunch meeting with Warren Buffet after he paid over $4.5 million for the meeting. Then after the meeting with Warren Buffet, news came out that the thousands of dollars of TRX tokens he gave to Warren were given to a charity that was just funny. Justin Sun also didn't help his reputation with the whole Steemit and Hive brouhaha, the hostile takeover and censorship he brought to Steemit which led its delegators to break off and create the Hive platform.
it's just short term buy and sell for me. is getting more mature it seems now, and he is no more
Recently though it seems that Justin Sun has matured, you now hear less about him in the news and he goes about his business quietly amassing all his billions. I have begun having a quiet respect for the man seeing all he has built at his young age. I have traded Tron in the past a couple of times and I have made decent profit from them but I for no reason like them as a project to invest in. It has always been short term buys for me, a quick intraday buy and sell, TRX has never been a project i look at as a long term hodl.
Cardano (ADA):
In my early years in crypto, i used to have some hope for Cardano as something that was going to go very big and maybe one day challenge Ethereum for its spot. The narrative around Cardano is a truly beautiful one; founded by a co-founder at Ethereum who believed he could fix the shortcomings of the Ethereum network, Cardano being reviewed by professors and some of the most learned minds in the world and so it cannot fail, Cardano adopted by governments and nations around the world, Cardano leading the way in goodwill and giving so much back to the society, the founder choosing the quiet life hence why he lives in a farm and chooses to look 5 times older than he actually is.
When you get to understand it all better though you realize that it’s all hogwash and Cardano is vaporware. They have been promising a project for so long and spectacularly underdelivered, the project is one that had so much anticipation and expectation riding on it, but it has very well failed to live up to any of them. It is one would never even trade, let alone buy and hodl, I avoid it and its community.
Like I said these are all just my opinion, they all are still good projects in their own right, we all just look out for different things in projects. Some of them still have a lot of potential if they pivot from the paths they are on, and can still do big things I might be very wrong in my analysis and they can go on to prove me very wrong, just sharing my thoughts.
My Top 3 NFTs Usecase
NFTs are the new rave, everyone seems to be making money from them and there seems to be a new drop every other day on crypto Twitter. Celebrities have wholeheartedly jumped on the NFTs bandwagon and every project I know today has already incorporated NFTs into their plans or planning to do so in the nearest future. Such is the hype around NFTs that once you get into the community, you need to have a strong will power to control yourself over-buying. The honest truth however from all I've seen is that 90% of NFTs have no utility apart from being profile pictures. The little nameless NFT projects are nothing more than profile pictures for their buyers, and the big name projects can maybe be seen as a store of value as price is expected to increase overtime.
1) Store of value:
This is the most popular use case for NFTs in my opinion. A large majority of those buying them see them as a store of value that is expected to increase overtime. Sadly it's mostly the big name NFT projects that fulfill this use case. A lot of the smaller name NFT projects that pump like crazy can be expected to dump over time. Some examples of projects I think fulfill this use case include; Crypto Punks, Fidenzas, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and a bunch of really big name NFTs. These in my opinion are those that can classify as stores of value because there will always be more rich people who want to buy them as a flex most importantly. I could be wrong and as I have said repeatedly it's just my opinion.
2) Royalties:
This is gradually growing to be a popular use case with NFTs. Artists can now use NFTs to give Royalties to their fans and loyal following who buy them. Holders of the NFTs are entitled to some of the Royalties from the music or artwork which they hold as NFTs. This is a pretty dope use case that I believe will encourage many to come into the NFTs space as who doesn't like a good side source of income and getting Royalties from music and artworks is most definitely as good as it gets. Projects like Band Royalty allows users to buy NFTs that gives them Royalties to artists' music and other forms of art.
3) Revenue generating:
This is one very innovative NFT use case that I came across recently and it is one I believe that we will grow to see many projects adopt as a way to reward their community and believers. Imagine a project like Uniswap or OpenSea released their NFTs and holders of the NFTs get a percentage of all the revenue that these platforms get. These are both platforms that process billions of dollars in transactions daily, and a percentage of those transactions goes back to the project as their revenue. So what if a percentage of those revenue are given back to the community, kind of how stocks give dividends.
It is pretty innovative in my opinion and there already is a project with that model and their name is POLKAPARTY. Holders of their PartyApes NFTs are going to be rewarded with 20% of all the platform's revenue. Only 1,000 PartyApe NFTs were released and currently according to OpenSea there are just 134 owners. This is going to be a great source of passive income and it's one model I believe that many projects will emulate in the coming months.
Why do meme & shit coins have the strongest communities?
As a Crypto Marketing Specialist who has worked with quite a handful of projects in my 3 years in the space, this is a question that never ceases to bug me. Apart from the Bitcoin maxis community and the Ethereum dev community, I don't think I have quite seen any other communities as strong and loyal as what we see with a lot of shit and meme coins. This question has lingered for so long because I know what it takes to build a community.
I personally know how hard it is and that is because the average crypto investor has experienced a scam or a rug pull and that makes them sceptical. They question every move the team makes and you have to keep reiterating to them that the team is genuine and here to stay for the long term. It truly is many times a tiring and thankless endeavour and I have seen many CEO and founders in the crypto space complain about how frustrating it can be with crypto investors.
Then here comes these meme coins and their shit coin partners who have a higher chance of being scams and yet people flock to them and you see their community actively and vigorously talking about them everywhere on social media. I have been on quite a couple of job interviews as a marketing specialist where I was asked what I think the strongest crypto project community is and why. To be honest, the first project that always comes to mind is Dogecoin, that is because their community is so strong and never seems to lose faith in the project that it truly is astounding.
Then came Shiba Inu and it seems that Dogecoin's throne is being challenged. I personally never invest in projects like these and I tell anyone who cares to listen not to because they have no utility and I doubt they will be here for the long run or survive a bear market. However I have spent hours studying these projects and their communities to understand how they did it to grow both very large and very loyal communities. Communities that will keep promoting them even when they are obvious cash grabs.
Recently I have begun to notice yet another who I believe has a strong community also. Their name is floki and I have been seeing a lot of talk about them on Twitter and Reddit. I am nowhere close to getting the answer I am looking for and that means I probably will keep researching but I have found that the hope that these coins will grow to make their holders crazy gains is one unifying factor.
That being said, if you know any other reasons for this phenomenon, please be sure to share. Like I said I don't invest in them but I'm open to learning from them xD.
Why I believe in Status Messaging!!
“Private Messaging” is a word that we see casually thrown around these days. Even the most centralised of giants like Facebook and the likes who make a killing off selling OUR DATA also claim to be private messaging options. Casually taking the time to read the privacy policies that we many times unconsciously sign up for will leave you in awe as we basically give them access to all of our data and information. A quick glance across these contracts would show that the word ‘privacy’ is a ruse and though it is a necessary evil these apps are far from being private. It is easy to see that to the big corporations users data is a lucrative enterprise and that is why they will keep selling our data.
