kurtster wrote:

I'm not in BTC, but in ETH. Finally back up to the level where it's minimally profitable ($3,898/coin). Bought in at $3375/coin and should've bought more when it dropped to ⅓ of that, but I'd made a deal with myself that I'd buy once and hodl.

Which means the question is
Is this a currency that can be used for day to day transactions, like people wish, or is it just a Beanie Baby where you buy, hold, and hope to be wealthy from the investment one day?

It's looking for all the world that crypto is the latter, because of its wild price unpredictability. It makes it completely useless as a currency.

 westslope wrote: 
Just a reminder about what, where and why I am.  The platform is PayPal and it is 100% funded by me.  No margins, puts, holds, stops or anything.  Full 24 / 7 manual control.

Of the 4 cryptos available I settled on Etherium after trying all 4.  They others were Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.  The reason I went with Etherium over the others is that it does other things beside just be a vehicle for monetary exchange.  It is also a building block for block chain development and therefore more useful; a multipurpose commodity.

I just went through all four of the cyptos mentioned above and keyed on the past 6 month gains (losses) to date for each one.

Bitcoin  +7.7%  +$4300 per coin

Bitcoin Cash  (- 37%)  (- $363)

Litecoin  (- 31%)  (- $84)

Etherium    +70%  +$1600

I'm up about 55% since I got out and back in a bit higher.  Steely should be up nearly 100% since he got in at a really good price.

So the question I ask myself is if Etherium is going to keep on cycling and do what you suggest or hold tight as I have been and go real long.  I do not have an immediate need for what is tied up and holding it does not cost me anything.  But if it is going to cycle, I need to start taking advantage of that.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
I watch mostly business news and the crypto ads are just a wee bit more than they have been in the past.  We also watch a lot of HGTV and DIY stuff.  Never seen one there on any of those shows.  Makes sense to see it heavily promoted with sporting events.  Gamblers would the target, imo.  Impulse buyers.

Bubble ?  Depends on what goes on around it.  And depends on which crypto, there are so many now.

kurtster et al.,

If you are actually making good coin on Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies — congratulations! — do not be shy about selling into the heat.   Think about taking down 2/3 to 4/5 of your position, at least.

Among other things, you are facing considerable policy risk.  

Fear of missing out is the worst mistake a speculative investor/trader can make.   I know from (repeated) personal experience and having watched too many to count other speculators do the same.  

 kurtster wrote:

Not sure if you watch TV with commercials but the baseball playoffs streaming platform has had crypto brokers every inning; anyway the mainstream investors are getting in or got in but that makes me think it's a bubble.

Hey steely, you still in ?   You're not camped out in my backyard.

We are back close to the all time high.  It's pretty tempting to take some profit, but with my luck it will really get going.  

 islander wrote: 
Yeah, I'm still in.  It got back up to purchase price once already.  I'm just gonna see if it starts cycling within a certain range for awhile.  May buy this dip and try and get a bit of a gain and sell that part on the rise.  If it makes it down to $1700 and I'm by the puter, I'll probably bite.  That could be as soon as the morning.  Life has been real complicated these past couple of months with lot's of medical stuff going on, so I'm being cautious and patient right now.  Haven't been paying enough attention to related things.  Not a good time for decision making right now.

Edit:  Did some catching up and it seems that inflation worries are driving things down at the moment.  Also concern as to whether or not the Fed will do anymore quantitative easing.  More is good for crypto.  Currently the Fed has about $8 Trillion on its balance sheet.  Adding more would cause inflation.

 islander wrote:
I had to laugh when I read this.  25% on a speculative investment is rather tame (but probably a realistic, relatively safe goal).  

kurtster:  You would know that islander was a 1%er if he bragged about making a modest compound annual rate of return below the rate of return on the S&P500, and in passing, casually mentioned his cattle ranch in Idaho or the upland game preserve he visits annually in Argentina. 

Unless islander was a precious metals specialist like Eric Sprott or risk-loving mining entrepreneur like Robert Friedland.  If that was the case, he would be too busy to hand out free advice on RP.

