So a lot of people have heard of Bitcoin, but there are many more people that have not.  If you live in the crypto currency space, like I do, you sometimes forget how far away from mainstream Bitcoin and other crypto currencies are.  But, that may already be changing.  This from an article by Sean Williams shows just how far blockchain technology has come in the past few years. "Just over a week ago, financial giants American Just over a week Express ( NYSE:AXP ) and Banco Santander ( NYSE:SAN ) announced a cross-border partnership that entails utilizing the blockchain network developed by Ripple. Behind bitcoin ($137.4 billion), Ethereum ($35.2 billion), and bitcoin cash ($20.3 billion), Ripple has the fourth-largest market cap ($9.1 billion) of any virtual currency. As reported by CNBC , payments made by American Express' business customers on its FX International Payments platform will be routed through Ripple's blockchain network and allow for instant, cross-border

IOTA is not your typical cryptocurrency.  IOTA, which typically stands for the Internet Of Things is a completely new approach to managing a blockchain. Blockchain technology is what made coins like Bitcoin (BTC) possible.  BTC is just a coin that uses the blockchain technology.  As I've said many times before, the "real" invention here was coming up with a blockchain that works.  To show that it works they created BTC.  The success of BTC is a very good indication of how well blockchains can work. Blockchains are what provide the audit trail of each transaction.  It is what allows you to purchase a digital "product" and be assured that the product is authentic and that you are the only one who owns that particular product.  It is what allows us to use BTC as money because it protects against counterfeiting.  Blockchains do have their limitations, most notably transaction speed, and IOTA solves these limitations.  This is hugely important because almost

As the November 16th Fork day for Bitcoin approaches I am getting more and more apprehensive about it. I really have a hard time seeing this fork go well. If you've been following me for the past year or so you'll know that's 100% different view from what I normally have. I have already moved most of my holdings to cash (Tether) and for my BTC brethren I encourage you to at least consider sitting this one out. I don't know who is going to be the winner here, BTC, B2X, or some other coin, but I've been hearing more and more about maybe Bitcoin Cash (BCH or BCC) being in play as the survivor. Here's a REALLY interesting article that talks about that possibility. I can't argue against any of what is in this article. https://www.yours.org/content/predicting-the-outcome-of-the-november-bitcoin-fork-89914ce0e1f5/?utm_content=bufferf3dec&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I have a serious question here that I'd appreciate any feedback on. Let me preface this by saying I've been mining, hording, and trading BTC and Alts for the last few years, and the upcoming BTC fork on November 16th, 2017, when block #494,784 is mined, is the most concerned I've ever been.  This is why: Up until now the BTC ticker has always been on the "right side" of any forks.  I know that's really just this past summer's fork with BCC because I'm ignoring Bitcoin Gold, but I also think of the ETH fork that led to ETC and how ETH stayed on the right side of that fork (IMHO).  The "big" coins have always maintained the ticker on the right side of the fork. But, I think that all changes with this next fork.  Even if you disagree with me, go with me here, we'll cover that at the end.  If I understand it correctly, and at least going by what Coinbase is going to do, the BTC ticker will stay with the non-segwit fork and the fork

As most of you already know, there are 2 BTC forks happening in the next couple of weeks.  One is the Segwit2x fork scheduled for November 16th, 2017.  The other is the Bitcoin Gold fork, which already happened yesterday, October 23rd, 2017. What is a Fork, why are we doing these forks, and what happens to the coins I hold during a fork are the common questions regarding forks.  Let's dig into each of those a little bit. A "Fork" is just a fancy way of saying someone has made a 2nd copy of the code and decided to take it in a different direction.  For example, imagine you have a team of programmers working on some code to make a crypto coin.  Monday morning arrives and the programmers get in an argument about what features their coin should have.  Some want it to be able to be mined by the general public, others want it all to be issued at once and have no mining support.  Some want it as fast as possible even if that compromises anonymity, others want just the oppo

As per my earlier posts about BitConnect.com and BitFinance.biz, I am getting mixed results and therefore sending out a big caution flag about BitFinance.biz. BitConnect has been doing exactly what they said they'd do.  They've been paying about 1.2% per day for the past 8 weeks or so. BitFinance was doing the same, paying exactly 1.0% per day for the past 4-5 weeks.  I've done several $1250 withdrawals over those weeks, but, I did a withdrawal last week and I did not get paid yet.  Normally I get paid within 24 hours.  That's a warning sign that maybe all is not good.  It still might work out, but until we know for sure I wouldn't recommend putting any money into BitFinance until we know more.

