Grrr ....... I Guess The Fates Don't Want Me To Use Noise.cash!
After not using Noise.cash for a while, I noticed my Free Tips had dried up. I thought that this was going to keep me from interacting with folks here, because while I like to tip, I don't like to lose money, (take BCH from my wallet), whilst doing so.
Then something wonderful happened! A kind user, ( @Lydsandra ), sent me some money. ( https://noise.cash/post/l9zv7kqm ) So now I could use this money to give tips from my wallet, without feeling like I was "losing money".
Problem solved, right? Well, not so fast. As it turns out, I've been having difficulty with the "QR Code" tipping function.
See the attached pics. Have any of y'all ever gotten those messages whilst attempting to tip directly from your wallet? I'm not even sure if some of the tips I tried to send arrived or not.
Even when the QR Code tip does work okay, it can take several minutes to complete. This adds up to a huge waste of time if I am attempting to tip many people.
All of this is in addition to the usual hassles of dealing with a weak internet connection, and electric service which routinely goes out at least once or twice every day. (Don't worry; the electric company makes up for the unreliability of their service by charging a ludicrously high price for it!) And then, of course, there are the demands put upon me by my wife and kids, whom I must admit have a higher priority than my twiddling around on the internet.
So ...... this is my weak excuse for not responding in a reasonable amount of time to any replies y'all have left me. I'm sorry. Sometimes the environment in which I "work" is just not conducive to getting anything done.
The Joys Of Being A Citizen Of The "Land of the Free"
My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I ask, ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKj7FLg3WVA ):
Why, oh WHY, do you block me from many crypto investment opportunities? I'm an adult, and my mind is at least as sound as that of our President, the hapless Mr. Biden. Let me decide what I will or will not invest in!
Maybe folks are correct, that if you are going to become wealthy via crypto, then a passport from the USA is a liability?
P.S. - the world's best national anthem is, of course, that of Kazakhstan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXn1mg_FOo0 ! (With all due apologies to the fine people of Kazakhstan.)
Somebody Sent Me $1.23
I haven't been active here on Noise.cash for a few days. As happens when I'm not active, my Free Tips have dried up. Because of this I expected that I wouldn't be doing much on Noise.cash today, as I don't like being on here just to drain BCH from my wallet. (If I don't have Free Tips to send, then I have to use the QR code and send tips from my wallet.)
However, two days ago someone sent me a tip of $1.23.
I don't know who sent this tip, or why, but it's nice that I got it, because now I can play on Noise.cash, and not feel like I'm spending my own money to do so.
Woo hoo!
Is My Obsession Making Me "Premature"?
If you've read my recent posts here, and on my unread and unloved blog, ( https://gimmethecash.blogspot.com ), you'll know that I have been obsessed with several money making websites, and have been trying to verify they actually work and pay out as fast as I can, so that I can help those of you who want to make some extra money. (And who doesn't want/need some extra money?) Unfortunately in my haste to get this info out, I may be cutting corners that shouldn't be cut, and thus inadvertently promoting scams.
I've written about Cryptos OTC, MetaFiYielders, Baked Bean, and Turd Burglar before, and now am adding Swapnex to this "investment portfolio". But of these five options, it is starting to look like only Cryptos OTC and Swapnex may be viable.
Turd Burglar is kinda in its own category, as it is more-or-less a silly site put up by Justin Pratt, ( https://www.youtube.com/c/JustinPratt1/videos ), to satirize all the ridiculous forks of the Baked Beans site. (If you have an extra dollar or two, it would be cool if you could invest them in some "turds".)
As for Baked Beans itself, despite being the darling of YouTube just a few weeks ago, it now appears that the site has entered into its death throes. The challenge for those of us who have invested into it is how are we gonna get our money back?
Finally there are the three remaining sites, which I believe are rock solid, because they are using a sound strategy of arbitrage to make their profits.
Or so I thought. While Cryptos OTC and Swapnex are excellent sites that should be around for a long time, and continue to pay high returns, (NOT a guarantee!), MetaFiYielders has come under some critical scrutiny from some of the more astute YouTubers recently. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o-tsp_uYcQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyu0_rnFumI .) So, with a heavy heart, I must inform y'all that putting money into MetaFiYielders is apparently more risky than I thought. (Actually, I was completely mistaken about MetaFiYielders, as it is NOT an arbitrage site, but rather makes its money via crypto loans, supposedly.)
So while Cryptos OTC and Swapnex are good sites, and worth investing money you CAN AFFORD TO LOSE, I would steer clear of the other three sites.
Please bear with me on this journey, folks! It's gonna take about another two months to prove that Cryptos OTC and Swapnex are profitable, but in the meantime I really, really, really want to share what I'm doing with y'all.
A Short Trip To Forest Park Resort, Dahilayan, Bukidnon. (Mindanao, Of Course!)
This past Sunday and Monday we, (my family, my wife's sister's family, and assorted neighbors/relatives), took a short trip to a nice resort in Bukidnon. Most of us had never been to Bukidnon, so it was quite an adventure.
This place is sorta southeast of Cagayan de Oro. Once the road from CDO turned south, it wound up and up and up and up! The views of the bay/ocean way below us were amazing.
The kids loved the resort. But some of the "rides" were a bit expensive, costing $12.00 USD per rider! As I don't have that kind of money to spend on 8 or more kids, we mostly just walked around.
