Should You be using a crypto dealer? [SFOX REVIEW]

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If you are in in the crypto market, you might have noticed a few advertisements popping up around the internet for brokers and liquidity providers. Since the bull run of 2017, these companies have been launched with record speed. If you want to learn even more about this trend, we have an article on it that you can check out here: brokers in the crypto market. If not, stick around for our SFOX review!

For those of you who are skeptical like me, I do not advocate for these companies nor am I sponsored. Regardless, you may be surprised to know what conclusion I came to on SFOX.

In addition, I will try to add my 2 cents here and there on some things the platform could improve on and things that SFOX surprises me on. With that being said, let’s dive into it.

Overview

In this article, I will discuss my experience with a company just like the ones in the ads and let you know firsthand what I learned. Specifically, we will be reviewing SFOX. Here are some things we will cover:

  • My discussion with a business development director
  • What is SFOX
  • What you can do with SFOX
  • How you can get started (if you feel inclined to)

While investigating the notorious ads that portray low fees, liquidity and security, this company in particular caught my eye. SFOX advertises themselves as a user friendly, verifiably secure, fully compliant and liquidity focused dealer.

SFOX trading platform REVIEW

San Francisco Open Exchange

First, let’s start off on how I found SFOX. For those interested, I actually found this company from a random google search not just through ads. I was googling “san francisco open exchange” and this company came up at the top of the page. Try it if you do not believe me.

After exiting the page by accident, I tried multiple other searches related to the companies’ niche, and it was very difficult to find them without using their name, SFOX. Personally, I would try to put some more effort in SEO, but that comes second to investing in your platform which we will get to later.

Initial Research on SFOX

Whenever I find a new company I am interested in, I immediately search for reviews, related content and scour their website for all the information. Most of the time, you can find everything you need to know about a company in a matter of 15 minutes if you are diligent and know where to look.

Oddly, SFOX took me a little more time to fully grasp their utility and use-cases in the crypto market. Therefore, I was not sold on the whole, broker, dealer, open exchange aspect yet.

Therefore, I wanted to dig deeper.

Personal Meetings

After doing some further due diligence, I realized you can personally setup a meeting on their website with the business development director, Daniel Kim. Without thinking twice, I did just that and within the same day, I was on the phone with him for 30 minutes uninterrupted.

Let’s pause for a moment, because this was impressive to say the least. Even more, Daniel emailed me to confirm the meeting, prompted me to what topics I would like to discuss, and followed up with several emails before we even spoke. I am fairly sure I will not get anyone but a robot from most companies, so this was an immediate breathe of fresh air. I almost did not know what to do.

Was he scamming me? That was my first thought.

Obviously, when someone meeting first time with someone, always always always search for their social profiles or proof of identity. Additionally, it is good business to know a little bit about the person you are meeting with ahead of time.

Business Development Lead Daniel Kim

With a simple linkedin search, I had Daniel’s account and everything I needed to know about him. Quite an impressive work history as Daniel has worked at Gemini as director of international sales and at itBit (crypto trading exchange made by Paxos) as director of US operations and as director of institutional client group.

Easy to say, this guy has been around the metaphorical crypto exchange block.

SFOX Q&A

At this point, there was no need to continue digging about for articles or reviews. I wrote down my questions and prepared for my discussion with Daniel.

Now, let’s go question by question and relay the answers. At the end we can review some of the things we talked about. I will list my questions and Daniel’s answers (paraphrased) right below.

What is SFOX

SFOX is an interactive crypto platform that acts as a prime dealer used to merge liquidity, manage portfolios and ultimately save time for our clients.

What is SFOX Target Market

Investors, Institutions, businesses, sophisticated and savvy traders, and really anyone that wants to transact in cryptocurrency. We are extremely welcoming to all sizes of users. Our goal is to make the market easily accessible to everyone through proper education and user friendly features.

What Are SFOX’s Features

SFOX has multiple outstanding features, but it excels by providing 20 liquidity partners, merged order books, and enterprise level security. Additionally, we make customer support our number one focus. The customer is who we are here to serve.

What Is SFOX Fees

The fees vary based on the order type of course. Generally, our fees are the lowest on the market with some being as low as .25% of any order. Besides orders, account setup and activation is free, deposits are free and there is no setup fee for any initial structuring. We pride ourselves on not having hidden costs and being completely transparent to the client.

Does SFOX Use Third Party Software

Simply, no. We used to until we realized the liability of using a third party software. Therefore, we hired the best engineers we could to fully build out our back end, proprietary software, and gateways. Now, the investor, broker, trader or institution can all rest assured that we have their funds, accounts and data secured and protected. Again, we want to focus on the client. Everything we do, is to provide the best services available to them. None of our clients have to worry about a random third party resource housing or transmitting their data unsecured.

What Is Your Largest Expense

For every dealer, our largest expense is compliance, regulation and security. Compliance being the main expense, we spend plenty of funds on complying with every rule and regulation we know about or hear about. Clients do not have to ever worry about our platform being targeted as suspicious or unregulated.

Why Use SFOX Instead Of An Exchange

This is a common question, the reason is mainly due to time, lower costs, liquidity, and accessibility. In order for you as a trader to trade across 20 liquidity providers, you are going to need 20 different accounts. On top of this, each exchange will have different fund transfer fees for withdrawals and deposits, different transaction fees and processes. The amount of time you lose when interacting across so many different platforms, sending funds, and liquidating potions will cost you a lot in hidden costs.

Every trader knows that time is money. Additionally, with the multiple different fees occurring on every platform, tracking your profits becomes quite challenging. SFOX aggregates all of these platforms into a single platform that’s easy to use, competitively priced and provides you with the tools to trade crypto efficiently.

What is SFOX’s Proprietary Software

Unfortunately, I cannot share this information with you. Although, I do want to note that it is very unique and ahead of most competitors. It overs solutions to problems that most of the market is still struggling with.

Anything Else You Would Like to Say About SFOX

The reason we decided to do everything in house, is because of how seriously we take security. We did not have to spend all of that money on funding for engineers, but we decided it was the right thing to do for the long-term success of our platform. We are confident out clients will thank us for it later when everything runs just as intended.

SFOX Conclusion

In conclusion, after research, reviews and a personal phone call from Daniel, my perspective changed in our SFOX review. I never realized the complications of trading on the crypto market. SFOX makes sense to use. They have a clear policy of clients first and they made it shine by Daniel being so accommodating. I scheduled a 15-minute call with him, and he talked for over half an hour on the same day. That is some quality customer service.

Their platform is clean, user-friendly, and quite trendy. It is a crypto minimalist dream, combined with a enterprise level use-cases. Personally, I want to thank Daniel for his time and for representing his company so well. If you have any more questions or concerns, please go over to their website, SFOX, and schedule a meeting with him yourself! After speaking with Daniel, follow this link hereto get started trading today on SFOX!

Additionally, for more information on SFOX:

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How Are Cryptocurrency and Forex similar

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Do the Forex and cryptocurrency markets have anything in common? While both terms may sound different and the markets are separate, they still have many overlapping characteristics. In this article, we will cover how cryptocurrency and Forex work similarly. In particular, we will start with a brief over view of what Forex actually is, what is traded and how it operates. Afterward, we will get into the similarities and strategies associated with both markets. With that being said, let’s get right to it.

What Is Forex?