This has however given rise to a new wave of privacy apps right now that offer true privacy. Blockchain and decentralized networks might be the only solutions to privacy and data protection as we know it. This is because some of the core principles on which Blockchain is built are decentralization, privacy and the anonymity that the network provides. This is what private messaging apps should posses to be able to live up to the name they claim. The apps should be decentralized and not controlled by a central authority, provide maximum privacy for users and not give back end access to some people, and they should also offer users anonymity from prying eyes.
We are witnessing a rise in blockchain solutions dedicated to making privacy truly a reality. One of them is Status Privacy app; an app like the name says that dedicated to bringing true privacy to its users. Status comes with inbuilt privacy as users have to choose a three-word identity phrase to keep their identity hidden.
The three word names are given to protect users privacy, and they can interact as they want without fear of being doxxed. Status also comes with an inbuilt wallet that allows users to store all their ERC-20 tokens. It’s one of the coolest features of Status to me; I can throw some crypto there and forget it which is the perfect form of hodling.
Another cool feature that Status comes with is their in-app browser that allows users to access Web 3 DApps. All the big name apps like MetaMask, Trust Wallet and the likes come with in-app browsers and Status is no exception. It is still very much undervalued project right now, it is one whose team is constantly working to innovate and build to be better, and I don't think Status will stay undervalued for much longer. I think the Status Network is one that will grow into a pretty big ecosystem and you should be a part of that growth.
To download the Status App and begin enjoying true privacy, click the link below;
https://status.im/
Please be Cautious while Investing!!!
I have seen it happen over and over again, like a scene from a movie that keeps replaying over and over. First market is in the red, then prices start going up and can't seem to stop going up. Everyone becomes euphoric and can't stop screaming "Up Only" and for good reason. It is literally the Up Only season, everything seems to go up. From solid fundamental coins to meme tokens and shit coins they all will be in the green. Fear and Greed Index and usually over 80% with everyone becoming extremely greedy and wanting to make as much money as they can. And then it happens again, there is a wicked dump and we see reports of billions of dollars worth of liquidations and lost. It's almost like they are just mere numbers but it is some people's life savings and some other mortgage money or children's school fees going down the drain. All those who thought they could make life changing money or generational wealth are forced to start all over again with nothing.
It has happened much too many times and yet so many still fall for it when it happens again. As I write this, Bitcoin is currently above $61,000 and Ethereum is above $3,700. While this is good news as it means we all make money it is also worrisome. The Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index stands at 78% Greed and the Ethereum Fear and Greed Index stands at 72% Greed. This means that a lot of people aren't taking out profit but are rather leveraging more and looking to make more money. When we get the crash that is almost certain to happen it will be very bloody for these set of people.
Another set of people at risk are those who are taking profit but buying into altcoins at these prices. It is generally believed that when Bitcoin and Ethereum boom in price, money generally moves into altcoins also as alts provide more gains. So a lot of people buy alts hoping for astronomical gains. This has been found not to be the case though as those who make gains are those who bought when the market was red. The risk of buying at these prices is that when the market eventually dumps like it surely will, those who bought at these prices will be very well and heavily underwater.
You don't want to be the guy who buys tokens at All Time Highs and then has to hope that prices beat All Time High to at least record some gains. The ones who make the most profit are those who invest in a token early. We have seen a lot of stories of many who lose it all when the market crashes. In my 3 years in the industry I have come across some of the most heartbreaking stories. Men losing it all, having to abandon their children, going homeless, losing their life savings and retirement plans.
Please be cautious, it's all about the long term, the one who gains the most is he who is there for the long term. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose and be sure to do your due diligence. That being said, Up Only and hope all our bags make it to the moon 🚀🚀.
The Status Network Enigma
The Status Network is an open set of projects that have over the years been building and are still building peer-to-peer technologies for people to transact in a safe and secure manner and communicate freely. Together, the network is building a suite of decentralized technologies from low-level protocols, to developer tools and even consumer products & applications that empowers people all over the world to take control. The Status Network focus is to ensure security, privacy, and peer-to-peer infrastructure products to enable local societies and economies to thrive.
The Status Network is driven by a goal to build the means for freedom for anyone who wants to take control back into their hands. The network provides sets of tools and infrastructure to help diverse communities around the globe achieve greater autonomy. The apps under the Status Network help to ensure private communication and the freedom to organize. There are also commerce tools that help to trade and access a wealth of open financial services. We also have Open source software for developers that helps them harness a p2p stack to create their own applications that uphold human rights and fosters economic opportunity. There are also Mobile applications that enable equal access to information and data even in the most remote areas in the world and decentralized neutral p2p protocols that don’t have a point of control.
Some of the DApps under the Status Network include;
**Status Network**, the crown jewel of the network, a private messaging app that protects users’ privacy by giving a three-word identity, could be something like “Torn Better Yak”, this helps to ensure anonymity. Status is also built with state-of-the-art Web 3 technology and browser that allows users access to the growing ecosystem of DApps including marketplaces, exchanges, games and social networks. The State of the art security standards ensure that users only get the best private browsing experience
https://status.im/
**Keycard**, a new type of smartcard and open-source API for simple integration with crypto wallets, DApps, and hardware. Designed to safely send, store, and receive cryptocurrencies in a seamless contactless experience.
https://keycard.tech/
**Assemble**, a decentralized project funding that helps creators and developers get the funding needed to build their Web3 projects.
https://assemble.fund/
These are just to mention a few of the projects in the Status Network. The Status Network is definitely one that is here to stay for sure!!!
A Case for $SNT
As I write this, Bitcoin is above $51k, Ethereum is above $3500 and it is both exhilarating and scary for what the future has to hold. As we have seen numerous times in the past when these two begin moving as they are now, they tend to drag the whole Cryptocurrency market with them upwards. We have already began seeing large moves for some alts, Shiba Inu has boomed like hell in the last couple of days and that is good news to tokens with solid fundamentals. A lot of very strong alts are in the red as I write this and if the run for Bitcoin and Ethereum continue, we can begin to hope for big moves for them too pretty soon.
If there is anything we learnt from the crazy volatility we saw in the last couple of weeks, it is that altcoins still have enormous potential for price growth and many are well below their All Time High giving big room for growth.
Anyone who has been in any altcoin run will know that the projects to bet on are those with solid Fundamentals and a strong working product, which are still so undervalued. I’ve talked about a couple of them overtime from; Solana, to FTT, to PolkaParty and one of my all time favorites, Status Network. They all have been doing spectacularly well and I am super excited for what is to come for all my picks. One I’m especially confident about is Status a messenger app that offers maximum privacy.
