Veritaseum

So I was browsing https://coinmarketcap.com/ just for fun. And I saw this coin near 100( this was a while ago, I’m not sure if it is true still), veritaseum. And I thought to myself, oh, like the youtube channel?

Well, no, it is not that. This isn’t the first time I have confused a cryptocurrency name with something else.

But this coin still is interesting.

It looks like you can “rent” your tokens (kind of like the margin loans I make on Polo). I’m not sure of the details exactly, but here is the site. https://veritas.veritaseum.com/verent-platform I will have to look into it more.

But, it looks like Polo is now ending the margin loans for US customers. Polo probably should be issuing a 1099 INT for each margin lender, but they don’t. Instead of correcting this, it looks like they are doing the easier solution and just ending the service. I probably will move to another exchange after this.

And, as might note in my last post, I am probably leaving Cryptopia as well. I’ll let you know when I find a new place to go.

Also, check out my most recent edition to Zero to Moon! When you buy the book to are entitled to personally as me, a CPA candidate, questions about Cryptocurrency. All personalized for your situation. At five dollars this really is a steal and if it catches on, I will likely have to discontinue it.

Sealand

Some of you may know I like to follow what micronations are up to. For example, take a look at these past posts:

Liberland

https://btcplus.blogspot.com/2016/05/happy-belated-birthday-liberland.html

Republic Veneta

http://btcplus.blogspot.com/2016/01/separatists-central-banks-and-strange.html

And my favorite micronation of course is Sealand.

Well, it looks like you can now buy lordship from Sealand with bitcoin!

https://www.sealandgov.org/

I have wanted lordship for awhile, but I kind of refuse to buy something so impractical. I actually tried to email someone at Sealand to trade services for lordship. I am cheap after all (so cheap, you should check out my newest website). But more importantly, earning lordship (rather than buying it) makes it seem more legitimate to me. But now, with the seemingly recent addition to purchase with bitcoin, I might actually do it (so I can tell you about the experience!)

My only complaint is the font they use for “lord” looks kind of strange. Actually, as I write it now, it looks like arial bold, which perhaps isn’t fancy enough.

Anyways, maybe I will do an update if I ever buy this.

And, as always,

Follow me on twitter

https://twitter.com/BTC_Plus

And Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/BTCplus.blog/

And check out my newest book!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L23SGSV

Nyan delisted

I have some unfortunate news. It looks like one of my favorite altcoins, Nyan, is going to be delisted from Cryptopia Shortly.   My heart raced slightly as I read the title “44-Day Delisting Notice.” Here is the email I got on Nov 26:

You are receiving this email because we recognise you as a holder of coin(s) that have been put into delisting status on Cryptopia.

We are committed to ensuring the coins we have available to trade on the exchange adhere to our stringent ethical, legal and technical standards outlined in our Listing Policy which can be viewed here: Listing Policy.

After conducting a thorough review, it has been determined that the below coin(s) no longer comply and as such, we are delisting:
⦁ NYAN
For further information regarding Cryptopia's delisting guidelines, our full policy can be viewed here: Delisting Policy.

Please note that we will permanently delist the above coin(s) on 9 November 2018 [Emphasis added]. Trade markets are now closed, and we recommend cancelling any open orders. To ensure your funds are off the exchange before the above coin(s) is removed, please withdraw any balances to a compatible wallet at your earliest convenience. Any queries or issues locating a compatible wallet or block explorer should be directed to the coin's development team. Please refer to our Delisting article for more information here

We would like to reassure you that Cryptopia only delists coins that could expose our users to risk, if you have any questions regarding this please contact our Support Team


At first, I didn’t know what to make of the email. It didn’t make any sense to me. Well, one problem was the date, which an email the next day they corrected: ”The date mentioned in our previous email was incorrect. The correct date for the delisting of the previously listed coin(s) is 10 January 2019.” I also reached out to the Crypotia for comment. To me, they refused to give any more information. However, to Coinaday, one of the devs, they stated “You are welcome to improve your coin’s infrastructure, including by making improvements to assist users to withdraw their coins from our exchange. However, doing so will not change the delisting status or date of 10/01/2019 on which it is due to be delisted.”

This Delisting is not limited to Nyan, there are 60 coins going through the delisting process right now (List here), but another of the coins is Ron Paul Coin! Oh dear. If you haven’t been reading my blog long, RPC was one of the first coins I covered.

Lastly, I commissioned a picture for Nyancoin. Here it is!

Audio Intro to the blog

November update

I have been working on some other big projects, so I haven’t had much time to give attention to this blog. But there are a few news events I wanted to cover and some announcements to make.