The FM market or Forex is the largest platform for trading in the globe with 5.1 trillion dollars being exchanged everyday. This is a large amount of wealth being shifted daily. For instance, the USA stock market trades approximately $257 billion every day. This is a fraction of the amount of what Forex produces on a day-to-day trade volume.

Additionally, foreign exchanges operate for five days out of the week and for twenty-four hours a day on those days. For instance, Forex trades are always in operation with the help of individuals and banks across the globe. For Forex, you will not find any central market as it is not directly associated with any other financial platforms. There are currency trades taking place on any market opening which might sound familiar to some crypto traders.

How Does Foreign Exchange Trade Operate?

With foreign exchange trade, you will have to buy a currency and later sell for another. Marketing and buying currencies will help you see more profits in Forex. Specifically, It has to do with speculating over how currencies will behave in the market. The speculation you set on in Forex can either be for futures or current value. Here is a list of some of the major currencies offered on the Forex Market.

The Major Currencies Of The Forex Market

SymbolNation
CFHSwitzerland
GBPGreat Britain
USDUnited States
JPYJapan
EUREurozone
CADCanada
AUDAustralia
NZDNew Zealand

Trading Currency Pairs

The real Forex market is a product of the major currency pairs. Although, the minor currency pairs can also help traders make a profit. The combination of other larger currency trades can also be the product of the minors. It can be in JPY/GBP, CHF/EUR, and GBP/EUR. The one big question that comes to mind is selecting the best currencies to trade.

The best way to go is by concentrating your trade on two or one currency pairs. It is perfect for anyone new to the Forex market. In most cases, the JPY/USD or USD/EUR happens to be the choice of traders. It is because these economies have enough resources and information available to traders. The truth is that these pairs happened to be the main volume of global trade on Forex due to trader preferences. Besides preferences, the hours of operation are very important to consider before trading.

International Market Hours For Forex Trading

Forex trading will always open around 9 pm on Sunday and close 20 GMT by Friday. During Forex hours, traders have the opportunity to trade, sell, and buy currencies. Asia, America and the Pacific will open markets at GMT to promote a fair and standardized market timing. Frankfurt opens the Forex market at 7 am from Monday through Friday. In London, the Forex market opens at 8 am. Access to the Forex platform is possible once the markets are open from multiple sources online or through brokers and exchanges. In similar fashion, the cryptocurrency market is up 24/7, but open for all 7 days of the week instead of the limited 5 days for Forex.

The Comprehensive Details Of Cryptocurrency

Besides the up time, cryptocurrency similarly remains a digital currency without any central point of operation. For instance, It means that the system behind cryptocurrency obeys a complex decentralization policy derived from its coding architecture. In addition, cryptocurrency doesn’t work with central bank’s regulations like fiat currencies do on Forex. Instead, this digital currency can operate freely on simple speculations, investing and trading.

Cryptocurrencies That Are Popular To Traditional Investors

Bitcoin – Bitcoin is the number one cryptocurrency which was created in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin is the main currency for exchange across the entire market.

Ethereum – Among many cryptocurrencies contesting with Bitcoin, Ethereum remains the runner up. After launching in 2015, this digital currency changed crypto investing forever.

Dash – Dash came to the scene in 2014 as a secretive and anonymous digital currency. One thing outstanding about Dash is that it performs untraceable payments.

Litecoin – This payment transaction digital currency was formed in 2011 and is one of the oldest. Therefore, It is considered to be the silver digital currency to Bitcoin’s gold.

Ripple – It is one of the top three digital currencies that has a different perspective then Bitcoin. Since inception in 2012, It has begun to disrupt international transfers like SWIFT.

Cryptocurrency and Forex

Let’s take a minute to review some of the similarities between the two markets. The table below outlines interactions between cryptocurrency and Forex.

Cryptocurrency TradingForex Trading
1. Leverage
Cryptocurrency exhibit permanent and quick transactions. Although, there is a small transaction fee for every crypto transaction. Brokers and Exchanges can offer anywhere from 10x to 100x leverage on some
accounts.

With Forex trading, there is a space for leverage of 10x and much higher as well. This implies that a trader can perform a trade of $1000 using only $100
2. Impact From Announcements, Global News, And Earnings Reports:
Announcements in the crypto market to no typically correlate with the market swings. Occasionally, reports on SEC regulation, global partnerships, and listings can still sway certain assets.
Influencing factors in Forex can let traders find better opportunities. Using analytics and event procrastination, traders can also help predict the market.

3. Production
The availability of cryptocurrency is in limitation. Demand will increase due to lessening in supply over time.

The supply-demand for Forex is relatively simple and dictated by the buyers and sellers. There is more or less a finite amount of each asset class.
4. Liquidity
Traders can get large profits on the levels of liquidity across exchanges, brokers, and dealers. Additionally, crypto is slowly gaining more use-cases and reaching higher levels of adoption

Liquidity is high for Forex trading with the same market advantages but institutional focus if higher in Forex.

Beside the similar interactions, there are also similar strategies to implement on both markets.

Top 8 Strategies When Trading Cryptocurrency and Forex

1. Get rid of volatility with pound/dollar price or with a stable coin

2. Use investment theme techniques like dollar cost averaging or spreads

3. Diversification of portfolio by hedging, options and uncorrelated assets

4. Engage in smart holding like cold storage and verifiable dealers or brokers

5. Try to invest by using a stable and secure crypto asset

6. Pool Investments if able to form stronger portfolios with other traders

7. Engage in passive income while investing with cryptocurrency

8. Never trust the market sentiment or majority. If everyone expects it, it will probably be wrong

Cryptocurrency And Forex Markets

Mainly, one con and pro that exist in both platforms is the high volatility factor. The truth is that the reward will be high when the risk escalates. The market of cryptocurrency can see larger fluctuations and even larger return per risk. Although, both markets will feel the touch of price variation over time.

Forex and Crypto Similarities

In conclusion, there is a high level of involvement for people trading Forex and cryptocurrency. To trade on either market, you need perseverance, efficient equity scheduling, continuity, and effective risk management. Therefore, being open to learning from other experts will help you thrive in both markets. There is every possibility to enjoy great benefits when trading on these platforms. Dig deep into these markets today and enjoy the dividend now or later in the future.

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Brokers In the Crypto Market

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The cryptocurrency market is growing rapidly though brokers In the crypto market. Although the price of Bitcoin may not always reflect the news surrounding market growth, there are always movements being made.

Specifically, there has been a surge of brokers that offer cryptocurrency services. These services range from investing to day trading, and even to large over the counter (OTC) orders. Before we get into what is happening with Brokers in the cryptocurrency market, let’s cover what a broker actually is.

What is a Broker

A Broker is a person or institute that sells or buys securities and has licenses to do so. Investors will hire a broker as a trusted agent or middle man in commercial negotiations and transitions. Typically, brokers will buy and sell securities on the behalf of the clients with their best interest in mind. This is refereed to as a fiduciary.

Brokers will typically collect a commission, which is a usually a flat fee or percentage of each investment at the time the order is made. This commission or spread is how brokers make their money and profit regardless how how the asset, option or portfolio preforms.

Brokers invest in all sorts of financial instruments. You can hire your own investor through a firm like Fidelity to purchase stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options, derivatives, or create a portfolio all of you own.