——————————————————-

Investment story:  My wife worked for a long time with a linguistics professor in an Eastern Canadian university.  She would buy shares in a company and then sell them after it made a 20% gain.   No exceptions.   I do not know any relevant details but would guess that her portfolio out-performed most self-directed portfolios in Canada.    Her strategy was so unorthodox and simple, that only an economist could appreciate it.  

Other than their love of passive investing (e.g., ETFs), what is the one thing that economists emphasize in this world that others should heed?   Costs matter.   The time spent researching matters.  The time spent checking in matters.  The time spent fretting matters hugely.  

 kurtster wrote:

So, are you still in?

My Sundial Growers play is probably going to sell out at a loss today. My Enphase and SunRun speculation is doing well.  I still really like this space and am now looking to some other connected pieces. I think that energy storage and infrastructure systems still have a lot of potential. Several of the flywheel energy companies look good. I'm going to pick up some ABB, I'm still looking for a good company that is making a flywheel energy storage system.

 islander wrote:

My SNDL order never filled because it stayed too high. I got around to looking at it yesterday and I missed the low, but it's at my original target, so I bought in at $1.  Not expecting much, but stop loss is at $.85 and sell is at $1.2.  I think I'm going longer on Enphase, but I took a little profit on Sunrun and moved it to First Solar. First is the same basic segment, but astronger company and is trading at a pretty good discount right now.  While looking around I went back to check Sunpower and found a P/E under 13. That was almost enough to get me in, but the rest of their fundamentals are messy. 

 rgio wrote:

I find this ability, if indeed it is a real one, good for crypto actually.  It will help to keep the riff raff more out of the picture.

 haresfur wrote:
It could be stolen before.  There were cases that included "fake" wallets and other infrastructure plots...but the idea that a government could unlock a wallet seemed unlikely.

If they can track the wallet, what else can they see?  I would guess the US has been hiding this ability for a while and decided to try and scare off some of the bandits by letting them consider what the US might be able to see.  If governments can track bitcoin, a lot of the underworld / dark web utility disappears.

 rgio wrote:

More to the point, it not only can be tracked, it can be stolen, right?

Hmmmm....?



That can't be good for business.  If the crooks now have to worry that the government can track it, the value would have to plummet...wouldn't it?  

“Bitcoin just seems like a scam,” he said, “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar. I want the dollar to be the currency of the world; that’s what I’ve always said.”

Trump’s comments drew scorn from far-right activists such as conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and Ali Alexander, the leader of the so-called Stop the Steal movement. They each questioned the former president’s anti-Bitcoin stance and claimed that the real “scam” was Trump’s longstanding support for the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Since we are on the topic of scams, I’d say COVID vaccines are also a scam,” Loomer wrote on Telegram Monday. “The reality is Trump’s base is pro-cryptocurrency and anti-COVID vaccine.”

Alexander agreed with Loomer, adding that “Trump is so passionately pro his experimental vaccine and anti-Bitcoin yet his base is the opposite on both issues.”

“He has terrible advisors and needs to re-examine these issues of freedom,” Alexander wrote to his nearly 20,000 subscribers on Telegram. “Like dude… get over it. We the People choose freedom.”

 kurtster wrote:

I don't know, for someone with the uncanny ability to sell crypto at the peak and buy back in at nearly the low, I'm really surprised you weren't able to pick an ETF mix in betterment with a little better record.  I haven't run all their ETFs, but the biggies - VTI and VTV did much better than that. Even the riskier emerging market stuff like VOE did ~5% annualized in that window.  Did you just put it all in bonds (although even most of those like BNDX did better than your return). Oh wait, short term treasury bonds were pretty flat, that must be where you put it all.   You should diversify a little bit to limit your risk in any one sector. 

Looking for 25% on speculative investments and you call me the 1%!  Good luck. I'm sure with your knack for buying at the lows you'll be rolling in it soon.

 islander wrote:
I stand corrected.  Been awhile since I bothered to open a statement.  It is now on self adjusting.