First, I got news recently the 99 bitcoin faucet is shutting down. I haven’t used this faucet personally, but it is always alarming when a major player exits the game. It makes me a little worried the faucets I use may shut down in the future.

Next, it looks like coinbase is growing in users and may even be considering an IPO down the line. This is also exciting news, and definitely something to look ahead to.

Next, I am wrapping up my second book. You may have seen my first book Zero to Moon on payhip. Well I’m now offering two editions of the book, one is just ONE dollar. The other is also really cheap and INCLUDES questions to me, the author. So check it out. But also prepare to look at my next book where I tackle passive income!

Lastly, it's post-election season, so why not look at my politics blog? This is the other project taking up my time. It is libertarian leaning, so it should have some good crossover appeal.

Chatting with an Expert on Bitcoin

I recently started watching Andrew Hales's content, he is a very interesting guy and it interesting to see him talk to someone about Bitcoin. Everyday it seems, crpyto becomes more and more mainstream.

My New Wallet: Bitpay

My go-to wallet, multibit, has not seen an update in quite a while and is really out of date. So I needed a new wallet. Additionally, my go-to site for gift cards, egifter, needed a new method of payment for bitcoin. So I had to get a new wallet that supported invoice payments. This is where Bitpay comes in.

It is a pretty standard wallet with a few cool features. One, you can buy amazon gift cards directly on the wallet. This is a super nice addition. One of my least favorite aspects of spending bitcoin is just double checking you pasted the wallet address correctly. But with the payment system integrated into the wallet, it's not an issue. Additionally, the invoice system that bitpay supports is a big help in this regard as well.

Speaking of new things, I also have a new faucet I really like. You can claim every 30 minutes from a huge list of altcoins, it even sorts them for you by price, so you can claim the most valuable coin!

Even better, coins that have proof of stake are staked for you in your btcpop wallet! Definitely worth looking at. Check it out here!

For a last piece of news, I bought a mining contract on BTCpop.

On 4/28/2018 I paid 0.00032148 btc ( about 3 dollars) for a scrypt mining contract on BTCpop. As of 5/15/2018 I have earned LTC 0.00013965 or about two cents. So at this rate in 6.25 years it will be pure profit!

Actually, the situation is much worse than I originally thought. See the payout of this contract is dependant on the price of LTC. Each payout has a flat fee associated with it. If the value of the the crypto is less than the flat fee, you are paid nothing. So given the decreases in prices of cryptocurrency, my mining contract is now not paying out most of the time, so it looks like my return of capital will be even later than I had originally thought! Oh goodness.

Early September Round Up

As some of you may know, I used to write for Coinbuzz until the site kind of just stopped. Well, for the first time in years there is new content on the site! It looks like two articles were published this summer.

In other news, my bitcoin book is getting a little dated and may need a new edition. So I’m offering it for just 1 dollar! And when I publish a new edition, you get it free! So check it out here on payhip!

Buy Now

Here are some other recent-ish pieces of news:

Robert Kiyosaki Calls US Dollar Fake, Says Bitcoin Will Be Its Replacement

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/96phwr/robert_kiyosaki_calls_us_dollar_fake_says_bitcoin/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=BitcoinAll&utm_content=t1_e426vvo

Here is a CPA firm that specializes in Cryptocurrency taxation!

https://www.camusocpa.com/the-definitive-guide-for-cryptocurrency-taxation/

Last, as I mentioned this this post….

Many mining websites are a scam, and it is just a matter of time for one of them to shut down. As I prepared this post, I checked on quite a few mining sites, and all of them were offline except this one. So I was a little bit surprised.

https://www.pro-miner.net/ref/r1EA5r

Be sure to check in soon, as I can’t imagine It will stay up too long.

Unsophisticated Investor

I saw this article linked on reddit recently, it looks like it is getting a lot of backlash. Now, I get why, but let me share a little representative of it.

I think this takes the Fed Chairs words slightly out of context. After all, unsophisticated has a technical meaning as well. A sophisticated investor or accredited investor is defined by the SEC as the following:

An accredited investor, in the context of a natural person,
includes anyone who:

earned income that exceeded $200,000 (or $300,000
together with a spouse) in each of the prior two years,
and reasonably expects the same for the
current year, OR
has a net worth over $1 million, either alone or
together with a spouse (excluding the value of the
person’s primary residence).

It isn’t necessarily a term to belittle people, it's just a statement of fact.

Here is some other news I was looking into this past week.

As you probably know, as an accountant and Crypto euthistist I always look for referencing to crypto in accounting publications, well here is the Journal of accountancy on crypto

And lastly, I’m considering a 2018 update to my ebook (which a copy provided FOC if anyone who bought the last edition). Let me know what you think!