Can you imagine a Native American themed park in the Philippines? (I'm so old I still refer to Native Americans as "American Indians".) Although if you look at the second pic, I'm pretty sure that the woman standing there looks more like a Filipino. And who ever heard of monkeys hanging out with Native Americans?
The third pic is of a hanging bridge we all walked across. That bridge was way, way up.
Maybe that's why some of us clutched the sides of the bridge more tightly than others!
There are these cool "fern trees" growing there that made me feel like I was back in the time of the dinosaurs. I've never seen ferns grow as trees before.
Finally, once we were all exhausted, we drove back to CDO, where we got a place to sleep for the night. This was my favorite part of the vacation, as the hotel, Mallberry Suites, was really nice. I wouldn't mind a "vacation" spent hanging out in a room there. (Besides, it is right across the street from a mall that has a Robinsons Market in it.)
Bad News For Safemoon HODLers
The esteemed Coffeezilla recently released three videos describing the Safemoon fiasco:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzbBi0agLNg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_Fz-UF3wbA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIUrE7Ovm5k
It appears that Safemoon was a fraud from the get go, so if you're a fanatical member of the "Safemoon Army", it's probably time for you to find another cause to devote your life, (and moral outrage), to defending.
I wonder if anyone will go to jail for this mess? IMHO some of the worst offenders are those popular online "influencers" who, for a hefty fee, encourage their followers to invest in these shitcoins.
The crypto world is a dangerous place, full of liars, thieves, and all around scum. Be careful should you decide to play in that playground.
The Best Laid Plans Of Mice and Men .......
Recently I've written about four high risk crypto "investments" I joined, complete with referral links. (Noise.cash will have a tantrum if I post a referral link, so you'll have to find links to these projects here: https://gimmethecash.blogspot.com/2022/04/its-all-about-arbitrage.html .) I cautioned y'all that, as these project are high risk, DO NOT PUT MONEY INTO THEM THAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LOSE.
As luck would have it, I now have a good example of why you need to be careful how you "invest" in these silly things. Baked Beans, a crypto project that has been receiving massive praise from most nearly everyone on YouTube, has in the last few days begun to bleed money. It appears that Baked Beans is in a death spiral, and that I stand to lose most of the $200 that I gambled on it.
IMHO, the best explanation of what happened is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G5-8luVSSY . Yes, Justin is a techie, and he's kinda dry, but he does some good research.
If you are going to watch YouTube videos to find crypto projects to invest in, watch out! Some of the people making videos will show you proof of extremely high returns, but what they won't make clear is that a large percent of their high returns are based on referrals. So unless you too have a popular YouTube channel, you will not get the same high returns they are getting.
Also, having one project be a dud of the four I invested in is not a bad percentage. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if at least one other project I put my money into turns out to be a stinker. But all I need is one project out of the four to succeed, and I'll be doing very well.
At this point in time, it appears that Cryptos OTC will be that very successful investment for me, but you never know. The folks behind these projects can turn evil in an instant, and rug pull and run off with everyone's money.
Anyone Else Having Trouble Posting?
Well, I'm having trouble posting again. :-( Apparently I am copying from one of my unpublished posts? (WTF Noise?)
Is anyone else having trouble posting, or am I on some sort of Noise.cash "naughty list"?
Trouble Posting?
Is anybody else having trouble posting now, or am I on the Noise.cash "naughty list"?
Posting About Crypto Investments
Since Noise.cash apparently flips out if I post referral links about my crypto "investments", I decided to write about them instead on my unread and unloved blog.
It's All About The Arbitrage! - https://gimmethecash.blogspot.com/2022/04/its-all-about-arbitrage.html . My lonely blog would love it if you would pay it a visit!
Meanwhile ...... I guess I can post here about "acceptable" subjects, such as my breakfast, (cold cereal/muesli with almond milk), whether it rained or not, (of course it rained, as we are in the Philippines!), and how often I scratched my butt today with either my left or right hand. (I believe today I was more of a lefty.)
I still don't know whether these sites I write about will make me big bags of money; it will take a couple of months at least before I can say for sure whether they work for me or not. But as soon as I can PROVE something, good or bad, I'll let y'all know.
Why Does Noise.cash Hate Me?
As you may or may not know, (or, quite frankly, care), yesterday I typed up a long post about my speculative crypto "investments". I had intended to post it here on Noise.cash so that y'all could learn from my experiences.
Unfortunately the automod swatted me down, claiming my post was "spam".
What did I do to trigger the automod's wrath?
Was it the referral links. Does "https://metafiyielders.com/?r@f=arph001" set it off? ("ref" changed to "r@f" to avoid being slapped by the automod.) How about https://www.cotps.com#/pages/login/register?invite=767378 ?
Well that's interesting! Apparently "?r@f=" is verboten, (I had to change "ref" to "r@f" here), but other forms of affiliate links are permitted?
To get around this rule, I tried shortening my referral links on my post yesterday, but somehow I hosed that up.
By the way, I HATE short links, because you have NO IDEA where they are redirecting you to. For all you know I could be sending you to the "Big Nostril Mommas" homepage, or even worse, to a malicious site that will try to take over your browser.
The Greatest Baked Beans Fork of All Time, Part Two
"These are the four "investments" I am currently gambling with. If you wish to join any of them, I would appreciate it if you used my referral code."
"Now I have only been doing this for about three weeks, so I have NO IDEA if any of these "investments" will be profitable or not, so if you want to imitate me you do so at your own risk!"
