If you watch my portfolio you know I hold more ETC than anything else right now. That's not because I like ETC for the long term, that's because I think ETH moved more than ETC and I think ETC is going to play catch-up shortly. I'd actually prefer buying and holding ETH for the long haul. I have the same feeling about Monero. It hasn't moved as much as other Alts and I think it will catch up shortly. I came across this analysis of ETC today by a professional trader I respect. I totally agree with his summary. We'll probably see another retest of $14, but then move up and break out. ETC chart courtesy of Hacked.com.

Monero is one of my favorite Alt coins.  Unlike most Alt coins where, as much as I hate to admit it, I tend to follow the crowd, I like Monero because of its fundamentals. Monero is used in place of BTC when the users want greater anonymity than what BTC provides.  Yes, this is often on the Dark web buying products of questionable nature, but also on normal Ecommerce sites by people who just don't like everything they do being tracked. I don't know this for a fact, but I think in terms of Alt coins, Monero is probably the coin most used for monetary value other than BTC. Ethereum is maybe used more often, but not for monetary reasons.  ETH is used to create other coins and for other uses of it's smart contract functionality.  When it comes to buying something online, your choices typically come down to BTC or Monero (and sometimes ZCash and/or Dash). I think the chart looks great.  It's been growing at a nice steady clip.  It is showing higher highs...

If you are just getting started with Crypto-currencies and you haven't read my "Getting Started" blog post, please do so now.  This post will assume you have completed the steps in the first Getting Started guide. In this post we are going to move some BTC from Coinbase to Poloniex and then buy some Golem (GNT) coin with our BTC. First let's move some BTC to Poloniex.  I'll assume you have already funded your Coinbase account with some BTC.  To move the coin to Poloniex you'll need your Poloniex BTC Address.  Let's get that first because you'll need that for Coinbase in a minute. Click on the "Balances" link on the home page, then select "Deposit/Withdrawal" from the drop-down menu. Then, when you are on your Deposit/Withdrawal page, find the line for Bitcoin (BTC) and click on the "Deposit" link.  Because you want to deposit BTC from Coinbase we are clicking on Deposit. That will make a window pop open that sh...

Ethereum, or ETH is the #2 coin, right behind Bitcoin.  It has always been my 2nd favorite coin and it has huge potential.  Those in the know won't be surprised if at some point it comes out the winner over BTC. ETH has a little brother called ETC.  ETC stands for Ethereum Classic.  Last summer ETH went through what is called a "hard fork".  That is when the codes branch off the code in a new direction. They make small tweaks all the time and send out a new build.  But when they make a large change, that requires a fork in the code.  In this case when the forked version came out, a lot of miners were upset with the changes and they refused to run the new version of the code.  So we ended up with 2 versions of Ethereum. Because the major exchanges had all already supported the new version of Ethereum and they stuck with the existing ticker of ETH, Now that there was this old version hanging on, they needed a ticker symbol in order to list it ...

Well, the past 48 hours has been anything but calm in the Crypto Currency world.  BTC shot up to $2700 and then promptly crashed to as low as $1600 on Poloniex.  Almost all Alt coins, including 100% of the coins I track, followed suit. We have been prediction a "correction" for quite some time.  The past 6-8 weeks in Alt coins and BTC for that matter have been crazy.  Almost every day, most coins were up double digit figures.  It was rare to see a down day at all. In my opinion it isn't healthy for the market to see a run-up like that without a retracement.  If you are in BTC for the long run, you want to see it behave like a mature asset, not like a flash-in-the-pan bubble.  Its recent climb from the $800 area to $2700 had the look and feel of a mania rather than investing. That being said, a lot of it could be attributed to new money entering the market.  When you look at it in terms of the volumes that trade on well known markets like the N...

I have mentioned the Bitcoin (BTC) ETF a lot lately in regards to the price of BTC.  Why is it such a big deal?  The answer is because it would bring in so much new money into BTC that the price would likely sky-rocket.  But it wouldn't sky-rocket in a bubble fashion but rather in a very legit supply and demand fashion. First of all, what is an ETF?  "ETF" stands for "Exchange Traded Fund".  ETFs are used to take some target asset, like a stock, or a stock index, or a collection of stocks in a specific industry, and create a fund that mirrors the price of those assets.  Instead of buying the actual assets, you buy and sell the ETF. For example, to trade the S&P 500, you could either buy each of the 500 stocks that make up the S&P 500 (not feasible for most people) or you could buy and sell the "SPY" ETF.  The SPY ETF is set up so the price mirrors that of the S&P 500.  This allows institutional investors an easy way to participat...

This from a very well written article on what will happen if Bitcoin falls substantially,  The link to the full article is at the bottom: "Japan has already legalized it. A major infrastructure change is coming very soon in the world’s third largest economy. We know that Bitflyer has signed a contract that ensures bitcoin is accepted at hundreds of thousands of retail stores across the island nation and that about 20 new bitcoin exchanges will be coming online shortly. India is currently reviewing the option to legalize and regulate digital currency. After the harsh and rapid demonetization, they’re in sore need of an alternative to paper money. They have a panel working on it now and hopefully, we’ll get some good news in the coming weeks. On or before Monday, May 15th, the SEC will deliver a decision to either approve or deny the world’s first bitcoin ETF, which if approved will open the markets to Billions of Dollars in institutional investments. As I’m writing, the total mar...