How to Know if you Need a Broker

If you are thinking about purchasing stocks or selling stocks, it is probably a good idea to get a broker. This is due to the fact that brokers have licenses to preform trades on the securities exchange. There are two distinct types of brokers to choose from, full-service brokers, and discount brokers. The main difference between the two is the service provided. A full-service broker will review the transactions, create a financial plan, setup your portfolio and things like this. A discount broker will simply execute trades for you that you request.

The amazing thing is that for trading cryptocurrency, you do not need a broker. Anyone can trade crypto on any exchange at any time of the day including in the middle of the night. Although this is the case, unless you have experience trading and know what you are doing you may want to still consider a broker.

Why Do crypto traders use brokers

A Majority of crypto traders use crypto exchanges to preform trades on a daily basis. Crypto exchanges are very convenient, but across a spread of different assets, it can become quite difficult to always get the trade you want. Therefore, you will need to open multiple accounts and make unnecessary transfers to preform all of the trades you want.

Secondly, there are not many exchanges that allow for fiat to crypto deposits. Even more, those exchanges that do allow such deposits, do not have crypto to fiat trading pairs. To resemble these trading pairs, investors will utilize stable coins when can be limited in liquidity, not have access to all the trading pairs you desire, and sometimes be untrustworthy.

Should You Use a Broker or an Exchange?

As an investor, you need to figure out what suits your needs most. Indications that you should use a broker or dealer over an exchange are:

  • Using multiple accounts on different exchanges
  • Need for increased liquidity
  • Micro Profit focused trading
  • High trading frequency
  • Use for spreads, options, or margin accounts across multiple trading pairs

If you are a high frequency trader there are good chances you will need to increase your liquidity on multiple exchanges. When you open multiple accounts on multiple exchanges, you will incurred different fees on each. Sending assets between exchanges will also incur additional fees. When you try to margin trade on multiple exchanges, you will have different leverage limits.

Additionally, being on multiple exchanges means you will have multiple logins, passwords and potentially problems. There have been several exchange hacks, closures, and frozen assets. Finally, the more exchanges you trade on, the more risk you are also assuming for your portfolio.

Finally, traders can save time, set flat fees, reduce risk and focus more on each trade by utilizing a broker or dealer. This is incredibly important for your portfolio and success as a trader.

Trading Solutions For Crypto Traders

As an alternative to all of these issues, crypto traders are using brokers to combat all of the issues the exchanges present to traders. With the bull run in 2017, the broker market exploded and now there are over 100 crypto brokers to choose from across the market. Let’s take a peak at 10 of them.

Nadex

One of the only legally operating CFTC binary options exchanges in the US. This brokerage is retail tailored and offers options, call spreads and Touch Brackets.

eToro

eToro is a FX and CFD broker that has been providing its services mainly to traditional investors since 2006. The British FCA is based out of London and regulates this broker as well.

Olymp Trade

Certified by FinaCom, Olymp Trade is a platform that offers currency trading pairs, stocks, indicies, commodities, and cryptocurrency.

City Index

Established in the UK in 1983, this CFD brokerage is based out of the UK. Additionally, this company is regulated by the British FCA which makes it very reliable.

Eight Cap

As an Australian FX and CFD broker, Eight Cap offers trades on Forex, crypto pairs, Indices and commodities.

PrimeXBT

Bitcoin-based brokerage designed to offer leverage and cryptocurrency trading pairs. Create leverage up to 100x your original investment.

SFOX

Interactive crypto platform with a focus on liquidity over 20 exchanges, enhanced security though internal operations, and unique proprietary backed solutions.

Brokers In Crypto

Clearly, the brokers are moving into the crypto space at full speed as the market recovers and heads into the next halfening of 2020. Brokers In the crypto market are strong savvy people that can have huge influence as they open the doors to increased exposure, liquidity, and traditional investors. This movement is a clear sign that the crypto market is not going anywhere anytime soon.

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Crypto Investment Strategy

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To start this post: Crypto Investment Strategy, it is important to know that nothing in this post can or should be considered financial advice or consulting. Simply one person’s opinion on crypto investment strategy and the future of digital assets. With that being said, let’s dive into it.

Diversifying a Portfolio

A common question in the stock market and crypto market: is it important to diversify your portfolio? Of course, everyone automatically assumes the answer is yes, but are you sure? If you ever actually go back and crunch the numbers, run a comparison, and test this hypothesis you may be surprised to find that historically, it did not work in the crypto market. Let’s start with the global market and understand why traditional investor follow this strategy.

Global Market

In the global economy, markets are experiencing natural inflation as wealth grows through wealth creation across the world. Thus if there is more wealth, a stronger global economy, and increased trade. Naturally, a majority of markets will over preform on average. In a glance, the global economy has been growing steadily over the past 60 years due to an increase in energy consumption, consumers market needs, and global trade.

Clearly, not every industry will continually increase. For instance, the railroad industry was a pillar of the economy in the early 1900’s, but I would not suggest investing your life savings there now. Likewise, tech companies will rise and fall as innovation and development ensures, but how fast is global wealth growing?

Global Wealth

An article from the Financial Poise on global wealth commented:

Global Wealth is On the Rise – From mid-2017 to mid-2018, global wealth rose by $14 trillion to $317 trillion, a growth rate of 4.6%. What’s more, over that year, the growth of wealth exceeded population growth, so subsequently, global mean wealth rose to $63,100 per adult (a record high).

Financial Poise, April 2019

In short, we all statistically just become richer per person by just being alive, congrats. Additionally, the Financial Poise had this to say about the US:

U.S. Consistency – In the U.S., both total wealth ($98.154 trillion) and wealth per adult ($403,970) has grown every year since 2008. This growth occurred even when overall global wealth suffered a decline in both 2014 and 2015. In the most recent report, U.S. household wealth rose 6.5%.

It is a pretty good time to be an American as our national wealth year over year increase surpassed the global wealth increase on average.

Diversifying a Crypto Portfolio

If you are an investor and you preach diversification of portfolios with a surging market you will probably be correct most of the time. Why is this the case? Because if you diversify enough, you essentially have a spread of the average market, or otherwise known as the Market Portfolio. Investors also follow this theory due to the disposition effect, investor attention, and the Herd behavior including information cascade effect and relative wealth concerns.

Ideally, a market portfolio sounds great in theory, except when applied to the crypto market. This is because the crypto market is no where near the maturity of the global market.

Let’s evaluate this theory on crypto. For fun, let’s use memory lane and see how the top 10 assets have changed year over year in the Crypto Market using mid May as a comparison date for each evaluation.

2013 Cryptocurrency Market Top 10 Assets

There are a few things to consider when reviewing the crypto market. The first thing is that it was not a mature market in its early days. This means, there was not substantial data on the market and the assets did not have the proper time to come into fruition due to lack of exposure and education. Therefore, as we look at the top 10 assets year over year, you will start to see them change less and less as the market matures into 2019.

2013 Top 10 Assets, Photos via CoinMarketCap Historical Data

2014 Cryptocurrency Market Top 10 Assets

Even though the market is not mature in 2014, we can see Bitcoin and XRP claim the top 3 positions at an early stage. This is why these two assets could be labeled as risk-adverse assets compared to the majority of other cryptos. Remember, it is the data surrounding the price, positioning, and liquidity of these assets compared to the market portfolio which establishes their risk levels. Consistent trade volume and percentage market share (year over year) are also very important indicators of risk levels for assets and not purely fundamentals.