With the recent privacy tussle that we saw with WhatsApp showing that they do not care about user data and privacy, we saw apps like Telegram and Signal able to leverage off that and add exponential number of users in mere days. The fight for privacy will lead many to try out other social and messenger apps, the ones who will truly guarantee privacy and not just saying it for saying sake.
I have been fortunate to try out so many apps in my own quest for privacy and one of the best I’ve found has to undoubtedly be Status. It comes embedded with privacy tools and not just chats been encrypted through Blockchain technology, but also usernames themselves are also private and unknown. The app users do not know who is on the other end of the conversation because users upon signing up are given a three word username which is indecipherable and indiscernible. Privacy is of paramount importance to them and it is was one of the reasons I decided to try them out, and now it’s one of the reasons I’m still using the app even in spite of the plethora of options out there.
As at the time of writing this, their SNT token is sitting at $0.0894, this is very significant growth from the last time I wrote about them. They have a Market Cap of $347,033,655. Best of all for me, they are listed on Binance which is where I do all of my trading. Still very much undervalued if you ask me, I truly believe they will do rather well in the not too distant anymore altseason, a bag sure wouldn’t hurt.
To download the Status App and begin enjoying true privacy, click the link below;
https://status.im/get/
My Status Experience.....
I have been using the Status Network app for over a year and I am deeply in love with the multi-versatility that it offers. Status allows users to use a Private Messaging app, a wallet and a Web 3 Browser. It is one app that I would highly recommend to everyone looking to try something out of the norm, those looking to try a messaging app apart from the popular big me ones. While crypto adoption is moving forward, there are still many things all of us can do to fasten it. I would love to see crypto and Status grow and see increased adoption and I'm doing my bit by spreading the word about Status to actualise that dream.
Status application which combines private messaging, secure crypto transactions, and Web3 DApp browsing in your pocket. It brings you the best of all worlds and it's one app I always like to talk about whenever I'm given the opportunity. It's a solid pick for me with enormous long term potential.
Status is now available both on Mobile ( iOs and Android) and Desktop (Mac, Linux, Windows) and you can download it here:
https://status.im/get/
The SNT is the official token of the Status network (based on the Ethereum blockchain) and you can learn all about it and it's utility here
https://status.im/snt-utility/
I especially love Status for always keeping in touch with their community. It is one project I know that releases consistent projects keeping their community in the loop of their activities, growth, setbacks and the likes. These updates are usually shared openly through periodically organzed town hall meetings, where everyone can join in and participate. The recordings are also made available later for those who weren't present to watch or read(whichever you prefer) and get the latest town hall Status news. From the news shared during their last town hall meeting, here are some key information about Status Network;
Status is actively hiring new members to join the team and achieve more. There are 17 new roles on the team and Community members can refer qualified individuals they know.
Also more fantastic features have been added to the Desktop app to make the experience way smoother and memorable.
The next update release will also set the UI to include informing of an online and offline state.
User growth continues, especially in African and South American countries where the app is experiencing massive adoption.
Since the beginning of this year, close to 1.6 million app installs, or approximately 7400 app installs per day
Over 12 000 active daily users
Status was a partner of ETHCC event in July
Status Ambassador program is growing rapidly. New ambassadors joined all around the world. You can also join the program if you're interested and help spread the word about Status.
https://ambassador.status.im/
Status is definitely one app I'm super excited for. I think they have a very solid use case and that they will be here for the long term as it's mostly apps with solid FA that last for the long term, and I'm sure Status has that solid FA
Will there ever be an Ethereum killer?
Since it's ICO in 2014, Ethereum has grown to in my opinion become the Chain of chains. It has overtaken the Bitcoin chain to become the standard for measuring growth in the Crypto industry. Ethereum has brought the most development to the crypto industry with the number of DApps it has brought to the scene. Ethereum was single handedly responsible for DeFi summer as 95% of the DApps were on the Ethereum network. I won't write this piece and only paint Ethereum in a good light, yes it has its shortcomings. Scalability is an issue and the gas continues to price a lot of people out, but I always find it funny when I hear people say no one is using Ethereum because of the high gas fees. The opposite is the case, it is precisely because a lot of people are using the chain that causes congestion and leads to gas fees being so high. But that can definitely be improved upon for sure
But just like any market leader there is a lot of competition for Ethereum's place as the top network. Over the years we have seen a lot of projects touted as Ethereum killers and they have slowly faded into obscurity overtime for some reasons. First, every project or DApp needs users and the most users are on the Ethereum network. So no matter how much projects raise in funding to rival Ethereum and how great their product is, when there are no users it goes obsolete. Another is because most devs are on Ethereum mainnet, there are big incentives to mine and work in Ethereum than most other chains. We have seen an awful lot of projects over the years referred to as Ethereum killers.
There was EOS back in the day touted as a big Ethereum killer. EOS even without a product raised over 4 billion dollars. I will be honest, I used EOS back in the day and it was cheap and fast, it was a great place for gaming DApps and a music streaming one I knew of back then. The EOS selling point was that it could handle 1000 transactions per second while Ethereum currently handles about 30 transactions per second. EOS failed monumentally and right now it's pretty much an abandoned project with no DApps moving there, no new users and basically dragging the existing DApps there to the ground with it. I liked it at some point but saw its lapses and the shady personality of the founder and I backed out. Another big fail was Ripple. Ripple was founded years before Ethereum, was cheaper than Ethereum and could process more transactions than Ethereum. Till this day Ripple diehards still see it as a project that can match Ethereum, definitely not with a 100 billion total supply and not with a team that regularly publicly dumps tokens on their community. I was not happy for the SEC case that Ripple had, because it wasn't good for the entire crypto community, but the team at Ripple had profited way too much from dumping their tokens not to attract attention. Yes many will argue Vitalik also sold his Ethereum holding, he didn't hold half as much as the Ripple team did and he's still on the project building, unlike the Ripple guys who have practically abandoned it. Then again there was also Cardano, founded by one of the Ethereum Co-founders Charles Hoskinson and in my opinion not a competition at all. Cardano described itself as a 3rd generation platform looking to significantly improve those things that have been identified as shortcomings in 1st generation (Bitcoin — decentralized money) and 2nd generation (Ethereum — smart contracts) blockchain platforms. Cardano’s goal was to become the “Internet of Blockchains” and establish interoperability not only between block chains such as BTC, ETH and the likes but also to legacy systems of the banking world. While it was all very ambitious it was more difficult to put it into reality than it was to put on the fine print. Cardano has been promising smart contracts for the past 2 years and they went live yesterday they were still unusable. For a 3rd generation platform they are still lagging behind Ethereum even after all the peer reviews.