"Baked Beans: shorturl.at/eiwAM"
"Cryptos OTC: shorturl.at/nvO07"
" MetaFiYielders: shorturl.at/exT35"
"..... and last, but certainly not least,"
"Turd Burglar: shorturl.at/fowK8"
Noise.cash loves quotation marks!!
"The Greatest Dapp Fork In The Known Universe?"
Since the Noise.Cash automod has gone insane, I will have to split this post into two pieces.
Note: I had to add quotes above, and this silly note, to get around Noise's malfunctioning spam filter.
"Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, OB? I eat my beans with a spoon!"
"No, I am not talking about the venerated vegetable, ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qLhGc6XJho ), but rather a "yield farming" Dapp that has gone viral in the last few weeks. It is one of four risky "investments" I have currently put some money into. "
"In the rather cruddy screen shots below we can see part of the Baked Beans screen in the first pic. Baked Beans has been so successful that folks have been copying its contract code, and launching their own "improved" Dapp. (Do a search on YouTube for "Baked Beans Fork".) When techies look at the new contract code, these "improvements" usually consist of little more than changing the name of the contract or the development fee."
"Frustrated with all the silly forks, one techie, (Justin Pratt - https://www.youtube.com/c/JustinPratt1 ), created a fork of Baked Beans where the ONLY change he made to the contract code was to change the name of the contract. He gave his new project the highly fitting name, "Turd Burglar", and with great fanfare, (okay - maybe not so much), this latest, greatest fork of the Baked Beans Dapp was launched. The second pic is a cruddy screen capture of the Turd Burglar screen."
"You can find out all about Turd Burglar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61Up7CNAhfc&t=203s . (Beware: Justin is a techie type who kinda speaks in a dull monotone. He is NOT the most exciting guy to listen to, but he certainly knows what he is talking about.) "
"So flush some BNB and join the great Turd revolution today!"
I'm Pissed Off!!
I can put up with a lot of stupid shit from the Noise.cash automods, but when I work on a post for over an hour and I get the damn message shown in the pic below, then maybe it is time to move on to greener pastures.
HOW THE FUCK CAN I SPAM MYSELF, PARTICULARLY WITH A LONG POST I JUST WROTE FROM SCRATCH?
Life In The Philippine Provinces
Life here in western Mindanao is in some ways unchanged from the way it was a hundred years ago. In the first pic you can see one of my wife's relatives, (she seems related to over half the people in this village!), transporting some huge stiff petioles from coconut palms. These are used as fuel for cooking here.
Notice the "engine" of the wooden cart is a carabao.
The second pic shows a baby bird, unable to fly, that a young lady, (daughter of the man in the first pic), rescued and perched up on a clothes line. I guess this little fellow is lucky that he is too small to eat!
In the background of the second pic you can see sorta their house. These people are technically squatters, living in an undeveloped roadway easement. If the municipality ever decides to build the road, they will have to move.
The three houses of the families, (the man and his two adult sons), that live here are small wooden structures. While the houses don't have a proper septic system, (because they are "temporary"), there is a line of water to them from the water company, and each house has some electric service.
These are mostly nice folks, (the old guy - who is younger than me, by the way! - can get a bit grumpy when he hits the bottle too much), but they are living on the edge, surviving as subsistence farmers. There is no welfare or other form of social services here in the Philippines. If you don't work, you don't eat!
But since everyone knows everyone else here in this village, if one family suddenly needs some help, the others will pitch in to help as best they can. But nobody has much of a surplus of anything!
Except for the presence of stupid mosquitoes and other biting/stinging flying/crawling nasties, the lack of a proper house isn't that much of a problem here, as the climate is mild. (No friggin' snow! Hooray!!) You could probably live in a tent and do fine, as long as none of the biting insects give you dengue or some other cruddy disease, or no cobras decide to visit.
The longer I stay here, the more I like it!
Stupid Body Tricks, Part Three
Yes, esteemed Noisers, it's time for more stupid body tricks. Part of an ongoing series, ( https://noise.cash/post/17nwgx8p , https://noise.cash/post/1gk7k6n2 ), until my body finally figures out how to self-destruct.
My wife is gone today, traveling to the "big city" with her sister and brother-in-law to sell a truckload of copra, (dried coconut). So I had the opportunity to sit with our younger kid during his school lesson this morning. Which I did, but during the lessons I could hardly keep my eyes open, and in fact lay down on the bed for a few quick snoozes during class. (What a cruddy teacher I am, huh?)
Once school was over I decided to get something to eat. I had not eaten breakfast yet, and was wondering if maybe a lack of food was making me sleepy.
Breakfast was cereal accompanied by a can of guyabano, (soursop), nectar, as shown in the pic. Now guyabano can react severely with my system. I've spent LOTS of time sitting in the CR after eating too much of it. But I was very thirsty, and there wasn't much else to drink, so I basically chugged down a can of the stuff.
All seemed well for an hour or so, then whilst sitting at the computer I had a strong urge to burp. No problem, right? Well, this burp turned out to be what I call a "sonic burp", meaning stuff came up with it. Yuck.
It didn't taste too bad, so I just swallowed the "stuff" and continued fussing with whatever silly stuff I was fussing with. But then I felt like I had to vomit. Grrr ......