2014 Top 10 Assets

2015 Cryptocurrency Market Top 10 Assets

Here we see some familiar names like Litecoin, Dash, Stellar and even Dogecoin sitting all in the top 10. With the exception of Banx which ended up becoming a scam, MaidSafeCoin which is rank 78, and Nxt which is rank 144, all of prior top 10 assets are still in the top 50 of the crypto market. This is quite impressive for such an immature market.

2015 Top 10 Assets

2016 Cryptocurrency Market Top 10 Assets

In 2016, the surge of Ethereum began. A foundational game changer, Ethereum restructured the market and lead to a new breed of crypto projects. Additionally, this is the first year of top ten assets that will not be labeled scams, shutdown, or be terminated by the next year’s top 10 list. We can see the market is starting to mature in 2016 leading to a surge in prices. Additionally, the movement from traditional ICO investments into token sales would soon scale Ethereum into a new super power.

2016 Top 10 Assets

2017 Cryptocurrency Market Top 10 Assets

2017 has some familiar faces that we have all seen before. This was your top 10 assets as of May 2017 that lead the way for the bull run to $20,000 per Bitcoin.

2017 Top 10 Assets

2018 Cryptocurrency Market Top 10 Assets

In 2018, this list is the most important list to date. This is a list that is representative of the most impactful bear market that crypto industry has experienced on a large scale. We can see all of the projects listed here are still top 15 projects of the entire crypto market today without exception. This fact speaks to the maturity of the market and how far the industry has come.

2018 Top 10 Assets

2019 Cryptocurrency Market Top 10 Assets

Here we are in today’s time (2019) with a similar market ranking to the one above. By removing Tether from the top 10 (which CMC should) we would have Tron sneaking back into the top 10 and rightfully so with its vibrant (persistent) CEO and community. The only project that has been pushed slightly out of the top 10 is IOTA. Ironically, by removing Tether and the new fork of Bitcoin cash which is Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (Faketoshi), Iota would be ranked 13th which is not that far of a drop from 9th. IOTA still has mass potential and can easily climb into the top 10 given current market conditions.

2019 Top 10 Assetys

With the lack of movement coming from the top 10 market cap assets, there can be a case for a Market Portfolio that would bare more consistency with the overall market sentiment then ever before.

This problem in the prior years with diversifying your portfolio is the assets in the top 10 were never consistent enough to create a reliable spread. Now, with the market gaining substantial exposure, and the assets becoming stable, a market portfolio could be argued for.

The answer to the above question, is it important to diversity your portfolio, has changed. Historically, across the market the answer would be a resounding no. You would have lost a substantial amount of profits if you did and Bitcoins you could have obtained.

Today’s Market

In Today’s market the answer is quite the opposite. Any investors or speculator can easily make a foundational argument for a market portfolio that would potentially decrease volatility and risk. The risk is associated still with hacks, forks and exchange failures. A Market Portfolio may look something like a spread of the top 15 assets that is skewed towards the top 3 most stable assets, Bitcoin, XRP, and Ethereum. This Market Portfolio would be perfect for institutions, hedge funds, and pension plans looking to gain exposure to the crypto industry, but still maintain a minimal risk level.

Hedging your Portfolio

Another alternative to creating a standard Market portfolio and investing in it, is hedging against other types of cryptocurrency. This will be done a number of ways, but I propose it is done by crypto type.

For instance, If you invest heavily in Bitcoin, then you probably should not invest in assets like Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV or Tezos. This is because all of these assets are trying to accomplish the same task and are competitors.

Likewise, if you invest heavily in Ethereum, you probably do not want to purchase EOS, TRON, Cardano, or any other platform based currencies.

You can say the same for Ripple in comparison to Stellar and NANO.

Hedging gets trickier when you get into investing in lower market cap coins, but the same idea can be applied. If you are heavily invested in Ethereum and want to hedge from it, you will want to invest in tokens not based on the Ethereum platform. Although, this is also changing because tokens can soon migrate between chains.

Similarly, if you invest in Binance coin, you will not want to invest in Huobi or Kucoin exchange tokens.

Other ways to hedge

If you are even more risk adverse, hedge into stable coins. Do this when the market is volatile as a strategy to capture gains and decrease losses. Stable coins are mostly used by traders to reduce the exposure to the overall market volatility.

In Conclusion

To summarize, creating a market spread is becoming more and more appealing. As financial instruments open up and adoption gains traction, owning a spread of the market portfolio may be the best bet. The top 50 assets on the market will still move considerably for the coming years, so if you create a spread try to keep it close to the top 20 at a maximum.

Otherwise, do your due diligence and possibly try to hedge accordingly to not have too much exposure towards one industry. If you can not choose the assets to hedge against, or you are just not confident in your research, fall back to a spread and save yourself time and heartache.

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Should You Invest In Cardano

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To start this post: Should You Invest In Cardano (ADA), it is important to know that nothing in this post can or should be considered financial advice or consulting. Simply one person’s opinion on Cardano and the future of digital assets. With that being said, let’s dive into it.

What is Cardano

Let’s start this post off with a general overview of Cardano. Cardano is a top ten cryptocurrency that is built on a function based language, Haskell. The aim of Cardano is to provide the market with a provably verifiable smart contract based platform. ADA is promoted by 3 branches: Input Output Hong Kong, Cardano Foundation, and Emurgo.

Input Output Hong Kong: This is the branch of the trio that facilitates blockchain development, constructs research, and works with other projects for monetary gain. They are now moving to Wyoming! There has been no update on if they will change the name of the company as well. By the way please please please check out their website because wow.

Cardano Foundation: This piece of the group is the community initiative. The foundation is a group of dedicated individuals that promote the use and well being of the Cardano community.

Emurgo: Based out of Japan, Emurgo is the investment arm of the Cardano ecosystem. This group is responsible for building commercialized partnerships, bringing startups to the ecosystem, and promoting ADA smart contract development.

Market Sentiment

Now that we know what it is, what does the market think?

An important part of each project is the market sentiment surrounding the digital asset. Thus far, the sentiment on Cardano has been a highlight for this project. Not only do most investors love this project, but streamers, youtubers and bloggers do as well. There is hardly any bad news about this project besides the fact that is it taking longer than expected. When a project has a general consensus of positivity across the entire market, you know they are doing something right.

Cardano Research

Besides a positive sentiment, Cardano focuses heavily on research for their mission of a provable system. In order to create provably verifiable smart contracts with a unique consensus layer, there has to be a highly educated team of professors, researchers and innovators. Each piece and assumption has been taken into account and analyzed in the Cardano academic papers. There are over 50 research papers that have been published and a good amount of those papers have been peer reviewed on an international scale.

As impressive as this is, the real trick comes into play when the research is not only provable, but the fundamental building blocks of the ADA blockchain main-net are as well. The main-net is easily the most anticipated arrival for the Cardano community that should be coming into fruition later on in 2019.

Cardano Community

Likewise, the Cardano community is a pillar of ingenuity and zeal. There are podcasts like the Cardano Effect and Podcast Cardano. There are random AMAs lead by none other than the CEO Charles Hoskinson where he will randomly live stream on Youtube and answer questions for 2 hours. Additionally, Once a year in Florida IOHK hosts their very own summit. The summit is specifically for employees only to recap on the development and discuss the future of the company. The community wanted to attend the summit so bad that now anyone to come just to experience the company first hand.