It seems that October of 2017 will be the month of the Fork.   After recently surviving the first Segwit fork a couple months ago, which led to Bitcoin Cash, we now face another "Fork" on October 25th which will create Bitcoin Gold. I use the term "Fork" lightly there because it isn't really a fork, instead it is an air-drop.  That is to say the BTC code isn't really forking like it did for Segwit, but instead on October 25th Bitcoin Gold will magically appear for anyone that holds any BTC. Not much is known about Bitcoin Gold other than it's main purpose is to put more power in the hands of the small minors at the expense of the big mining farms.  Bitcoin Gold will be able to be mined on simple home based PC hardware, whereas regular BTC requires custom build ASIC mining rigs. There is also a big Ethereum (ETH) fork coming in a few days on about October 15th (on block 4,370,000).  That is a true fork and will be the launch of the Byzantium upgra

Earlier this month I talked about BitConnect.co and BitFinance.biz, two places that provided HYIP investment opportunities.  These are very high risk, but very high return "investment" plans (to use the term loosely). Shortly after writing that I put $10k into BitConnect and after less than a month I have already pulled out about $3600 in interest payments.  I chose BitConnect because it paid twice the daily rate that BitFinance paid.  I would have preferred to use BitFinance, and if I were looking to be more conservative I would have, but I couldn't pass up the 1%+ per day rate offered by BitConnect.  To me BitFinance would be preferable because BitConnect was already a couple years old and these HYIP programs tend to run their course in a few years or less.  That being said, one thing that sets BitConnect apart from all other HYIP's I've seen is they have a BitConnect Alt coin (BCC) to go along with their program and that coin has been performing very well

EDIT Oct 21st, 2017 - Note that BitFinance is no longer in business.  They were even worse than the typical HYIP scam in that they only lasted a month instead of several years.  As of this date they continue to collect money but they do not make payouts.  DO NOT DEPOSIT WITH THEM! I typically talk about different Crypto coins, particularly Alt coins, but for a change I am going to look at a couple different ways you can make money with Bitcoin.  In fact, what if I told you there is a way you can double your money in 3 months or less?  Sounds crazy, and maybe it is, but it is out there. As you know, Bitcoin itself is a risky investment.  Nobody knows where the price is going or how long it will be around.  Is it a flash in the  pan "bubble" or is it a true technological marvel that will change the way we look at currency from now on. I personally feel that Bitcoin, or more specifically "Blockchain", is a noteworthy invention that is here to stay.  What is the

In my June 28th post "Ants in the Pants - Jumping the gun with my NEOs coin purchase" I touched on why I like Antshares (ANT).  As a quick review here, Antshares can be looked at as a Chinese version of Ethereum (ETH).  Antshares has the addtional benefit of paying dividends in the form of Antcoins (ANC). At the time, ANT was trading at about 0.0018 BTC, or about $7.50 per share.  As of today, ANT is trading at 0.0042, or about $13.50 per share.  That's an 80% increase in about 20 months, nothing to shake a stick at.  But, I see ANT potentially trading at close to the ETH price, which right now is $250 per coin.  ETH has been trading as high as $400 per coin in mid June. If ANT were to approach those prices, that's at least a 20-fold increase over it's current price. Needless to say, ANT remains one of my favorite ALT coins in terms of "Home Run" potential. Note: ANT doesn't trade on Poloniex but it does trade on Bittrex.  Also check out my e

Bitcoin (BTC) is back at it's highs today.  Tomorrow is FDay for BTC - Fork Day. Why is BTC at it's highs the day before the fork?  Is this a case of buy the rumor and sell the news?  Or, is this a case of the market showing satisfaction that the fork process is expected to go well and the BTC price is about to explode to the upside? There's a well know saying in trading of "Buy the rumor, Sell the news".  It has proven itself to be true over and over again.  Very often good news is already figured into the price of an equity and when that good news actually becomes true, the equity then drops because the anticipation of the event has passed. Is that the case now with BTC?  Should we be looking to sell BTC as soon as the fork is implemented on Aug 1st, 2017 at 7:20 AM CT?  Or, is the price being held back by the fork and once the fork goes smoothly it is going to take off. To make things more difficult there is an alternate explanation for the current hi

Everywhere you turn in Crypto World everyone is talking about August 1st.  What to do, what to do. I've read several article that are supposedly "the whole story behind the BTC scalability choice" and each one I read says a different thing.  I'm not sure if that is because they really don't know what they are talking about, or if it is because things continue to change and by the time one article goes to press times have changed enough for the next article.  It seems to be a little of both. I distill it down to this.  There was great, warranted fear that consensus would not be made and there could be a real ugly hard fork of BTC this Summer.  Well the very good news is that did not happen.  Consensus was reached and Segwit is in the process of being implemented.  BIP 91 kicked in last week. So that leads us to August 1st and "Bitcoin Cash", or BCC.  On August first is is very possible a portion of the BTC crowd will enable a fork of the code lead