Like most folks, I'm not fond of vomiting, so I tried to suppress the urge, but it grew stronger and stronger, until -- darn it! -- it became apparent that I was gonna barf NOW! I covered my mouth with my hands and ran for the CR, but I didn't quite make it, spewing a bit of vomit on the CR doorway. And things were even worse when I tried to aim for the commode, basically spewing vomit all over it. (Sorry, but I didn't think to take a pic.)
So then I had the pleasant task of cleaning up my own mess. Fortunately after I got the worst of it up our neighbor/maid/friend Ms. E cleaned up the rest for me.
I actually feel better now, although still a bit tired. But in the future I am going to have to take it easy on the guyabano!
Wanna Be A Multi-Millionare?
Or at least own artwork worth millions?
For some insane reason, (rich people are crazy!), folks have been spending over a million dollars for easily reproduceable jpegs of "art" images. Using the wonderful screen capture technology built into my Apple PC, I have captured several of these million dollar images which you may download/copy, and begin to acquire your own immensely valuable NFT estate.
The first image is titled "Forever Rose", and was one of the first NFTs to sell for a million dollars, if not the first. The second image is called "Quantum", and is supposedly "SuperRare", whatever that means. It sold for a mere 1.5 million.
The third image sold for 69 million! (Wealthy people are nuts!!)
I don't know what the fourth image sold for, but I included it because it is so pretty. (Ugh!)
And the best was saved for last! That grey block, titled, "The Pixel", was bought by some idiot for 1.3 million!
Meanwhile, millions and millions of folks all around the world, working hard at important jobs necessary to sustain civilization, are barely paid a living wage.
What Crazy Nonsense Have I Been Up To?
I haven't been super active on Noise.cash these past few days because I have been busy working on, (fixated on, to be honest!), a few crypto projects that IF they work out, have the potential to make me a whole lot of money.
I was gonna wait to write about them until I actually withdrew money from them, but since regarding these crazy projects time is of the essence, I figured I'd go ahead and tell you about them now, before I have any proof of profit. SO DO YOUR OWN BLOODY RESEARCH!!
1. THORWallet app. This first project at the moment is a dud. I put $400 into it, and within two weeks it shot up to over $550. Now, however, it has crashed back down again to $430. The good news with this one is you can get your principle back, and you can invest plain old BCH and LTC crypto into it. No friggin' weirdo tokens!
If my account ever goes above $500 again, I'm gonna cash out of it. I don't like "investments" that shoot up, and then crash back down like this one does. But if you like rollercoasters, THORWallet is the smartphone app for you!
2. Cryptos OTC Trading Platform - https://cotps.com . (If you're really nice, you'll use my referral link: https://www.cotps.com#/pages/login/register?invite=767378 .) This project generates money via arbitrage, much like Warren Buffet made his fortune. The good news about this one is that you can get your principle back. The bad news is you have to invest using some dippy Tether token that resides on the Tron network, USDT-TRC20. (Normal USDT won't work.) Also, it MAY simply be a Pyramid Scheme, although it's been running and paying out for a while now.
I put $200 into it. The pic shows my profit after two or three days.
3. Baked Beans - https://bakedbeans.io/ . This project generates money by ..... uh, well, to be honest, I haven't a clue how this crazy thing works. It's even shakier than Cryptos OTC, (much shakier, IMHO), but because it pays out up to 8% daily, (that's right, DAILY!), I went ahead and put $200 into it.
Of course, it uses another weirdo token, this time BNB on the Binance Smart Chain. And once you put money into it, you'll NEVER get your principle back. Your profit will come from the interest generated. (You really need to research this thing before you'll understand how to use it.)
As there are now several new forks of this application running on other chains, it MAY be less likely that it will be rug pulled anytime soon. Who knows? I can't see how this project is 100% legit, so please only put into it money you can afford to lose. (This is one you'll want to do a lot of research on!)
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So there you have it, three crypto projects that have been occupying my time recently. Cryptos OTC and Baked Beans have the POTENTIAL for outrageous returns, but they are also very risky. Please invest (gamble) wisely. If it comes to my attention that any of y'all have put money that you need for food, rent, or medicine into either of these projects, and then lost it, I will be very, very upset. In fact, I will find out where you live, hunt you down, and bite you! I am not kidding. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!
**** Update. It would probably help you to read this post from Ms. Esmee about investing in crypto: https://noise.cash/post/15rxx3n6 . ****
Follow Up To My Problems With Atomic Wallet
Sorry to spam everyone, but I want to be clear that the problem I was having sending TRX-USDT was a User Error, NOT, as I implied, a problem with Atomic Wallet.
Apparently I need to have some Tron laying about to send/convert the stupid things, which I did not know. Hooray for Atomic Wallet support!
I figured this merited a post of its own because so many of the tools we use for crypto have atrocious support. (Yes Coinbase, I'm looking at you!) But Atomic Wallet support is excellent and quick. Because of that, I wholeheartedly recommend Atomic Wallet for anyone looking for a software wallet.
Frustration Getting Started With Cryptos OTC Trading Platform
*** UPDATE *** I got a response from the Atomic Wallet support team. As you would expect, it was a user error. I need to have some Tron available to send TRX-USDT tokens. ***
Grrr!!! I am soooo frustrated right now! Since last night I've been trying to fund my Cryptos OTC account, and have hit nothing but roadblocks!
What is Cryptos OTC? It appears to be a way to make a little bit of money, over and over again, which over time adds up to some very big bucks.