Additionally, multiple Youtubers like Crypto Daily and The Crypto Lark are constantly shilling and promoting the Cardano name to bring more recognition and exposure to the project.

Why to Invest in Ada

At the end of things, there is still one looming question of should you invest or not. For that question, here are some reasons to invest in Cardano:

  • Charles Hoskinson was a co-founder in Ethereum one of the most successful projects on the market
  • Research driven project with scores of brilliant individuals
  • Functional based language that intuitively decreases chance of hacks, bugs or protocol failures
  • Widely adopted and liked asset with constant promotion
  • Main net release happening in 2019 that should spike enthusiasm, exposure and coin price (not guaranteed)
  • Three brand eco-system to eliminate single point of failure. Additionally, each branch is funded in unique ways which means prolonged longevity of the project

Why not to Invest in Ada

Likewise, here are some reason why you probably should not invest in Cardano:

  • Not a complete project yet
  • Launch date has been delayed already and could potentially be delayed again
  • Multiple competitors including EOS, TRON and Ethereum
  • Not the highest volume (liquidity) but regularly in the top 20

Cardano Price Projection

Besides the fundamentals, the price of Cardano is still an important aspect to consider.

Before we discuss this remember price projections are incredibly fickle and could result in a wide range of results. For more information on how I believe the market will react in the coming years, check out this blog on Crypto Market Cycles.

Assuming the crypto market will reach to an entire market cap of $1.2 – $2.5 trillion, The Ada coin price could surge to anywhere between $1.80 to $3.50 per coin. This would actually be a huge ROI for investors considering the price currently stands at $.074 per coin.

Again, price projections are considering an immeasurable amount of assumptions and conditions. Projects come and go throughout the market and Cardano could potentially phase out of popularity. Regardless, I believe this project will stay within the top 20 at minimum throughout the next bull run.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I believe Cardano is a good investment due to the fundamentals, thriving ecosystem, sustainability and general sentiment. Above all else, Charles Hoskinson has spent most of his 2018 year traveling and forming relationships with governments across the globe. I am unsure what this will mean for Cardano in the future, but it sure smells like a winner.

Finally, remember that if you can not accurately explain to you mom what you are investing in, then you probably should not invest in it. Do your research, due diligence and confirm every fact before acknowledging it as true.

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Crypto Industry

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The world is changing due to the crypto industry. Behind the curtains, every industry is comprised of silent, diligent workers that are coordinating the show. The crypto industry is no different.

Crypto Industry Impact

On the surface, it may seem like the crypto industry is a hosh-posh group of rouge cypherpunks buying and selling fake money. Most traditional investors consider the crypto market to be the wild west of money. But that is not the case, at least not entirely.

There is a truth to the idea that the crypto industry is a volatile and emotionally driven realm. Beside its apparent downfalls, the crypto market is a thriving ecosystem of talent, education and inspirational leaders. Additionally, there are thousands of jobs entering the market, constant wealth creation, and technological advancements unlike ever before.

In this post I would like to discuss why the crypto industry is good for the world, besides the currency aspect or blockchain specific use-cases.

Blockchain Jobs

First thing I want to focus on is the jobs that are being created within this industry. To give a brief idea, Linkedin has almost 4000 blockchain related jobs as of May 2019 on that platform alone.

Each project has a dedicated team of developers and community managers. This means there are thousands upon thousands of jobs created for developers because there are over 3000 cryptocurrencys alone. This does not even include the exchanges, communities and white hats. To say the crypto industry has brought tens of thousands of jobs to the global job market will soon become an understatement.

Impact of Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Let’s think about the exchanges for a second. An exchange needs a strong team of diversified developers, community managers for all their platforms, accountants, executive team, marketing managers, custodial services, possibly insurance, market data engineers, customer service representatives, office managers, and of course a dependable legal team. Taking this into consideration and the fact that there are hundreds of exchanges, that’s a lot of jobs flooding the market.

Besides exchanges, there is an entire ecosystem of financial products hitting the market. To name a few:

  • Bitcoin gateway payment providers like CryptoChill or Bitpay
  • Futures markets and margin accounts are on exchanges like Kraken and Bitfinex
  • Potential ETF proposal through the SEC and Bakkt
  • Banking products like XRP to circumvent SWIFT
  • Derivatives and options market
  • Custodial solutions and crypto processing companies

Cryptocurrency Wealth Creation

Besides the job market expanding, there is obvious signs of wealth creation. Investors pay real money to obtain these digital assets. That money does not disappear and the tokens go from being worthless to being worth “something” when they are traded on an exchange.

This is a basic example of wealth creation. Additionally, every time a miner takes his reward and puts it on the market, wealth is in essence being created in forms of these digital assets. This can lead to the global economy shifting over the next 10-15 years if the crypto market becomes a stable ranking of world power.

Blockchain Technological Advancements

Finally, the crypto industry has lead to many amazing things besides the traditional blockchain data structure. New systems like Hyper Ledger, DAG, and complete coding languages are developing due to this movement. In addition, industries like AI, Supply Chain, and IOT are thriving from an influx of projects and use-cases. As scalability becomes the norm throughout the market, we should see an increase in industry specific use-cases.

Additionally, crypto has the potential to reach the unbanked and provide liquidity for every human with a cell phone though new products being pushed in Africa. Regions in Africa are now becoming apart of the global economy that never were before. Another instance of this is from the Middle East. Some women do not own a bank accounts due to their religious laws, but now they have Bitcoin addresses to get paid for their work.

Is Crypto Good for the World?

In summary, yes. Crypto is essentially providing a capitalistic society for the entire globe to become involved in. It provides a way for every person, not only traditional or certified investors, to invest and become larger parts of the market scene. This continual influx of cash flow and liquidity from a global real time market will provide a surge in new products, discovering new solutions, and bringing the future to today.

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Crypto Market Cycles

To start this post: Crypto Market Cycles, it is important to know that nothing in this post can or should be considered financial advice or consulting. Simply one person’s opinion on the crypto market and the future of digital assets. With that being said, let’s dive into it.

The Importance of Cycles

The crypto Industry has come a long way since the initial Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008. As Bitcoin developed, it was very important for the first use-cases to show the utility of digital assets. From the first pizza ordered, to the Silk Road showing the benefit of an unstoppable digital currency, the world has been marveled by cryptocurrency. As Bitcoin and the blockchain industry continue to mature, there will continue to be cycles for the market.

To date, we have experienced three crypto market cycles:

First cycle: Digital assets that proved there is a use-case for digital currency through means of exchange coupled with a unique, verifiable data storage layer, blockchain.

Second cycle: Implemented coding through addition layers to allow the creation of decentralize applications, token generation and new internal economic systems of control.

Third cycle: New age scalable platforms with unique consensus algorithms POS, DPOS, Ouroboros. Market is maturing with new partnerships, products and filtering out dying projects.

Fourth cycle: What’s Next?

Let’s take some time to break each of these cycles down more to lead us into what we can expect for the fourth cycle.

First Cycle

The first main cycle that the crypto industry surmounted, established the first-generation survivors. For instance, Bitcoin and Litecoin emerged from this cycle and laid the foundation for everything to follow.