Recently there have been a lot of new projects touted as Ethereum killers. I will be the first to admit that Ethereum needs some competition to keep it on its toes and for Vitalik and the team to keep innovating, some of the said competition look solid while a ton of others are just pure vaporware. There are a ton of then right now, from the more popular Cosmos, to Polkadot, to Tezos, to Solana, to Avalanche, to Arbitrum, to Binance Smart Chain etc. A lot won't be here for long in my opinion.
The Binance Smart Chain had a crazy run period where at some point they rivalled and surpassed Ethereum for number of daily transactions. The cheap fees there made it very easy to use the network, but it also skyrocketed the number of scams on the network and at some point BSC became a scamming centre with lots of pumps and dumps. While BSC is centralised, I won't lie to myself and say people care about decentralisation when they can get fast fees, but BSC will not be the Ethereum killer many think they are. Some other big contenders are Solana, Polkadot, Cosmos, Arbitrum and Avalanche in my opinion. Solana has been the rave of the moment with it's crazy run and while I love it and hold the currency I will be patient to see how the comparison plays out, but I wish Solana the best. I also love Polkadot a lot and I believe it will do big things with its goal to bring interoperability. Same can be said for Cosmos, Avalanche and Arbitrum, the latter two being Ethereum L2 options. I have used both bridges and interacted with both chains and I love what I saw. Lots of DApps integrating Avalanche and Arbitrum and I am excited for the future for both of them but don't know if they can be called Ethereum killers since they use underlying Ethereum technology.
All in all, I think it's always a good idea to buy and hold solid competition tokens like AVAX, SOL, ATOM etc. If there's anything we've learned from the growth in usage of BSC it is that as the crypto market keeps growing and more people keep getting in, these other options will have their days and holders will make money, and the goal for everyone here is to make money.
Privacy with Status..........
It gives me a quick, short chuckle whenever I see a lot of messaging apps from the big corporations that tag themselves to be ‘Private Messaging apps’ or tout themselves to be committed to the privacy or protection of their users data. The reason is pretty basic and not far-fetched at all, they always claim to be privacy centric, but they do not practice what they preach and are not in the least bit concerned about their users’ data. Their privacy promise does not stop them in any way from harvesting their users’ data and selling it to the highest bidder, they still have backend access to users’ data and they can do with it as they see fit.
Many will still remember the not too distant Twitter hack, where it was later discovered after the break-in that there is a god-mode at Twitter that is accessible to quite a number of people, which was triggered and the accounts of a host of verified personalities were compromised and the said accounts used to request for Bitcoin from unsuspecting members of the public. This is just one of a plethora of instances in which some of the biggest names have been compromised and seemingly safe users data have been accessed, something which should be unheard of with the level of security available at their disposal.
It is inadequacies such as this that brings a void for blockchain projects to fill. Of all the many rising to fill this void, Status network seems to be taking centre stage and leading the struggle to bring back true Private Messaging. Status strives to be a secure communication tool that upholds human rights. It is designed to enable the free flow of information, protect the right to private, secure conversations, and promote the sovereignty of individuals.
One reason I have grown to dearly love the Status platform is because it is entirely open sourced and made by hundreds of contributors around the world. Developers, designers, creators, educators, enthusiasts, and more are given the reigns and have the freedom and open access to the repos, assets, and information. Status has been designed to be censorship resistant and free from third party control.
Status prides herself in using the latest encryption and security tools to ensure users messages and transactions are kept both private and secure. Status removes intermediaries to keep messages private and assets secure for a smoother, frictionless, confident and secure communication.
Status has made sure that users will never be asked for a phone number, email address, or bank account when creating a Status account. Users have the ultimate power to private or they can choose of their own volition to selectively reveal their identity to the world with Status. There is no pressure to be social or out there with Status, you can maintain full anonymity should you choose.
Status also comes embedded with a Decentralized Web3 Browser that allows users access to the growing ecosystem of DApps including marketplaces, exchanges, games and social networks. State of the art security standards ensure that users only get the best private browsing experience.
One of my favorite features of Status is also the wallet that it comes with. Users can safely send, store and receive cryptocurrencies including ERC20 and ERC721 tokens with the Status crypto wallet. Only you hold the keys to your funds. Status' intuitive design protects you and your funds from attacks. Users’ security is literally in their hands as they hold their private keys and ensure the security of their accounts.
Status is one name I’m tipping to be here for the long run, because the search for more privacy-centric apps is one that will continue for a very long time to come and though we will see continued enhancements none will be as secure and safe as one that is hosted on a Blockchain. Status brings forth the dream of freedom of speech, decentralization and privacy all embodied in one app.
To download the Status App and begin enjoying true privacy, click the link below;
https://status.im/get/
Following the Big money
Many will wonder why I lead with the image I do, and it’s pretty simple. Following the big money names like Sam Bankman Fried has left me more profitable just buying and holding his picks than I would have thought ever possible. I remember with vivid memory, Sam talking about Solana at $2, if we had listened to him and bought and held all along, that would have been some pretty insane profits. I followed late on and bought and held, that was singlehandedly one of my individual largest altcoin gains.
Overtime I have cultivated the habit of watching people like Sam, Zhu Su of 3AC and other reputable big name VCs and investors to know what projects they are investing in and pitching their tents with. As a small retail investor, I don’t have the funds to go in with them so it takes some tact to not get dumped on and actually make some profit. While you stand to get wicked profit following the big money, there is also the risk of getting dumped on. The big money guys always get in super early either during the Angel round or presale, sometime their tokens are locked and sometimes they get it at launch. Irrespective of when they get it, you can expect a dump when they receive their token because they are primarily businesses and their first focus is to make profit. So you can always expect them to sell a chunk of holdings (if not all) to make some profit from that venture. As a retail investor you want to steer clear when those tokens are about to get unlocked as it will almost likely be a wicked dump.
But in the long run you can almost be very sure that such projects will be solid. If you critically think about it, it’s the smart and business savvy thing to do. The reason is because these VC firms and businesses have the best of the best brains dedicated solely to finding the next gems and money makers and investing in them. I am quick to accept that I am not as smart as these guys, neither do I have the resources and inside information at their disposal to spot these early gems. It is much easier to watch these guys closely and invest in whatever gems they are going into, sit on my hands and inevitably wait for the wicked profits to follow.
I have a sub FTX account dedicated specially to investing in such projects that I plan to just sit on my hands and hold for years if possible and see where it leads. I have been very fortunate with my picks and investments and they have yielded very good profits for me. I invested in FTT simply because it was from Sam and I believe FTX will grow to one day rival or even surpass Binance at some point, and that has been a very profitable investment for me. Also very recently, sometime two weeks ago I think, I saw a tweet from Sam about how proud he was of ATLAS as a project and the team. I checked them out and saw that he was backing them and their token hadn’t gone live yet. Once it went live I got in and it has been printing higher highs in my wallet ever since. It has been on the top gainers list on FTX for the past 3 days in a row, and while I am very impressed with the gains right now I know it’s nothing compared to what’s to come, it’s still sub $1.