Would you like to join? Here is my referral link: https://www.cotps.com#/pages/login/register?invite=767378 .
Now please be aware that I have NOT completely vetted this platform yet. Until I can make money on it, AND withdraw my profits, I can't wholeheartedly recommend it. But if you do a cursory search online, (like I did), you'll find the reviews of the site are pretty positive. It APPEARS to be a great way to make money, IF you can ever figure out how to fund the stupid thing.
The big problem is that Cryptos OTC uses a weird variant of the USDT (Tether) token that runs on the Tron network. So you can't just send it regular USDT tokens to get started. Oh no ..... that would be too easy! You MUST ensure that you are sending TRX-USDT tokens.
Well, no problem, I guess, because my wonderful Atomic Wallet supports TRX-USDT tokens. I simply converted some BTC to TRX-USDT, and then sent those TRX-USDT to my Cryptos OTC account.
Except the send transaction never worked. After an hour or so, it simply disappeared from my Atomic Wallet. WTF? I tried again, and got the same problem. I tried to send the TRX-USDT tokens to my Trust Wallet; that also failed. In desperation, I decided to convert my TRX-USDT tokens back to BTC. THAT TRANSACTION FAILED!! Grrr!!!
Stupid Atomic Wallet! (To be fair, I am in an email conversation with their support at the moment.) Since my Atomic Wallet let me down, I figured I'd try some other way to send TRX-USDT tokens to Cryptos OTC. How about CoinBitch? (aka Coinbase)
Y'all probably know that I don't have much respect for CoinBitch, but it is a reliable way to buy and send crypto, IF you can get logged on. And I think I found the trick to logging on to that silly site from here in the Philippines. When you go to their homepage, DO NOT click a signin tab, but rather click the signup tab. When you get to the signup screen, there should be a place to click if you already have an account. Sign in from the page that you then get redirected to.
In any case, don't try to signin if you are presented with a captcha before entering your password. You will simply be sent to a screen that says your account is blocked. (Isn't CoinBitch stupid!)
Anyway, once I logged into CoinBitch, I had to choose what crypto to buy, as CoinBitch doesn't support TRX-USDT. I decided to purchase BCH, (of course!), as we know it is reliable, fast, and cheap to send. I bought about $100 of it, and then sent all of it to my Trust Wallet, where once it arrived it would be converted to TRX-USDT. Problem solved, huh?
Ha, ha, jokes on me! I should know better than to trust CoinBitch. I got a message after hitting the send button that the transaction usually takes about 6 hours. SIX HOURS!! What the hell is CoinBitch doing with those BCH?
Anyway, so now I have about $75 of TRX-USDT apparently stuck in my buggy Atomic Wallet, while I am waiting for CoinBitch to get off its fat behind and send TRX-USDT to my Trust Wallet. To add to the sense of how frustrated I am, our internet connection here is pretty cruddy, (at least the electricity hasn't gone out yet today!), and the laptop I'm working on is getting old and frumpy, and just can't seem to handle what is demanded of it these days. It seems to be ready for the next stage of its life, as a boat anchor!
So how is your day going?
Days Like This Make Me Glad I'm A HODLer
I am a HODLer. (I feel like I am in some kinda 12 step recovery program when I say that. "My name is Old Bastard, and I HODL cryptocurrency.") As such, I usually don't give a rat's behind about what the silly crypto market is up to on a day-by-day basis, unless we have one of those crazy days when the prices skyrocket, or more likely, collapse.
However, recently I have been watching the progress of my investments on my THORWallet. In mid-March I put $400 into that app, and just a few days ago it was showing that this is now worth almost $600! Woo hoo!! Now note that these may just be "phantom profits" that go **poof** as soon as I attempt to withdraw them. If it's too good to be true .....
I was curious to find out if these profits are in fact real or not, so I decided that I would withdraw some money once the value in THORWallet crossed $600. That was a few days ago. Ever since then the crypto market seems to have rolled over and, instead of working to make us all rich, simply laid there like a fat pig, slowly belching away value. My THORWallet investment has declined from $590 to a still respectable $530. (I'll take a 33% gain over the course of two weeks any time I can get it!)
It's a really good thing I'm not an active trader of crypto, because just a few days ago I would have bet that we were ready for moon shot, and that BTC would easily be worth $60,000 soon, on its way to even higher prices. And of course the rest of the market would have followed BTC's lead.
Instead we have this pathetic performance.
The two coins I have invested on THORWallet are BCH and LTC, both of which have lost ground over the past week.
What's up with the crypto markets? Will they ever wake up? Well of course they will, and with a vigor that may astonish us, but it may take them longer to get their act together than any of us would like.
I Think I Know Why People Hate Uphold
Uphold is a CEX that I have seen getting quite a bit of hate here on Noise.cash recently. Yes, as a CEX it automatically sucks, but I think I now know why people dislike it so much.
Look at the attached pic, and read under the heading on the right titled "Blockchain integration". Do you notice that you can only withdraw seven types of crypto to your own wallet?
WTF is up with that?
I was logged onto Uphold today, and I thought I would buy some NANO, because they are one of the few places that support this coin. But as I was going through the buy process, I got a warning message that any NANO I purchased could NOT be withdrawn to an external wallet, but would have to be converted to something like US Dollars first.
Okay, NANO is kinda weird. How about KAVA then? I got the same disturbing message. SOL? Can't withdraw it either.