What does the recent SEC opinion mean?  Well, each case is different so make sure you ask your attorney, but I will tell you how I interpret it. I am in the process of an ICO and have met with our attorneys on this. My/Our interpretation is, if you do an ICO where you are offering ownership of the company, then that falls under the jurisdiction of the SEC. It doesn't matter if you are selling your ownership positions for Fiat currency or for Crypto currency, it is still an offering and therefore is subject to all the rules and regulations of security offerings. If, on the other hand, you are just selling tokens and those tokens can be used to access your product, then the SEC "ruling" doesn't apply to you. In this scenario think of the token sale as selling Gift Certificates instead. The SEC does not regulate the sale of Gift Certificates any more than the regulate the sale of any other product.  So if your ICO is selling tokens that have nothing to do with owner

When people ask me how I store my coins, I explain that I keep my high volume coins (meaning I may trade them) in my "Exchange" account, and I keep my buy-and-hold coins in either a PC based wallet or on my KeepKey. A Keepkey is a USB hardware device that you plug in to your USB port to transfer to and from, and when not in use you store it in a safe place, such as a locked drawer or a home safe.  Keepkey is not the only hardware wallet out there.  In fact Ledger makes a very good wallet, but they are constantly sold out and the wait list is often months to get one. The reason I store them the way I do is for security. I don't trust online wallets to keep my coins as safe as I can when I store them locally.  Just this week there was a hack of the ETC online wallet site "ClassicEtherWallet.com".  The hackers used social engineering to get control of the site and made off with user's coins.  You can Google for more info on that or see a summary here: h

How much lower will we go?  Isn't that the question to which we'd all like the answer. On my June 24th post I said that I didn't like the absence of strength in the recovery and it looked like we might go lower before we get a real recovery rally underway.  Well, it looks like that is what is going on.  There's no telling how much lower it will go before it recovers, but it will recover at some point.  Should you cash out and wait for a low before buying back in?  Maybe, but I'd recommend against it.  Most of the time it will recover very quickly and you'll be caught on the sidelines.  Then you don't want to buy into a rally so you are waiting for it to crash again so you can get in, and if it doesn't crash you are left out of the recovery.  If you aren't in for the recovery you've guaranteed your losses.  But, it is your money, you have to decide how much you can take before you want to sit it out for a while and wait for it to stabilize. In

If you've been following my portfolio you may have noticed that I purchased a lot of NEOS coin recently.  It actually has been doing extremely well the past few months and has done well for me. Well, the thing is, I didn't really mean to buy NEOS, I meant to buy NEO.  The names are very similar but they are two totally different coins, totally unrelated to each other. Neo, the coin I meant to buy, is the re-branded name of the coin called ANTShares (ANS).  ANS has been on a tear lately.  ANS is a very big coin in China. They call it the Chinese version of Ethereum because just like Ethereum it is a publicly accessible open source blockchain.  Just like Ethereum you can deploy smart contracts on ANT and create your own coins.  I have high expectations for ANS, so I'm trying to load up on it, as is everyone else. What is really interesting about ANS is that if you own the ANS coin you get paid dividends in the form of ANT coins.  Note that one is AntShares (ANS) and t

Alt coins traditionally show most of their strength on Fridays and Saturdays.  Then they tend to give some of that back on Sunday and Monday.  They tend to operate independently all week long, and then repeat the process. We didn't see much strength yesterday (Friday) and they are looking pretty weak right now.  I've got a feeling we are going to re-test the lows of the recent correction.  Either that or they are going to strengthen and break out to the upside in the next 24 hours or so. So, we better either see some strength soon, or I think we'll be re-testing the lows.  The image is from Poloniex at 19:00 on Saturday 6/24/17.

I had been watching ANT coins because there was a lot of talk about them and a lot of upwards price movement.  I didn't realize until reading a Hacked.com article today that ANT coins are traded as NEOS on Poloniex. This coin has a LOT of potential.  Per the Hacked article, you can see they are calling it the "Ethereum of China".  It is rare for Alt coins to jump to dollars in value so quickly out of the gate. NEOS has already traded as high as $11 per coin. I've sold SOME of my NXT, Monero, and SIA just so I could take a sizable position in NEOs.  If it performs like ETH, it has a long way to go in price.  If you remember, I bought a bunch of ETH at about $6 per coin and then put it away and forgot about it only to pull it out a year later and find it trading at over $300 per coin.  I'm hoping NEOs does the same thing.  I just bought it at a little over $6 this morning.