With Bitcoin gaining exposure globally through this period, new market makers and innovators started to develop an understanding for what Satoshi created.

Second Cycle

The second cycle gave us projects like Ethereum and NEO. Two of the super powers of their time, both projects shifted the market sentiment in ways unforeseen. Out of these two project Ethereum clearly came out on top. Ethereum gave the market a new investment vehicle, token sales. Additionally, ETH became the second most widely adopted trading-pair across the entire market and enabled an entire new industry, decentralized applications.

Third Cycle

Cycle number three, is still in effect but reaching its end. It will not be done until around late 2019 or early 2020. This cycle has been ripe with huge partnerships, product developments and a purge of bad actors throughout the market.

This cycle lead to cryptos like Cardano, EOS and TRON. Scalabilty is key with each project promising different market focuses.

Fourth Cycle

Each of the previous cycles has propelled the market forward one way or another. What then is to be expected from the fourth cycle?

To consider a decent time frame, we can project the fourth cycle to move into effect late 2021 and possibly last until 2027. It is important to note that a majority of the movement in this cycle will be a result of each previous cycle laying the ground work.

Crypto Adoption

The first thing that will happen in the fourth cycle is a dramatic increase in adoption. The third cycle has laid the foundation of partnerships and regulatory clarity for this to take place.

Crypto Partnerships

The partnerships will want to move quickly to test and develop products. Their aim is, capitalize on first mover advantage to maximize profits. Therefore, timing will be everything in the fourth cycle. Ironically with the economy surging, it is highly probable that during the fourth cycle the economy could start to slip into a global recession. This would compel companies to cut funding, reduce development and look to increase cash flow and reserves due to devaluation of assets. This scenario would lead to markets being squeezed and forced ahead of schedule. Additionally, in this scenario, most companies will be reluctant to investing funds into further research without measurable short-term economic benefits.

Crypto Regulation

Ignoring the economic collapse, prior cycles have set the fourth cycle up for regulatory clarity. Additionally, I discuss this in another article here. Looking at the current market situation, we see governments slowly but surely increasing their data mining and research, developing professional blockchain teams, and clarifying the problematic regulatory issues. We anticipate a few things resulting from this in the fourth cycle:

  • Oversight from governing bodies will increase
  • Transactions will start to be tracked more diligently leading to decrease in anonymity 
  • Expectations of the market leaders will increase
  • Growth in financial instruments through the traditional market like Bakkt, ETFs, derivatives, options and futures

Regulation and proper clarification seems to be the only thing keeping the flood gates closed at this point. The fourth cycle may be the biggest opening in those gates we have received yet.

Blockchain Development

In the fourth cycle, there will be a new phase of development across the market like in the previous 3 cycles. My personal prediction is that we will start to see a few things:

  • Projects will begin to acquire other failing projects and their communities
  • The new investment vehicles will be focused on Initial exchange offerings and Security token offerings
  • Larger projects will start to capitalize and impact specific industries
  • Cross chain transactions, data transfers and atomic swaps will become the norm
  • We will start to see initial phases of what I call “clustering”. This means top projects focusing on different markets will united and form super chains. These super chains will be like combining the use-cases, utility and communities of 3 different projects. Imagine XRP combining with Cardano and IOTA. Now any project launched on top of this super chain and naturally migrate throughout each eco-system and interchangeably utilize all products, protocols and nodes in the network.

Crypto Market Cap

It is not improbable to expect the fourth market cycle to take the crypto industry to new heights in terms of prices. With the historical growth patterns and the increase in “intrinsic” value of the market, we can estimate the market cap of the entire market to grow into the trillions.

Based on the 2017 bull run, an out of the box exaggerative number would be a total market cap of $8 trillion. A more realistic number with higher probability would be a market cap between $1.2 – $2.5 trillion. This would easily lead to another bubble and potential retracement to the 2017 highs of $800 billion afterwards. If the market can grow and sustain a total market cap over $1 trillion then we could consider the market volatility to be decreasing steadily as the market grows.

How to Prepare

In Addition, if you are curious on how to prepare your portfolio for crypto market cycles, head on over to my other article on, How to Structure a Crypto Portfolio.

Honestly, the best way to prepare for the crypto market cycles is to do your due diligence and never invest in things you can not easily explain to your mother.

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How to Structure a Crypto Portfolio

To start this post: How to Structure a Crypto Portfolio, it is important to know that nothing in this post can or should be considered financial advice or consulting. Simply one person’s opinion on crypto portfolios and the future of digital assets. With that being said, let’s dive into it.

Time to Enter

Moving away from the bear market of 2018, it is a great time to set up your crypto portfolio. Hopefully you have already done so when the market dipped, but if you have not here are some tips on how to do it.

Setting Up a Crypto Portfolio

To begin, we are going to need a few things:

  • Coinbase account: to convert your fiat into crypto and vice versa
  • Binance account: to trade for different digital assets
  • Cold wallet storage: to protect your digital assets from hackers
  • CryptoPanic: to keep up with all the most relevant news on the market
  • CoinMarketCap: To keep track of every asset in the market and get sad when yours is not the top surging coin
  • 3Commas: For trading and setting stop limits on your assets.

We are not going to cover each of these items in this article, but you can find these topics covered in other articles on the site.

Choose an Investment Game Plan

Before you even start purchasing cryptocurrency, it is important to do your due diligence and map our your investment strategy. You will want to diversify your portfolio across the market investing in 5-10 different assets. A great strategy is to invest in:

  • 4 top ten digital assets representing 50-60% of your entire portfolio
  • 3 top 100 digital assets representing 20-30% of your portfolio
  • One to two fun assets or ICOs or simply hold some reserves in Bitcoin or a stable coin

If you are very risk-adverse then you may want to increase the weight of your portfolio by purchasing more top 10 digital assets. These assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, EOS, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, Litecoin and other similar top assets are the least risky investments. There is several years of data backing up the price of most of the assets and they each will have a substantial amount of liquidity for easy exits.

Additionally, it is important to note that investing in most of these top assets will naturally diversify your portfolio. This is due to the nature of most of the top assets representing different markets, use-cases, and purposes. For instance, Bitcoin is a digital currency that has the largest node network in the world which makes storing data and holding reserves extremely secure. Ethereum on the other hand is a platform based cryptocurrrency with an application layer for decentralized applications. Furthermore, Ripple aims to disrupt the financial industry through products offered by its parent company.

Top Market Assets

Likewise, most of the other top assets will offer some exclusive code base, purpose or market need.

  • Bitcoin – Grandfather of cryptocurrency with largest node network, largest adoption rate/exposure base and most widely used digital currency
  • Ethereum – Decentralized application platform written with proprietary code base, Solidity. Trading pairs across most exchanges
  • Ripple – Cryptocurrency with fee-less near instant transfers. Aims to disrupt the financial banking giant SWIFT
  • Bitcoin Cash – Another community of Bitcoin minimalists with different ideas on how the underlying code base should run
  • Litecoin – The silver to bitcoin’s gold. Plans to implement anonymous transactions moving forward
  • EOS – Similar to Ethereum except written on C and boasts different partnerships, road map and early implementation of proof of staking consensus
  • Binance Coin – Exchange based coin that now has its own blockchain. Value of this token heavily will depend on the success of the worlds largest exchange Binance
  • Tron – Also similar to Ethereum and EOS except heavily targeting the gaming industry with partnerships like Blizzard. CEO loves to promote this project
  • Stellar – Similar to Ripple except the fundamentals are different. Airdropped all tokens and aims to be better than Ripple.
  • Cardano – Formal verification driven blockchain with smart contracts similar to Ethereum. Written on a functional based language Haskell
  • Monero – One of the original anonymous based cryptocurrency utilizing a protocol called zK-SNARKs

Each of these assets can be obtained from either Coinbase or Binance which is why these two exchanges are critical to setting up your crypto portfolio.