No wonder Uphold claims to "support" so many different types of crypto. It appears to me that they just hold your money in a "slush fund" of some type, (probably invested in a DEX), and simply allow you to track how your "crypto" is performing by showing you results based on prices in the crypto market.
Boo! Hiss!! This is bullshit! This is even, (if you can imagine such a thing), worse than Coinbitch, (aka Coinbase), which at least actually holds the crypto they claim to buy for you, and will allow you to withdraw your crypto to an external wallet. (If you're able to logon to Coinbitch, which can be a futile endeavor sometimes.)
I now consider Uphold to be swimming in the muck on the bottom of the barrel with the likes of PayPal, another place which deceptively allows you to "own" crypto. (Ever try to withdraw "your" crypto from PayPal?) Yet these turd merchants are allowed to operate freely, while a site like BlockFi, which was giving ordinary Americans a chance to earn high interest rates on crypto they owned, gets bitch slapped by the criminals at the SEC. (Maybe Will Smith could go work for the SEC, or be their spokesman?)
NOT YOUR KEYS, NOT YOUR CRYPTO!!
Manuel Resort
Yesterday we took a day trip to the wonderful Manuel Resort. The resort is located near Dipolog City, in Zamboanga del Norte, and is about a 3.5 hour drive from where we live, out in the corn fields of Zamboanga del Sur. We all had a great time, although we're all extremely tired today, due in no small part to my wife's crazy decision to make a 1 hour detour on the way home to see "the beach". (The "beach" we saw was extremely underwhelming.)
Yes, we took pics, but I'm too darn tired to upload them right now. If you go to this website, https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g7931654-d7930078-Reviews-Manuel_Resort-Pinan_Zamboanga_del_Norte_Zamboanga_Peninsula_Mindanao.html , there are lots and lots and lots of pics of the place. However, none of these pics seem to capture this real beauty of the place, which is all the well maintained potted plants scattered all over the resort. My wife, a drooling plant person, was in heaven as we walked about the resort, looking at all the wonderful plants.
So that's Manuel Resort. If you are ever in western Mindanao, it is most certainly worth a visit.
And yes, this is an extremely "low energy" post. I am NOT doing Manuel Resort justice. (It truly is a nice place.) But the only reason I am posting now, in my extremely tired state, is because silly Noise.cash won't give me any free tips. I am hoping this post will tickle some sensitive spot on the great automods code, and it will spew forth an abundance of tips to my account, so I can reply to those who have replied to me.
A Clarification Of Proper Etiquette Regarding Jada Smith
Characters in this drama:
Will Smith - former "tough guy" actor who now seems willing to play the role of wimpy cuckold in real life.
Jada Smith - Will's wife, who claims to be in an "open relationship" with Will, or something like that. (Basically, she has sex with other men.)
Chris Rock - a comedian who seemingly naively stepped on a hornet's nest.
With the current flurry of activity over Will Smith slapping Chris Rock because of a joke Mr. Rock made regarding Ms. Smith's hair, (or lack thereof), I figured it would be useful as a public service announcement to state what is, and what is not, acceptable behavior regarding Ms. Smith.
While it is perfectly acceptable to engage in sexual relations with Will Smith's wife, it is absolutely unacceptable to make any sort of joke at her expense, regardless of how mild this joke may be, or that said joke was made by a comedian during a semi-comedic presentation.
Note that jokes about having sexual relations with Ms. Smith will have to be vetted on a case by case basis.
Now that this tragic problem has been hopefully resolved, we can return to our daily minor inconveniences, such as how to stop Russians and Ukrainians from killing each other.
The Struggle To Exit Coinbase Continues
If you've read my latest posts, you know that my opinion of Coinbase has soured considerably. (E.g, https://noise.cash/post/16908799 and https://noise.cash/post/l9zmv9jz .) I've started the process of moving my crypto off that shitty exchange, but as of today have hit a bump.
Logging into Coinbase from the Philippines with our funky internet connection is a huge pain-in-the-butt. I had to try multiple times today, and kept getting the friendly "blocked" message, until at last I held my breath and successfully logged into my account. Unfortunately, when I then tried to transfer my crypto out of Coinbase, I got the message in the first pic.
Stupid Coinbase!!
I'm not the only one who thinks Coinbase is a shitty exchange. Toby and Heidi made a followup video to Toby's video released yesterday, which warned us about Coinbase shenanigans. This new video goes into more depth, and has a link to a source article about Coinbase restricting how you SEND crypto if you reside in certain countries. (These restrictions will probably soon come to YOUR country too, by the way!) That new video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tlqDL7yyH0 .
Finally, here is a source article that explains Coinbase's latest method to jerk around its users: https://www.ibtimes.com/coinbase-complies-local-laws-announces-changes-services-users-3-countries-3452522 .
If I were you, I would be getting my crypto off Coinbase NOW, before they start restricting our access to our own coins even more severely. It is becoming painfully clear to me why they say, "Not your keys; not your crypto"!
OMG Coinbase! WTF?
"Coinbase now requires full names and addresses of recipients when you send BTC off exchanges from Canada, Singapore, or Japan." Toby of Crypto Tips
I hate to be an alarmist, but please watch this video and let me know what you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chVitWQIm68&t=37s .
Yes, the Crypto Tips channel has been against Centralized Exchanges for years, but if there is any truth to this statement, (and I trust Crypto Tips, so there probably is), then Coinbase is going into a very, very dark and nasty place. You now need to whitelist addresses to which you send crypto? YUCK!!