Poly Math and Bitcoin Podcast

Here is some more slightly old news! As well as a funny video, enjoy!

https://www.cryptobasicpodcast.com/home/polymath

I ran into this interesting podcast. This is the only episode I have listened to so far. But it talks about a service called polymath, which seeks to solve some of the compliance issues associated with offering public securities.

As you may or may not know, there are a lot of rules. In fact, that is pretty much the purpose of the SEC. Anyways, this podcast explains all that background and is pretty interesting. I would definitely give it a listen.

One other item of news, John Mcafee was hospitalized.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/john-mcafee-poisoned-hospital-bitcoin-twitter-cryptocurrency-north-carolina-a8412341.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/8xauph/went_cave_exploring_recently_and_i_think_i_found/

Mid-June Round up

Sometimes I start an article, but never finish it. Here are some of those articles!

It looks like John McAfee will really debate Jamie Dimon! That is crazy! And I mentioned this is what should happen in a reddit post.

Largest Crypto Event EVER Coming to the US this July 11-13 at @harrahsresort in Atlantic City, NJ.

Tickets on SALE NOW but Selling Out FAST.

50% OFF Until June 1st
25% OFF June 1-15th
Full Price June 15-July 1st
2x Price July 1-10https://t.co/pjMvne3cEl pic.twitter.com/fsBUkWLv5j

— Blockchain World Conference (@BWCevent) May 28, 2018

I also recently watched a documentary on Netflix about John McAfee. I recommend watching it, it's called Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee. This is just one source of information, but it looks like John has a bit of a shady past. I mean, I had heard about some of this past, but watching the documentary makes it more clear. I don’t know what I will do if he gets the LP party nomination for 2020, but that is a story for my other blog.

Anyways, here are some links I have been looking at lately. Lots of interesting Crypto news and I can’t cover it all.

Somewhat recent links

Robert Shiller has been getting a lot of press attention regarding bitcoin. He actually has a pretty great finance course on COursera,

https://blockonomi.com/shiller-bitcoin-extinct/

https://bitnewstoday.com/news/technology/nobel-prize-winning-robert-shiller-cryptocurrencies-may-not-reform-money/

“Mining rigs”

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/5/31/17229748/artesian-altcoin-struggle-against-stripe

Earning money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoG482doRv0

Paying taxes on what you have earned?

https://blog.xtrabytes.global/general-crypto/cryptocurrencies-and-taxes/

Big 4 accounting and Crypto auditing

https://toshitimes.com/worlds-4-largest-accounting-firms-move-into-crypto-audi

Iconsumer

So I have a few shares I received for free from this company called Iconsumer. They are one of those cashback companies. You buy stuff online and they give you a small amount of cash back. One of the methods they pay you is via bitcoin, which is why this post is on this blog. They recently released financial statements and of course, as an accountant I had to look over these.The statements are quite telling. Let's look at Gross profit:

So the company gives out more money that it makes from its commissions. This seems like a really good product to use. This simply is not a sustainable business model, and I think the idea is to attract users and then lower the payback rate once they have more users. But that means the time to use this service is now when you will get the most of it! Check it out here!

Full SEC filing here

FUD

My posts are running a little bit late these days. Ok a lot late. It’s a little less impressive to post price predictions after than have already happened. Still, here it is and perhaps the trend hasn’t ended yet.

People in the bitcoin community like the acronym FUD, which stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. Lots of people have doubts about bitcoin, particularly outside of the cryptocurrency community. So, the community often gets tired of the same points that are brought up by outsiders, that bitcoin doesn’t have intrinsic value (which is true, but fiat doesn’t either), that it’s a ponzi scheme (which isn’t true, but many scammers use btc to facilitate their scams), and others.

But I recently read an email this week that makes a compelling argument for a price decrease. Harry Dent the Founder of Dent Research, uses the following chart, showing some of the largest bubbles in history.

So it’s possible BTC may lose some value. In the short time after this email, btc has actually gone up. But by the time I actually publish, I expect a totally different story.

Here is another except from his email: “ But I don’t think this crash is done. I expect we’ll see bitcoin ultimately lose well over 90% of its value before rallying again longer term.

Then it’ll be the buy of the century just like the internet stocks were in late 2002 after a similar, dramatic 16-month bubble and then a 93% crash.”

Here is another chart shared on reddit recently

http://i.imgur.com/o04sQSS.jpg

So maybe it is a good time to sell. Unfortunately, it looks like you can no longer buy Amazon gift cards with bitcoin anymore! The sites I used in the past like Egifter no longer sell Amazon gift cards for btc, or even for USD. So this is unfortunate. Perhaps I will have to use EBay instead (which if you haven’t used since the early 2000s, still has a lot of good things on it, particularly cables). Either way, I will have to figure something out, and I’ll post an update.