If you do not mind risk, then you will want to keep reserves on the exchange where you will be trading to try and time the market for bullruns/shorts.

Fiat to Crypto

The standard method for investing into the crypto scene is to dollar cost average in or DCA. For instance, if you wanted to invest $10,000 into crypto currency you would want to spread out this investment over a period of several weeks or months if you have the patience. The price of crypto is extremely volatile and it is best to invest your assets on days where the market is red or decreasing in value.

Moving Funds off Exchange

After each purchase, it is important to decide if you want to keep your funds on the exchange for accessibility, or if security is your number one priority. These days most investors do both approaches depending on how active they are with their funds. The most secure way to protect your funds is to move then to cold storage with a hardware wallet. The Ledger Nano is the most popular wallet, but there are multiple wallets on the market.

Time Frame

Now that you have your portfolio set up, how long do you wait? Typically, the market goes in 3 to 4 year cycles. With the last cycle ending in 2017 and early 2018, we are projecting the next bullrun to happen between 2021 and 2022. Regardless, it is best practice to plan on sitting on your investment for 3 to 5 years for maximum maturity. At that point, the market will be increasingly different and there could possibly be better indicators, price predictions, and stability.

Conclusion

Now that you are locked in for the ride, it is best to almost forget about your investment. The crypto market is an extremely emotional winding market with many dramatic circumstances. The news will twist the facts, the exchanges will get hacked periodically, and people will lose their mind.

Understand that this is normal and should be expected. Learn to laugh at the world, market cycles and FUD and you will be just fine. Above all else, Hodl and believe in your due diligence. For everything else there’s stop losses.

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Should You Invest In Ripple

To start this post: Should You Invest In Ripple, it is important to know that nothing in this post can or should be considered financial advice or consulting. Simply one person’s opinion on Ripple and the future of digital assets. With that being said, let’s dive into it.

First off, we should mention that there is a distinction between the company Ripple and the token, XRP. Although Ripple is actually the company that supports and advocates for the token XRP, most people just call the token: Ripple. Moving forward, we are going to discuss both interchangeably as in my eyes, they are the same thing.

What is Ripple

Ripple is one of the top market cap crypto asset projects that was started in 2013 by three individuals: Arthur Britto, Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen. The asset is a transaction focused crypto currency with the potential to disrupt the financial industry. Ripple aims to replace SWIFT which is the current adopted international means of money transfer for most banks around the world.

The original trio that started Ripple have their own past and stories we will not be discussing here. If you want to leave more, check out this post.

Why is Ripple a Top Crypto Asset

Ripple has ripped through the market in record speed. Historically, the asset has held the number 3 spot out of all cryptocurrencys in the market. For a short while in 2018 and 2019, XRP actually over took Ethereum for the number 2 asset in the industry in terms of market cap.

Every digital asset dreams of being in the top ten. Ripple has almost never been out of the top 5 and wil lnot be for the foreseeable future.

The idea of disrupting the international banking market with fee-less international transfers is quite appealing. The company boats 3 main products:

  • xRapid – Payment providers use xRapid to source on-demand liquidity
  • xCurrent – Banks use xCurrent to process global payments for customers
  • XVia – Businesses use xVia to plug into RippleNet to send payments

Each of these products aim to utilize XRP the digital asset in one way or another. The speculation of an international banking market utilizing one cryptocurrency for all international transfers and payments could send any coin to the moon.

Ripple Partnerships

Another reason Ripple has surmounted its competition is the vast list of partnerships. Ripple easily has over 200 international banks partnered with their products already. For a current list of all partnerships, dates and other information click here. Ripple currently has over 185 institutions and banks using or testing xCurrent, 20 entities using or testing xRapid and around 10 entities using or testing xVia.

This is momentous for the crypto industry as a whole.

Who is Ripple’s Competition

The main competition for Ripple is Stellar. Stellar is another asset and project focused on disrupting international transfers. Ironically, Stellar began by one of Ripples founding members, Jed McCaleb. There is a story there that no one has time for.

In short what Stellar tried to do was give away all of its tokens during their token sale. This was a scheme to maximize exposure and increase liquidity short-term. The funny thing is there was not a lot of thought and consideration put into this airdrop and many things went amiss. This is not a article on Stellar, so this story will have to continue another time. This of Stellar as the step-child of Ripple.

The only competitor recently announced in 2019, is JPM coin. JP Morgan actually has decided to not only enter the crypto industry, but do so by creating their own token. This token aims to do the same thing that Ripple is trying to do. The difference is that JPM coin is exclusively for JP Morgan customers and clientele. Essentially, JP Morgan created an internally used and accepted digital asset that will be used to settle debts, balance accounts, move money, and credit swap internationally all within their own book of business.

No one knows how this will turn out for JPM, but it is very interesting to see the use-cases for crypto grow and companies start to enter the industry.

What are some Problems with Ripple

Clearly, there are some problems with every digital asset, but what are Ripple’s?

The main problem that has yet to be solved is that the main company behind the adoration of XRP, still holds a majority of the total supply of the token. This is looked down upon in the crypto industry as more assets are supposed to promote a decentralized and fair consensus protocol. With Ripple holding most of the coins, there has been speculation that they could dump a large portion of assets on the the market at any time.

Jed McCaleb tried to do just that when he left the company Ripple for Stellar. In light of this, a judge actually ruled in favor of the company, Ripple, and restricted Jed’s ability to dump his percentage of the total supply on the market.

Other than the problem of most of the funds being with the parent company themselves, there is another problem of consensus. Ideally, projects come to consensus through proof of work or proof of stake protocols. In contrast, the very banks and institutions that utilize the products of Ripple actually verify the network. This means that in order to use the products for fee-less transfers, the entities actually have to become a node on the network.

In other words, the banks and institutions that the crypto community wants to remove from the financial system, are back in control.

So, what is our conclusion on Ripple?

Ripple is a Good Investment

In conclusion, we can speculate that Ripple is a good investment. Here is why:

Ripple is basically a hedge against the decentralized crypto scene. It is not a traditional currency and it is not a platform based crypto asset, it is different. It is an institution and bank focused digital asset. If you believe in diversifying your portfolio and you have invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum already, then Ripple would be your next investment vehicle.

Additionally, here are a few more drivers for your investment conscious:

  • Ripple has too many partnerships to ignore
  • Binance and other notable exchanges have begun to offer XRP has a base trading pair which is huge for liquidity
  • Coinbase now offers XRP to fiat pairs
  • Ripple has an amazing ROI since inception
  • Ripple has held in the top 5, year or year, which is notable at a minimum

As always do you own research and learn about Bitcoin, Ethereum, ripple and some of the other top assets before investing. Make an educated decisions for yourself which digital asset suits you, if any. At the end of the day, if you can’t explain what Ripple is to your mom then you probably should not invest. Knowledge is power.