Maybe Toby misunderstood a Coinbase announcement? I don't know. I haven't come across any other YouTube channel or website verifying this awful news, so I hope it's not true. But if it is ...... it is strongly in our own best interest to get our coins off Coinbase ASAP!
Screw You, Coinbase!
As y'all may be aware, I've invested $2,300 USD into various cryptos on Coinbase which I am simply sitting on, in an effort to show that to make money in crypto, HODLing alone will work. *
In recent weeks, as the crypto markets were taking a beating, my investment was down in value, showing a $500 decline most recently. However, now that crypto is becoming "cool" again, and starting to show its strength, I thought I would hop on Coinbase and check out what my account was worth now.
Ha, ha ..... jokes on me!
Look at the first pic. I should know better than to think that I could simply logon to MY account whenever I wanted. After all, this is a Coinbase account! Multiple attempts to access my account resulted in the same stupid error.
I am currently residing in the Philippines. Maybe my current location is troubling to the Lords of Coinbase? Who knows, but once I accessed their site via a VPN, (masking my address as being somewhere in the USA), I was able to logon with no troubles.
Stupid Coinbase! **
Anyway, back to what I originally wanted to write about, before Coinbase decided to be a prick: how the heck are my investments doing after about two months?
If you look at the second pic, you'll see the top four coins at the moment: DASH, BTC, BCH (Hooray!), and Tezos (XTC). These guys are all generating a positive return. They are followed by the next four coins, LTC, Cardanao (ADA), Stella (XLM), and DOT, who are all close to breaking even. ***
The final pic shows a mediocre SOL, followed by the two cruddy, (at the moment), coins, ALGO and ATOM. This is followed by the best performing coin of all, which it pains me to admit is ETH. (I dislike Ethereum so much I only put $100 into it.)
What are the morals we can glean from this story?
1. While two months is way too short a time to demonstrate that HODLing is a successful strategy, it is already beginning to show okay results.
2. Be VERY CAREFUL storing your crypto on Coinbase, as they are notorious for cutting off access to your account for ..... well, "reasons".
In the near future, I need to research DEXs where I can store my crypto, (e.g., THORWallet), where I can get great returns AND access to my coins whenever I want. I guess I also need to finally get off my butt and figure out how to buy crypto via BISQ, ( https://bisq.network/ ). Coinbase has been easy and convenient, but their negatives are now beginning to outweigh their positives, at least for me.
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* For the morbidly curious! An overview of my investing strategy is here: https://noise.cash/post/1w889v4j . An overview of my Coinbase HODLing strategy, when the crypto markets were down: https://noise.cash/post/1xgg5wzr .
** Because of stupid Coinbase tricks like this, I'm concerned about being permanently locked out of my account. Which is why I probably won't leave all of my investments in Coinbase until the end of the year. I need to start researching better places to move my coins to. The stupid US Government forced BlockFi to shut off US citizens, so that is no longer an option. I am making a killing, ($400 invested a little over 10 days ago is now showing as worth over $500), on the THORWallet app, but these "profits" are just virtual numbers at the time being. Until I actually successfully withdraw these coins, I won't fully trust this app. But damn ...... what a fantastic rate of return!!
*** Note that some of the coins, (XTZ, ADA, ALGO, and ATOM), pay a yearly interest, although ALGO's is so pitifully low it is barely worth mentioning.
High Interest Rates On Crypto Held On Kraken
How would you like to get up to 24% interest on crypto you hold in a Centralized Exchange?
If you check out the first pic, you can see the cryptos paying the highest interest rates on Kraken. At the top of the list is KAVA, with a whopping 24%.
Based on my quick research, (do your own to verify, please!), it appears that KAVA is a useful coin that will be around awhile, and not a doomed shit coin or a cruddy rug-pull token. I liked what I saw when I read up on it, so I invested $70 USD into KAVA via my Kraken account.
I don't know about y'all, but I have always had trouble getting funds into my Kraken account. After several failed attempts to link a bank account, I determined that buying crypto directly on Kraken just isn't gonna work for me. What to do then? I decided to buy crypto on Coinbase, transfer this crypto to my Kraken account, then exchange it there for KAVA. (Yeah, I must love paying fees, huh?)
Once I decided to do this, the next issue was what crypto should I buy on Coinbase? It has to also be a crypto supported on Kraken, so I could transfer it over, but I didn't want to use the more popular cryptos such as BTC or BCH, because that may mess up my "experiment" I'm conducting on Coinbase to see if buying and simply HODLing a coin for 12 months will result in a profit. (Don't even talk to me about ETH! The fees on that stupid coin are ridiculous!) So I choose an unaccountably popular coin that at the moment I don't own, none other than the infamous Doggy Poop coin, DOGE.
And you know what? DOGE worked spectacularly well for this function. The fees to buy and send it from Coinbase weren't too atrocious, and it showed up in my Kraken account very quickly. Hooray for the Doggy Poop coin! But, alas, my opinion of its eventual "earning potential" remains unchanged, so I converted every last bit of it to KAVA.
So now I am earning a sweet 24% on a (hopefully) solid crypto. The only drawback I see to this right now is that Kraken is of course a CEX. If you don't think that keeping your crypto on a CEX has some very big inherent risks, you may want to talk to someone who lives in Canada. Basically, a CEX is always vulnerable to the whims of government, and should the government where you live go insane, such as apparently is happening in Canada, (and Australia), they could simply order the CEX to freeze or turn over all the funds in your account. Mega bummer!!