It has been a very effective and profitable strategy for me personally and the bunch of people who I also know do it too and its most definitely one I think a whole lot more people should try instead of trying to trade and failing miserably at it. At this point I consider myself a Sam fan boy, but admittedly it has made me a lot of money. Spreading my funds across some picks by these big boys has honestly made me money than I would have chasing pumps and trading. Cheers to us all making more money.
My top 5 altcoin picks right now
This I am sure will be a very controversial list, while some of the altcoins mentioned here will be agreed on by all as solid picks, some others are just like the title says my personal views. First a back story into my experience in the financial markets and what qualifies me to write this piece. I started off in the foreign exchange market, but trading currency pairs never felt right to me and so I switched to Indices trading. While those are clearly manipulated, I found a home trading V-75. I then switched to Crypto in 2018 and traded spot and futures for a while. All of these trading were however a pass time for me as I had a career in marketing, and so with my exposure to Crypto it was only natural that I transitioned into Crypto marketing. Began working marketing with Blockchain projects sometime around 2018 and there has been no looking back since then, I still however occasionally trade crypto and indices. I am however focused more on the long term investing side; I love to buy altcoins, stocks and real estate all as long term investments. Now that we have a back story out of the way, time to jump into the topic of today’s discussion; My top 5 altcoin picks and bags, whatever you choose to call it. All alts on this list have to fulfill certain criteria, some of them are; have a strong product, have a strong community, not lacking marketing wise (based off my marketing experience :), experienced team or backing amongst others. Now let’s jump into the list proper.
The first for me is the King, many don’t consider this an altcoin any longer it has most probably transcended what we call an altcoin. For this list however, I will include it in my classification of alts, and that is the leading blockchain; Ethereum. Ever since getting into crypto and understanding what a blockchain is, I’ve always been an Ethereum fan boy and Ethereum has continued overtime to dwarf every chain that has been touted as the Ethereum killer. Defi summer and the growth of NFTs right now has shown us that Ethereum is always at the forefront of all forms of innovation in crypto as we know it. I still think $10,000 Ethereum is still undervalued.
The next for me is FTT the native token of the FTX Derivatives exchange. Compared to all other big exchanges like Binance, Coinbase and the likes FTX is killing it right now. They are doing a good job getting their names in front of everything possible, buying as many rights as they can and sponsoring so many things. They have one of the most impeccable marketing in the whole crypto industry and that is going to pay off in the long run, both bringing them a lot of money and attracting a ton of new users. Also with the opportunities that staking FTT offers on the FTX exchange I expect more people to begin to key in to this. I expect FTT tokens to be as high as the BNB tokens at some point. Like I personally say, whatever Sam turns to gold and I personally have big faith in the guys over there to make FTT something monumentally big.
The next altcoin for me has to be none other but the beautiful ass Solana. I think so many people are still sleeping on these gems. I still classify them as a gem because what that team has built is just something magnificent. My conservative target for my SOL bag right stands at $1,000.I think they will pull so big a run, reminiscent of BNBs run when it rose to over $700. I don’t think Solana will rise to compete with Ethereum but it will do big in its own rights. I have seen some questionable marketing from the Solana team but that all can be forgiven when they have the type of product that they do.
Up next I am heavy and confident in Matic. They are the only L2 product on Ethereum that I want to use and I love to use. It’s a beautiful sight watching Matic being used by more and more people. The Ethereum gas fees issues highlights the need for Matic, and I beam with joy when I go on Opensea every other day and see more NFT creators choosing to use the Matic chain to avoid the Ethereum fees. I’m pretty confident in Matic for the long run and I try to DCA in as I expect short terms fluctuations but in the long term, Matic is an untapped gem.
Lastly but by no means the least is yet another big name, I’m heavy big on Polkadot. I think Polkadot is heavily undervalued for all that they offer and it both hurts and is funny to me. DOT is a project I’ve always had an eye on for a very long time but I recently began stacking up on them after the crash recently. I think we will see more projects building on the Polkadot ecosystem overtime.
As can be noticed from my list I much prefer to buy into large alts, not been doing a lot of low cap hunting. I think large cap alts are kinda safer to hold as they recover quicker after dumps and crashes. Also some honorary mentions which could not be included in this piece but definitely some alts I love and always looking for opportunities to get more of are; USDT, Chainlink, PolkaParty, Status Network, Ocean Protocol, Alliance Block, Polkastarter etc. Each of them a well researched and trusted project and definitely solid for the long term.
I will begin putting out more content such as this based off my experiences trading in the financial markets and marketing for some of the biggest crypto projects. To get content like these, please do well to subscribe to my Substack, it promises to be well worth it.
https://donchristov.substack.com/subscribe
Blockchain and Private Messaging
“Private Messaging” as a word being thrown around sounds very ironic to me. The truth about it which most of us know but just refuse to discuss or think about is that those who claim to offer this much sought after feature are anything but private with our most important commodity, OUR DATA. Many have never read the privacy policies they unconsciously sign up for across several apps. A quick glance across these contracts would show that the ‘privacy’ is a ruse and what they offer is in fact far from anything called Privacy. It is easy to see that to the big corporations users privacy is a farce, and users data is a lucrative enterprise.
There are a plethora of apps right now that claim to offer some modicum of privacy but a deep dive into trying to understand their workings will reveal that very far from it they do not. It seems though that Blockchain and decentralized networks might be the only solutions to privacy and data protection as we know it. Some of the core tenets of Blockchain as we know are its decentralization, Privacy and the anonymity that the network provides. This is if you ask me what Private messaging applications should posses before they can claim that they offer any privacy. The ability to be decentralized and not controlled by a central authority, it should provide maximum privacy and not give back end access to some people, and it should also offer anonymity to its users from prying eyes.
Blockchain is the only solution to the privacy haggle we are plagued with, luckily there are blockchain solutions dedicated to making privacy truly a thing and not a fairytale utopia we hope for. One of them is Status Privacy app; an app like the name says that dedicated to bringing true privacy to its users. Status comes with inbuilt privacy as users have to choose Three-word identity phrases, just like the way Reddit offers to give its users anonymous names.
The three word names are given to users to protect their privacy, and they allow users to be able to interact as they want without fear of being doxxed. Status also comes with an inbuilt wallet that allows users to store all their ERC-20 tokens. It’s one of the coolest features of Status to me; I can throw some crypto there and forget it which is the perfect form of hodling lol.