So kind of slow times in the crypto space, isn't it?  For those of you relatively new to this space, we haven't see these kinds of down days nor these sideways days since the first of the year. I personally think it is good for the market to do this.  It shows it is a more "mature" market in that it is behaving in a more normal manner.  After a big run-up like we've had, we are/were due for a correction.  Hopefully we are done with it, but I won't be surprised if there is a little more to go. We are getting close to the point where Bitcoin may be dethroned as the "biggest" coin.  Ethereum (ETH) is now running a very close second and could pass BTC in the next few weeks.  A lot of people, including myself, thought that might happen at some point, but I think almost everyone saw that as 5 or 10 years off. I saw this chart today courtesy of HowMuch.net and thought I'd share it.  As much as I (and now you) focus on BTC each day, BTC is really a

BitShares (BTS) has really been consolidating nicely since it's big thrust up June 6th-8th.   As of now, it looks like if it breaks above, and holds above 0.00013 then it is starting it's next move. We might see a retest of 0.00011 before that move up.  That could be a great opportunity to buy more should that happen.  I'd put in a buy around the 0.00011 level with a tight stop at 0.00010 or so.  If it were go break down you'd only be out a few points and if it were to take off as it appears it might, it could provide a good run. Here's an interesting little addition to what BTS is doing this summer to help run up the BTS price and make more people aware of how big BTS really is: https://dontpanicsell.com/2017/06/15/bts/

The easiest way to make money with Bitcoin (BTC) is to buy it and hold it.  All you need to do is go to one of the 3 main places to buy BTC (CoinBase.com, LocalBitcoins.com, or a BTC ATM), buy some coin and every 6 months to a year check back on the price. I've done other posts about how BTC has performed over the past few years.  I think this statement sums it up well: I f you invested $10,000 in Bitcoin and $10,000 in Gold in 2010, that the Gold would now be worth $9,900 and the Bitcoin would be worth over $200,000,000. There are a lot of people who don't buy and hold but rather day-trade BTC.  Just like any highly volitile asset, some of those traders will get rich and some will go broke.  Since BTC has always seemed to go up most traders I know are making a lot of money as long as they don't short BTC. But, my favorite place to make "big" money on crypto-currencies is on the alternate, or "Alt" coins.  Bitcoin is only one of hundreds of block-c

If you've had to interact with Customer Service on Poloniex lately you've come to see that waiting for a response from them is like waiting for the seasons to change.  They both come about very slowly and with little fanfare. Poloniex has recently added a lot more customer service Reps and they closed down the Troll Box in order to allocate those resources to customer service issues.  So they know there is a problem and they are trying to fix it.  But, here's a couple things you can do to get your question answered as quickly as possible. First of all, after you open a ticket, make sure you come back and check it every day.  It's very possible for them to respond to your ticket but for you not to know about it.  It can be because their response email ended up in your spam folder, or it just never went out in the first place.  More than once I've been surprised to see a response on my ticket with no associated response via email. Secondly, and most importantly,

The upcoming SONM ICO has a couple things that makes it more complicated than most ICOs.  First, US residents are not allowed.  Whether or not you follow that restriction is up to you, but that is what the website says.  Second, they are issuing ETH based Tokens for your payments.  Tokens are slightly different than coins. In a typical ICO, you sign up for an account, you send them some funds, and they put their coins in your account.  Once their coins become popular enough to be listed on exchanges such as Poloniex or Bitfinex, you can move the coins there and do whatever you want with them. The SONM ICO will exchange ETH coins for SNM Tokens.  You can pretty much think of those tokens as being just like coins.  I hold some Augur (REP Ticker) on Poloniex which is the same kind of tokens as these will be.  They are both tokens that are created on the ETH blockchain.  Whereas BTC is a coin on the Bitcoin blockchain, ETH is a coin on the ETH Blockchain.  But, the ETH blockchain als

I don't normally "trade" in Crypto currencies.  My strategy has been, and continues to be, find a good coin to buy and hold.  Studies have shown over and over that is the best way to make money when purchasing equities. But, I've decided to take some part of my portfolio, somewhere around 10%, and to take a risk with that part.  I'm looking for coins that have had a lot of volatility lately and which appear to be ready to break out. With that in mind I've focused on 3 coins this past weekend.  On Friday I bought a million coins each of Sia (SC) and Burst (BURST).  I have no attachment to Si, I'm only buying it because it is one of those coins I always seem to see with double digit gains on any one day.  Burst on the other hand is a coin I know fairly well and in fact I mine Burst on a daily basis. So I bought a million Sia at 0.00000425 and a million Burst at 0.00000560.  I'm hoping they both break out around the 0.0000072