My goal in the near future is to get more familiar with DEXs, not only as investment platforms, but as places to convert fiat into crypto, and then crypto back into fiat. My faith in my government, (America, "Land of the Free"), is at this point hovering near zero.
An Allegory Explaining Why Violence Is Not Always The Best Solution
We are all aware of what is happening in the Ukraine, and the immense human tragedy events there are causing. There seems to be a flaw in the human psyche, causing us to lash out in anger whenever something bad happens to us.
Will we ever learn NOT to use violence to attempt to resolve all our problems?
A master was explaining to his student one day that while sometimes effective, violence is not the solution to every problem. The student was not in agreement, and argued that might makes right, and that the more powerful force is always the one that wins.
The master spoke to him. "Suppose a mosquito lands on your body. What will you do?"
"I will smash it!", the boy enthusiastically replied.
"Very good," the master agreed. "But suppose the mosquito lands on your testicles?"
There is always a way to solve a problem without violence.
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A special bonus joke, for those of you who are still reading:
One day, while taking a bath, a three year old boy pointed to his testicles, and asked his mother, "Mama, are these my brains?"
Smiling, she replied, "Not yet."
Four Ways I Invest Crypto
I am currently using four different methods of investing my cryptocurrency.
1. Simply keeping my crypto in a wallet or centralized exchange.
I have crypto in various software wallets, and in various centralized exchanges. Although some of the crypto in the wallets may be able to get a small return from being staked, this is not a huge amount of money. The crypto in the centralized exchanges may get a tiny return from being staked also, but mostly it just sits there, looking pretty.
This is the easiest and laziest way to play with crypto. For example, I have bought $2,300 worth of crypto that I am letting sit on Coinbase, just to prove to the world that if I leave it alone for a year or so, I will make money on it, even by doing nothing.
2. Earning interest from a specialized central exchange.
While you could argue that this is simply a specific case of #1 above, I would counter that it merits its own category. Examples of these "specialized" exchanges would be BlockFi and Gemini.
BlockFi used to be a great way to get a nice return on your crypto, (particularly stable coins), but recently the jerks at the SEC have heavily fined them, (for what? hampering the banksters' goal of world domination?), so their interest bearing accounts are no longer open to American citizens. If you are "fortunate" enough to be from the "Land of the Free", you can still open an account with Gemini, and use their "Earn" accounts to get interest on your crypto holdings. Of course, if you aren't an American, you can just stick your tongue out at the SEC and open up an interest bearing BlockFi account.
I have about $1000 grandfathered into BlockFi interest bearing accounts, and some crypto socked away in Gemini "Earn" accounts. Unfortunately though, I can no longer add money to my BlockFi accounts, and if I withdraw from them, I can never replace the withdrawn funds.
3. Self-directed crypto Roth IRA.
This is by far the most complicated way to invest crypto, and is specifically designed for American citizens, who now must contend with their stupid government's obscene need to tax just about any activity associated with crypto. (Will we soon be taxed for simply looking at our account balance?) The traditional way to do this is to set up an LLC, then have this LLC set up and fund a Roth IRA, blah, blah, blah ...... Too complicated for me!
If you watch this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvheQejTCu0 , you'll find out about the simplified method I am using. (It is featured at about 12:15.) These folks teamed up with Gemini, and if you open a self-directed Roth IRA with them, they will set up the Gemini account for you.
Some things to note: 1) This is a DIFFERENT Gemini account than my own account I set up in method #2 above. 2) You are strictly speaking not the owner of this Gemini account, so to do things like get Earn activated, you'll have to submit a form to the folks at DirectedIRA. 3) I am not necessarily saying that this is the best way to set up a Roth IRA to hold crypto, but rather just the way I chose to do so, because of the options available it was the simplest.
If you're an American and this seems interesting to you, you can find more info about it here: https://directedira.com/cryptocurrency/ .
4. Invest your crypto in a DEX.
As the SEC, IRS, and other stupid government agencies continue to froth at the mouth and act like rabid dogs regarding crypto, I believe this option will become more and more the favored one for holders of crypto, and not just American citizens, as all governments are apparently insane. But I have been avoiding DEXs because I don't want to fiddle around with MetaMask, which I just don't completely trust. (Probably paranoia on my part, but check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13LLjSMpgmk )
Enter THORchain, and THORWallet. These have gotten very good reviews from folks I trust:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql__qhwCrr0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKuGleDtjBg
So yesterday I downloaded THORWallet on my iPhone, and sent over $200 worth of BCH and $200 worth of LTC to my new wallet. It took me a while, but I eventually figured out how to transfer most of those balances to their respective pools, where I am supposedly getting phenomenal interest rates on them, (30%+).
That being said, THORWallet is still new, and may have some bugs to work out. The first pic shows what I see when I first open my wallet. Where did my money go?? Fortunately this is apparently just a glitch, as in a few moments, (sometimes more than a minute!), the screen refreshes to look like pic #2. And yes, it seems I have already made some money. (I just put in the $400 yesterday!)
If you'd like to give THORWallet a try, PLEASE watch the two videos above. They do a much better job explaining it than I can.
5. Special bonus method.
Actually this has nothing to do with investing crypto at all, but is just a reminder to check out pic #3, as it is funny.
@OldBastard