Another cool feature that Status comes with is their in-app browser that allows users to access Web 3 DApps. Like the more popular MetaMask and Trust Wallet, all coming with in-app browsers, Status also comes with one of its own. Still a much undervalued project right now, it is one whose team is constantly working to innovate and build to be better, I think the Status Network is one that will grow into a pretty big ecosystem. With the bull market that the Cryptocurrency market is currently experiencing, I think solid Fundamental Analysis projects like Status will be among those moon-shots that do really big things. I am holding a bag myself and I am giddy with anticipation for the run to come ahead. It’s definitely one project I would recommend for everyone to try out both the product for your privacy and to get a bag as an investment for the long term.
To download the Status App and begin enjoying true privacy, click the link below;
https://status.im/
Group Finance will change the world
The concept of a DAO is one that is being thrown around a lot these days in Crypto. Every project these days either claims to be a DAO or plans to migrate to a DAO at some point. I believe the concept of DAOs comes from something very simple and that is Group Finance. The ability of people to decide what they want their money and funds to do, where they want it to go and what direction they want it to take. While Group Finance is not heard of as much as DAOs, probably because it has a less fanciful name lol, but back to the discussion at hand. I think we will see concepts like Group Finance that allows everyday people to make financial decisions concerning them. No more will they have to rely on the bank, hedge funds, mutual funds, or even the crypto project to make financial decisions for them. Their financial future is really and truly in their hands.
It was with utmost satisfaction that I found a project that takes Group Finance to a whole new level. PolkaParty is a platform that is focused on user created decentralized autonomous organizations or Parties like we like to call them. Through these parties users can pool funds together and decide what to do with these funds. Anything at all is possible with these parties, they could be used to invest in early stage projects, they could also be used to collectively pool resources for a common goal. So long as the party members agree to it, it can be done by the party. PolkaParty is chain agnostic and that means there are many features that let users win prize rewards.
PolkaParty is user-friendly, rewarding, and cheap so anyone can join the fun. Users can participate in any of the party models from Democracy to monarchy to weighted Democracy. Users get to interact with fellow PartyGoers for the ultimate DeFi experience.
PolkaParty, being the leaders of innovation, also have the first Revenue based NFTs that I know of. Users who buy their NFTs are entitled to a percent of all platform revenue. Only 1,000 NFTs were released at a price of 500 USDC each. 20% of all platform revenue will go to the NFT owners and there are 5 tiers of NFTs from the Platinum Apes to the Common Apes. Each had their own percent of revenue to be gotten and NFTs are randomly minted so it remains fair. Check out PolkaPlace to mint those PartyApes;
http://polkaplace.xyz
Lots of other features to come that I'm really looking forward to. One particularly exciting one for me right now is that their POLP tokens are the first Auto Liquidity tokens on the Ethereum network. What this means is that 5 percent of transactions gets added back into the liquidity pool to make sure that there is always enough liquidity for the tokens. It's a pretty common feature on Binance Smart Chain with projects like Safemoon adopting but it hadn't been able to be done on the Ethereum network before now. According to the team, the target has been set at 100k POLP tokens, and as soon as the contract fees reach that target it will automatically add liquidity. So far since launch under the past 24 hours there have been 3 auto liquidity events and I'm beyond stoked that this feature is up and running. I am eagerly looking forward to Parties launching and being able to join parties, so much to be excited for this project. With the plans shared by the team this is going to be a pretty big one. Join their telegram group for more information;
t.me/PolkaParty
You can also check out their website for more information;
https://polkaparty.io
My thoughts on NFTs
NFTs are by no means a new trend in the crypto industry, they have been here for a couple of years now, but they seem to have picked up full steam this year with a lot more people taking interest. We’ve seen some of the biggest names like Gary Vee become big advocates for the power of NFT’s and everyone from footballers to movie stars and artists release NFT’s. It has been a most rapid ascension for the industry as we see NFTs selling for hundreds of millions of dollars and some valued at billions. Long forgotten NFTs like EtherRocks that have been there since 2017 are making comebacks and now have a floor price of over $120k. We also saw Beeple sell his monumental “Everydays - The First 5000 Days” for over $69 million with many more going for several millions. CryptoPunks have gotten to OG status in the NFT space and we’ve seen many others like Bored Apes, Penguins, PolyPunks and a lot of others grow to be regarded as valuable investments. I have followed the NFTs market with interest over the years but I will be the first to confess I only recently began collecting NFTs for myself.
First of all the NFT run right now in some ways reminds me of Defi summer 2020 where we saw so many projects literally launch and pull crazy 10 to 20x runs. While many projects with solid potentials did big things during the run, many scams also blossomed and when the run ended many were left holding dead bags. The NFT market is in its boom stage and so many works are selling for ludicrous amounts that are in my honest opinion unjustifiable. Like Defi summer ended on a not-so-good note with many projects, I think we will see something similar with NFTs also. While the floor prices go up, the floor prices are only prices that people can buy at. You also need people to buy it though, when there are no buyers the NFTs just stay there with the absurd prices the owners bought it at but with no one to buy it of them.
Make no mistakes however, buying NFTs are fun and in a way makes you feel better than buying altcoins. I began buying NFTs last week and under 24 hours of my exposure to Opensea I had bought 4 NFTs and I was spending lots of hours a day on Opensea browsing through the NFTs there. Buying NFTs is a very addictive game and I believe it will bring in more people to crypto than even Defi did. The reason for this belief is actually simple, Defi could be said to be a bit complex for noobs. The DApps are complicated and sometimes unusable and the concepts can’t be easily understood by anyone who hasn’t been into crypto for a while. But with NFTs its basically just buying artworks you love and the love for Art is transcending and will appeal to more people than the “Future of finance” will.
While I believe we will make a lot of money in the short term flipping NFTs like a lot of people have done so far. It must also be said that the NFT game can be very addictive and that will get a lot of people burnt when the hype dies down a bit. The NFTs growth will continue but at some point in my opinion it won’t be as profound as it is right now. In the meantime before we get to that crescendo, I will keep spending insane amounts of time on Opensea and keep looking to make life changing money through these artworks, some of them beautiful pieces and some of them in my honest opinion hideous works that shouldn’t have seen the light of day. Like the title said however, these are just my thoughts, merely that and nothing else.
Decentralisation in a Centralised world.
As the different arms of Government everyday seeks to gain more control over the media and the apps that we everyday use, it becomes imperative to seek out and stand behind those apps that promote a shred of decentralization. We have over the past couple of weeks in the Crypto space seen a couple of big projects and apps like Uniswap and Binance succumb to the regulatory demands and lose a shred of their decentralization (in the case of Uniswap).
It is indeed a good sight to see that in the face of this wave of regulation and attempting to centralize all things that the media and some of the Blockchain apps we love so much are sticking it out and giving their users the full benefits of decentralization. Status is one of such projects still holding their own and not compromising on the decentralization that was promised. Users still get access to the app to use all the cool features that attracted them in the first place plus more. In Q2 alone, Status released their V1. 13 and V1. 14 update. V1.13 introduced stuff like the activity centre where new group invites are shown and you either accept or decline them. V1. 14 then brought a bunch of UX improvements including highlighting posts that mention you, an unread message counter for mentions, and the ability to manage sync chat history.