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Should You Invest In Ethereum

To start this post: Should You Invest In Ethereum, it is important to know that nothing in this post can or should be considered financial advice or consulting. Simply one person’s opinion on Ethereum and the future of digital assets. With that being said, let’s dive into it.

There are so many things to say about Ethereum. We are going to try and focus on the simple question of, should you invest your hard earned money into it? Let’s take a quick moment to review what Ethereum is.

What Is Ethereum

Ethereum is a blockchain based platform that enables decentralized applications to be run on top of it as well as tokens to be generated and sold though it. Essentially, it is a platform based cryptocurrency with goals of becoming a scalable and fundamental piece of the crypto industry through future proof of staking consensus.

It was developed by Vitalik Buterin when World of War craft nerfed his main character. He was so enraged that he decided to build a new technological empire of the future. This is not the real reason why, but happens to be something that he jokes about. Regardless, Vitalik is a brilliant man and still in his early 20’s.

How Does Ethereum Compare

With respect to other projects in the crypto space, Ethereum still stands tall above most of the crowd. Ethereum has essentially led the way since 2014 in advancement, market moving and fundamentals. Of course, there are multiple projects now on the market that can basically do what Ethereum can do.

What is the difference then?

Ethereum has one huge “advantage”, first mover advantage. Simply just as Google was one of the first companies to come out on top in the dot com era, so has Ethereum emerged on top and ahead of the crowd before any other project like it did.

This means Ethereum has the largest following, fan base, exposure, recognition, developer base, original syntax (Solidity) and mining pool. Ethereum is right behind Bitcoin in fame and use-cases. It is a safe bet that any exchange you decided to trade on will have at least these two trading pairs, Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Speculators once thought that Ethereum would be the project to finally overtake father Bitcoin. It still could in the long run, but for now I think second place suits a project of its stature.

Should I Invest In Ethereum

Back to the main topic, investing. There are several reasons why I believe Ethereum is not only a stable investment, but a wise one.

  • It has the largest following and is closely resembling companies like Microsoft in its early days
  • Extremely liquidable asset only out preformed by Bitcoin itself. Almost every exchange will have pairings to Ethereum
  • Solid road map that extends out for multiple years
  • Amazing community with multiple sites dedicated to spreading the word, teaching Solidity, encouraging development and hack-a-thons around the globe
  • In 2019 Ethereum will switch to staking. This means that in order to verify transactions on the chain, “miners” will have to stake a minimum 32 Ethereum in a wallet or in a pool and essecntially remove those 32 Ethereum from the market. Basically this cuts the market supply and demand increases as investors rush to buy the minimum number of Ethereum in order to stake and receive rewards or passive income from their asset.
  • Most ICOs are conducted in Ethereum investments although this will mostly likely continue to fade as a market norm
  • Most importantly, Ethereum has first mover advantage. I know this was mentioned above, but it can not be stressed enough. The Ethereum community is absolutely massive, global and above all brilliant. Some of the brightest minds are currently developing and pushing Ethereum to new heights never before seen.

What If All of That Does Not Matter?

At the end of the day, Ethereum is still one of the most widely used means of exchange across the entire crypto industry. Just on the liquidity and use-cases alone, Ethereum would be considered a decent investment. Now add to it a global community of dedicated developers and you have one sweet investment opportunity.

Ethereum Price Prediction

In the last bullrun of late 2017 and early 2018, Ethereum easily broke the $1,000 dollar levels per coin reaching heights of almost $1,400 a coin. It is not far-fetched to expect new heights the next bull run that should happen between 2021 and 2023.

In anticipation to this bullrun, we can predict that crypto market should grow into the trillion dollar levels. Basic analysis leads to the market easily breaking the $1 trillion dollar mark and possibly reaching as high as $2 trillion.

Where will Ethereum be in the next bullrun?

Of course, this is assuming several things. Ethereum maintains the second spot position, preforms similar to historical trends and continues to be a industry wide norm. Anything is possible and Ethereum could potentially fall off the spot light. Lets look at some of the other projects looking to take Ethereum’s crown.

Ethereum could break the $2,000 dollar levels and possibly hover close to $3,000 a coin. Historically, Ethereum hovers between 7% – 19% of the over all market cap of cryptocurrency. During the next bullrun this should stretch closer to the higher percent of 17-19% and give Ethereum a value of approximately $1,700 to $3,100.

What Are Ethereum’s competitors

Ethereum changed the cryptocurrency scene when it was launched. Since its inception, multiple projects have come out offering similar features and hoping to be the next big thing. A few notable mentions are:

Cardano vs. Ethereum

A function based cryptocurrency with a focus on formal verification, scalability and social impact. Lead by a co-creator of Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson, Cardano will soon launch its main-net, proof of staking and a proprietary consensus method. A lot of investors have extremely high hopes and expectations for this project which can be a double edge sword.

Cardano is fundamentally different from Ethereum down to the core programming language. Both projects do offer similar services, but cater and focus on different markets in a sense. Cardano will probably not be a direct competitor, but an alternative thought process all together.

EOS vs. Ethereum

EOS is a spitting image of Ethereum. With the first mover advantage of launching proof of stake before Ethereum, EOS has amassed a huge following and investor pool in its own right. It does lack the liquidity-pairings that Ethereum boasts, but nevertheless it is a formidable opponent. Clearly the world is large enough for two projects like Ethereum and we think EOS will simply be the Bill Gates to Tim cook if that comparison can be made.

Both Projects seek to provide proof of stake, token ready platform, virtual machines and enterprise ready solutions.

Hedging In Ethereum

If you are a risk-adverse investor, then clearly you want to invest in more than just Bitcoin. Ethereum could be considered a hedge against the currency based digital assets.

Although it is used as a mean of exchange, Ethereum leverages many use-cases that most digital currencies do not have. Holding Ethereum is similar to diversifying your portfolio in digital assets.

Ethereum long-term prediction

Clearly, I believe Ethereum is a stable bet. It has withstood the test of several years in the crypto market and maintained a top position throughout most of its tradable history. Buying a few Ethereum is simple to do on Coinbase and could lead to a nice ROI down the line. There are a few competitors that could start to eat away at Ethereum’s position, but overall it is safe to say that Ethereum is the second most secure asset in the entire crypto scene. Bitcoin being number of obviously.

When buying Ethereum, the future needs to be in mind. Ethereum and Bitcoin are not assets to buy and flip every month. The best ROI from these assets are from buying and holding for 3-5 years. These top market assets take years to fully mature and that is the beauty of buying a top market asset. Most of the fear of the asset going to $0 is removed because of investor sentiment for these projects.

Projects like Ethereum and Bitcoin will never reach $0 because there will always be someone willing to scoop them up at certain price levels.

Ethereum is a Good Investment

In conclusion, we can safely say that Ethereum is a good investment. This is based off of historical trends, amazing liquidity, ground-breaking technology, investor sentiment and future developments. It checks off all of the boxes that an investor should look for and then some if you are looking to diversify in the crypto market.

As always do you own research and learn about Bitcoin, Ethereum, ripple and some of the other top assets. Then make a choice for yourself which digital asset suits you, if any. At the end of the day if you can’t explain what Bitcoin is to your mom then you probably should not invest. Knowledge is power.

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