Overview (Opened January 11, 2018 )
Total Invested $100.00
Total Earned -$7.14
Total Balance $92.86

Quarterly Statement Betterment October 1, 2019 - December 31, 2019
Betterment Securities, Broker-Dealer

Quarterly Summary
Beginning Balance (Sep 30, 2019) $88.37
Net Change $4.49
Ending Balance (Dec 31, 2019) $92.86

Beginning Balance (May 1 2021) $108.50
Deposits $0.00
Withdrawals1 -$0.02
Earnings $1.30
Ending Balance (May 31 2021) $109.78

It is making money hand over fist ...

Regarding using PP as a platform.  There is no way of putting in trading orders.  There are no provisions for margin trading.  You can only buy and sell, live in real time with fully funded transactions.  You watch and wait.  My point all along has been that there is more than ample reaction time to avoid getting burned by a sudden downturn.  They are not as sudden as say metals or certain equities.

So you can play along, since you seem to be so interested.  
In on May 24  Exchange rate $2,419.42 USD = 1 Ethereum (ETH)

Current price:  CLICKY   $2793.02 or roughly 10%

Current PP sell price:

$2,776.63 USD = 1 ETH  with a $2790.02 market price

I am currently looking to see what the new range is likely to be going forward.  If I get up 25% ( $31-3200 ?) I might cash out and wait to go back in on a dip.  But that is dependent on if it starts cycling.  There is also the risk of getting out and getting left behind.  There may not be another dip or one that matters for a very long time.

 kurtster wrote:

As usual, you are wrong on many levels. I'm not even sure what you are on about with Netflix.  If you had actually listened to my advice on betterment, you wouldn't have had much exposure to volatility. You wouldn't have made 25% annual returns either, but that's not realistic for most people.   I'll go ahead and call bullshit - if you had money in Betterment for the last 3 years and are down 5%, you would have had to invest in the most risky and most unlucky funds they have. They only have a handfull of vanguards ETFs, but I don't think any of them would have that return in that window unless you bailed out last April. 

I'm sure you schooled the paypal guys and have set them straight. But if you want to be taken seriously in most investment groups you talk about your trades in real time. You don't need to tell us how much you are putting in, but it adds a lot more legitimacy if you say "today I bought, and here's my targets", instead of "I bought last week when it was low and sold today".  My speculation fund is about $1k. I'm moving some of it around. Here is what I have planned:  I have a buy order for SNDL at $1 that I hope fills tomorrow.  I'm also looking at moving some into Enphase and Sunrun. for Sundial I'm looking to sell out on an upswing at about $1.2, and Enphase and Sunrun I'll probably sell when I get a 10% return or so - depending on the volatility that goes with the solar guys I may change that target a little bit. 

 islander wrote:

yeah, yeah ... says the 1% er.  

I'm trying to keep specific dollar amounts out of this and instead speak in percentages, which in essence is all that matters, right ?  What, you want me to post my actual purchase and sales history to make you happy and me credible ? I'll guestimate that I am still up about $500 just to make you happy.  All's I am doing is using the amount of money you spend to fill the tank on your boat.  A lot to me, but chump change to you.

This is more about the opportunity provided by Pay Pal, the pluses and minuses.  I'm learning and sharing what I am learning.  I just had a long conversation with a PP supervisor over an inordinate length of time on a fund hold after a sale.  I went into depth with this guy when he tried to tell me that PP is only a payment processor.  I got him to understand that there is no third party involved once I nailed him down on just exactly who is their trading partner and to explain the actual percentage of the buy and sell spreads.  They will not disclose that.  I could make screen captures and figure it out myself, but this should be posted for the sake of transparency and also maybe to meet legal obligations.  He did admit that there is no trading partner, that it is PP itself, which led to the admission that they should not be applying the same rules.  This is a two party transaction directly between the member and PP itself.   A major adjustment is required here where there has to be a certification that all parties involved are safe and secure eliminating holds going forward.

But I digress, you already know all of this stuff, because you just do, right ?  Well you should'a told me a long time ago of this problem.

OBTW ... I took your advice regarding Betterment a few years ago and almost immediately lost money due to volatility.  Took everything out except $100.  Three years later, that $100 is worth $95.  Meanwhile every time I see Netflix's current stock price I think of you.

 islander wrote:
There was a hint of sarcasm in the question, but it doesn't really matter.