With over half a million downloads of the Status app across app stores in Q2 i.e. 502k downloads and over 1.3M downloads in the first half of the year through Google Play and the App Store, it is clear to see that Status is doing something right and the users recognize that. On average, the stats show that Status pulls in an upward of about 12,000 Daily Active Users and that is very exciting. In a period where many DApps are losing users, Status seems to be taking in more. There certainly is still more room for growth but this sure is encouraging.
Status delivers on the true meaning of Decentralization and Private Messaging and they are redefining what an app should be able to do. That my friends are why I am always super proud to talk about them and I seize the slightest opportunity I have to talk about this revolutionary project. They are also a relatively young project compared to some of the established names and big boys, and I expect them to do rather well as they keep growing and evolving. Status is one name I’m tipping to be here for the long run, because the search for more privacy-centric apps is one that will continue for a very long time to come and though we will see continued enhancements from the centralized guys, none will be as secure and safe as one that is hosted on a Blockchain. Status brings forth the dream of freedom of speech, decentralization and privacy all embodied in one app.
To download the Status App and begin enjoying true privacy, click the link below;
Click the link below to download the Status App
https://status.im/get/
Tips to Spot a Scam Project (4)
Hello guys, and welcome to the fourth and final part in our series on How to spot a Viable project series. If you haven’t read any of the previous 3 then you really should check them out here.
https://read.cash/@Don_Christov/tips-to-spot-a-scam-project-3-88fb1c47
We have talked about different concepts to look out for when researching into a project to invest in. We discussed the technology itself, we also talked about researching about their potential for Mass Adoption, and their team. Straight into today’s topic and the last in this rather long series, today we talk about the projects partnerships and updates.
No man can achieve his full potential in isolation, we are all social animals and we need others to grow and boom. The same can be said for businesses and by extension Crypto projects; they need other projects to grow. A project that isn’t going into any partnerships or is never in the news is almost certain to not grow further. Please do not mistake this for the project always being in the news, too much of everything is bad it opens them to unwanted attention and scrutiny. But partnerships, updates, reevaluating and reworking their roadmap, releasing new features are all important for a project to remain relevant, and any project that is lacking in these areas will not stand the test of time.
It’s one of the biggest reasons I love Status Network, I’ve been watching their team and contributors from all over the world work together make the Status Network better than it is currently. From ramping up the security, to organizing meet-ups around the world spreading the gospel of Blockchain and Status, to getting in the news and various other big moves, the Status team sure is working.
Another big criterion to research into is a projects partnership. When there are big updates and heavyweight partnerships you can expect it to attract investors and get in the face of the people. When that happens it is almost sure that the price of that token will witness growth and their product more users. It’s not rocket science tbh, there are a ton of projects out there all jostling for the users’ attention and the project must find a way to stand out and get investors. Take your time to research into their partnerships, the updates they release and if there is any new features and how they better on their already existing technology. Investing truly is risky and before you put your money anywhere you must make sure that you have done you Due Diligence thoroughly. I sure hope you have learnt a thing or two from this series and with this I close the curtain on this, thank you all for following me on this one month journey let’s do it again soon.
Check out their website to know more about Status Network
https://status.im/
Tips to Spot a Scam project (3)
Hello everyone, welcome to the third part in this series of how to spot a scam project. If you missed out on the first 2 check them out here.
https://read.cash/@Don_Christov/tips-to-spot-a-scam-project-8acf7d87
https://read.cash/@Don_Christov/tips-to-spot-a-scam-project-2-f7c6f43f
We’ve talked about the technology of the project and their ability to gain Mass adoption.
Another big way to spot a good project is through their Team. What many noobs don’t seem to understand is that a Crypto project is pretty much like and the same thing as a real world business. It will have a founder or in most cases founders, people who the originator of the idea shared it with and they came together to achieve it and a team. Just like a business, it requires a lot of work and sacrifice on the path of the team. We see Crypto projects that begin and they sell out just like in the business world. The team who will be handling your money needs to be researched into; any sort of shady past and you should run away.
You ask yourself simple questions like; Are the team competent in this industry they are into? Do they have proven records of experience doing similar things and succeeding? Do they have criminal records that will serve as red flags? Have they demonstrated skills of being passionate, resilient and determined from previous projects they’ve embarked on? These questions will help you make an informed guess about the team and how committed they are to the project. The truth is there will be the bad days; it’s only if they are really passionate about the project that they’ll keep going. An anonymous team should be heavily frowned against and in fact run away from. Nothing spells a red flag for a project like a team you can’t hold accountable for their actions or don’t even know.
Like I have been saying all along, you need to heavily research into the team. If it’s an anonymous team like we have with most meme coins springing up after the success of Dogecoin, then you need to steer clear. Same way if you find out after your research that any of the founders have a criminal background, then another reason to not go near. For example, when I wanted to invest into Status Private Messaging, I researched into their team and I found out that the founders Carl Bennetts and Jarrad Hope have been in the Blockchain industry for years and were core contributors for Ethereum before they decided to start their own project built on the Ethereum Blockchain. Things like that inspire confidence in the team and show that they are there for the tech and not a pump and dump just for the money.
With a team as experienced like that it’s no wonder they have been building a pretty solid project like Status. With over 50 contributors and developers aiding its growth I have the utmost faith that the project will only keep growing bigger.
Status is one name I’m tipping to be here for the long run, because the search for more privacy-centric apps is one that will continue for a very long time to come and though we will see continued enhancements none will be as secure and safe as one that is hosted on a Blockchain. Status brings forth the dream of freedom of speech, decentralization and privacy all embodied in one app. To download the Status App and begin enjoying true privacy, click the link below;
Click here to download the Status App
https://status.im/
The Defi Gem
The current state of the Crypto market has filled even the most diehard of believers with some measure of doubt. Just a short while ago we were celebrating $60,000 Bitcoin and today it’s below $30,000. While many will argue to look at the bigger picture, the short term though can be confidence draining at times.
The Defi space has been hit way harder in my opinion, lots of scams, rug pulls, exploitations and the likes. In spite of all the negativity, watching everything grow decentralized and watching the spread of Decentralized Finance has been a joy to watch. Watching things like Web3, Insurance, Exchanges, Savings, Asset Management, Mutual Funds etc move to Defi further reassures my belief that Crypto and Blockchain are indeed the future of not just Finance but the world.
A couple of Defi projects are very promising and even with the state of the market are doing pretty big things. I follow quite a couple of them in their development and I must say it gives a feeling that we have only witnessed the beginning of the Defi revolution. One such project I am super excited about right now is Sheesha Finance. Sheesha Finance is a mutual fund that invests in early stage or established Defi projects. According to the team they are currently in talks with 90 Defi projects to invest in.
Under the leadership of one of a Blockchain heavyweight, Saeed Hareb Al Darmaki, the project has announced partnerships with over 10 projects whose tokens will be airdropped to the Sheesha Finance community members. The projects include; Base protocol, Eqifi, TeraBlock, Zignaly, Mozik, Royale Finance, Plasma Finance, Drife, Splinterlands, SportsIcon, Mercor Finance, Defire and a couple of others. Some of these projects are already big and established names in the Defi industry and as a Sheesha investor and community member I can’t wait to receive airdrops from these projects.
Sheesha Finance is shaping up to be a DAO in the upcoming months and holders and community members will have the power to decide what projects Sheesha Finance invests in. Another thing I love about Sheesha is that it gives investors the choice of where they want to invest with, either the Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain version of Sheesha. The team gives their community the freewill to choose what chain they believe in and want to pitch their tents with. If you are a staunch Ethereum believer who is against BSC and its quasi-centralization then you can invest in the Ethereum version of the Sheesha tokens. Likewise if you are the opposite and an ardent BSC enthusiast, who loves the speed and cheapness they bring then you can invest in the Binance Smart Chain version of the Sheesha token. Also it is worthy of note that if you are like me and like both chains then you can invest in both and reap rewards from both ends. According to the team more chains will be integrated in the future, talks have begun with FTX and I am excited for that. Investing in a project like Sheesha will always be a smart play in my opinion, as you don’t just invest in one project but you open the doorway to be able to get rewards in a ton of other projects. Not just any projects, but only the best of them as they have been vetted by some of the biggest name in the Crypto industry. It is definitely one project I’m excited for the long term.
Tips to spot a Scam Project (2)
Welcome to the Part 2 of this series of 4 on How to spot a viable Crypto project. If you missed on the Part 1, check it out here
https://read.cash/@Don_Christov/tips-to-spot-a-scam-project-8acf7d87
With the slump in prices in the market recently the faith of those who invested in meme coins and the ton of shit coins that arose when price seemed to be Up Only have definitely been seriously shaken. But I believe that for those invested in solid projects, while they might hurt watching prices drop, they know that invariably it’s coming back up because the projects have solid foundations. There was the awful rise of meme coins after Dogecoin blew up and it was alarming watching a lot of people ape into them. Hopefully this series helps noob to better research coins before they FOMO into them. If you missed the first part, do check it out here;
Today we discuss the second thing to look out for when researching into a project to find out whether it’s a long term bet or not, and that is it’s potential for Mass adoption. The goal for every project is to integrate more users; many projects spend thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars on their marketing to achieve this. More users mean more demand for their technology and that almost invariable means price increase as they get in front of more eyes and potential investors. So as an investor, you should only be looking those projects that can clearly attain mass adoption. You find this out by checking what industry they are into, who are the players and big boys in that industry, how they plan to better their rivals, and if their technology is one that can be used by a lot of people. It is very important to note that the users might not just be individuals, sometimes users are others businesses or organizations, the technology though must be able to be used by a lot of people.
This is one reason why I am big on Status Messaging. Their technology is most definitely one that will attain Mass Adoption; they are in a gem of the industry they are based. Status is a Private Messaging app that offers the true meaning of privacy while also sticking to the tenet of decentralization. Many are looking for alternative messaging apps after the Data scandal with Facebook and the privacy tussle with WhatsApp. So many other big names in the messaging industry have at one time or the other failed security wise or sold their customers data, it is that gap that Status is coming to fill. They also have a Unique Selling Proposition for everyone which is that you can chat with loved ones while keeping track of your wallet with their inbuilt wallet feature, and even browse through your favorite DApps with their Web3 Browser.
The Private Messaging industry is a very lucrative one, and Status is in a very good position to get a slice of that pie. Like I said look out for a project that can achieve Mass Adoption, and I think it’s pretty clear that there’s no better way to achieve Mass adoption than through messaging as the world continues to go digital and billionaires continue to stay up to date on each other’s personal lives through Messaging. Billions of people on Earth and a teeming number of us have one thing in common, we just keep texting away with not much worry as to what is done with our data and you just can’t go wrong with this project
If there is no hope for Mass Adoption for a project, there is no hope for their token to rise in value and that’s the aim for every investment. You invest for the value to grow, so you make profit on your investment. Always be sure to research heavily into their potential for Mass Adoption, it truly is of utmost importance. Cheers to fruitful and lucrative investments.
Sheesha taking Defi by Storm
I recently had to sell some stocks, and it took 4 business days from the moment of selling till the money came to my bank account, sometimes it takes way longer than that. It took 2 days for the stocks to go from being unsettled cash to settled cash, and another 2 days to go from my trading app to my bank account. When compared with the speed of selling tokens on Uniswap or any of the other platforms and then sending it back to your account the difference is clear for all to see and the better option is clearly visible. I have watched with joy the spread and ascension of Defi over the past couple of years. When placed side by side with the centralized institutions its clear even to the layman that Defi offers so much more and is a thousand times better than the centralized systems. From decentralized platforms for lending and borrowing, to exchanging, to insurance, to saving and a whole lot of others.
New Defi use cases are springing up every other day and giving the power back to the people. One of the most use cases I’ve seen in a while has to be a decentralized Mutual fund. Mutual funds have always been an exclusively centralized endeavor, but with Defi this phenomenon has been made open for everyone. A project that by investing in them, you automatically qualify to receive airdrops from all the projects they in turn invest in. right now, investors are guaranteed airdrops from 10 projects including Base Protocol, Eqifi, Drife, Splinterlands and so many more. The team believes it’s going to be as much as 90 projects invested in for the long run. This is apart from the rewards in native tokens when you stake with them. This project is one other than SHEESHA FINANCE, one of the hottest Defi projects in my opinion right now.
With one of the strongest teams I’ve seen in the space right now with and an advisors list that’s made up of the who-is-who in crypto it’s almost a given that they will do good in the long run. I was fortunate to get into this project early one during their LGE, I consider it a stroke of luck that I heard about them that early on and invested when I did. Just barely 4 months after their LGE and I consider it to be one of my smartest investments so far this year.
With so much more in store, it’s definitely one product I’m expecting to do many big things. I am looking forward to Sheesha moving evolving to a DAO, then partner token airdrops which will begin third quarter, and the other project partnerships to be announced. I sure am super excited for the future of this project and Defi as a whole, and boy will I be a part of that future.
Check out their website or Telegram group for more details;
https://sheesha.finance/
https://t.me/sheeshafinance
@Don_Christov