4/20 blaze it, oh dear ( Potcoin faucet down on an unfortunate date)

I wrote this post on 4/20. I’m a little behind on my posting schedule

I have been looking at another crypto recently, potcoin! What a great day to talk about this. But it looks like my Bitcoin faucet is no longer operating. This is the sad part about most/many altcoin faucets, they don’t pay much and they tend to shutdown often.

At least my main faucets are still working.

Here is some other recent news about me/crypto sites.

http://btchoney.com

Has shut down!

I spoke about it here!

Btc pop lowered finally lowered their saving rate to 0% so I withdrew all my money from btcpop

Well, I kept a few shares of pop on there.

It looks like I even had some BTG and BCH on there as well!

Most exchanges don’t have BTG, so I have Bleutrade for that, check it out here.

Polo to be Acquired

I’m pretty late to the party, but it looks like Poloniex is to be acquired by Circle. This is a little interesting because Circle has some pretty mainstream investors like Goldman Sachs. Here are two articles on it.

http://www.jiorise.com/2018/02/circle-acquires-poloniex-approximately.html#

https://poloniex.com/press-releases/2018.02.26-Poloniex-joins-Circle/

I also changed ad networks in the somewhat recent past. So far, it's my favorite so far. And the best part is they pay in bitcoin! They credit you increments of 5 satoshi which is super nice, as other sites often pay in increments of 1 cent and round down which, at less than a $1 per cpm and a fill rate at less than 100%, means you can get decent daily views but still not get credited anything. So A-AD is a better network if you are still small time in your daily view count. Check it out here.

Also I haven’t all that much reporting on ICOs, or the specifics of some of them. For more details on the technical aspects of ICOs check this article out at 99bitcoin.

Like always, follow me on twitter

https://twitter.com/BTC_Plus

And Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/BTCplus.blog/

More Hash

I recently ran into some mining services online. While looking at them, I noticed something. Look at these two sites for example:

https://www.hashperium.com/?ref=36023

https://www.youhash.net/?ref=8219

See how similar they look?

They almost look cookie cutter to each other. Like similar templates with just slightly different images. Also note how they work exactly the same. You get a bunch of free hash rate, but you can’t withdraw it. Additionally, you can recruit referrals, but you don’t get credit for free referrals, only paid. The key terms are all exactly the same.

My guess is eventually these will dry up. They can’t mine like this indefinitely.

Look at these returns. They are simply too high, and that amount of money can’t buy that much hash power.

https://cryptoextraction.com/product/antminer-s9-13th-s/

Look at this miner for 2.5k. It has 13 TH/s or 13,000 GH/s. At about 10k a btc .5 btc is about 5k, or two antminer S9’s. Or 26,000 GH/s, which is significantly less than 350,000 GH/s. It is nowhere close really. This cannot be a real mining operation. These pop up mining operations are another classic example of a ponzi scheme. They have to recruit new users to pay off the old. And went it is no longer profitable, they will shut down the site, just like hashocean, hashprofit, and countless others.

In short, be careful what you are getting into! If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!

Some updates

So, my editor has been on the fritz lately, so there is an upcoming wave of content coming out soon...stay posted. The blog also is currently at 48,000 pageviews, and it looks like it will hit 50,000 in the near future!

In other news, the blog has been getting a lot of attention/comments from Anonymous readers. The comments are often pretty vague and I’m not sure what to make of them. If you have any insights, comment below! I’m really wondering why I’m getting all this attention.

Links

1

2

3

I also ran into an interesting piece about CPU mining on a raspberry pi. This process is similar in a lot of ways to the single board mining post I did earlier.

For a very small update, it looks like someone was threatening to create a NyanCash, like the Bitcoin Cash equivalent for Nyancoin. I’m not sure how serious they are, as it would be a lot of work and possibly not that much reward. Here is the post threatening it. One thing I enjoy about this whole situation is that the moderation team at /r/Nyancoins let the post remain. In /r/bitcoin and /r/btc it seems like there is some big censorship problems. I like to let issues be debated openly and I think censorship doesn’t let truth be explored. But now it sounds like I’m writing for my politics blog, doesn’t it?

Anyways, as always

Follow me on twitter

https://twitter.com/BTC_Plus

And Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/BTCplus.blog/

HARD DRIVE Mining? This is getting ridiculous...

Another interesting mining video from Linus! Check it out here. Also there are two in new posts in the works, so stay tuned!

Single board mining

I’ve been working on a new project, mining cryptocurrency on a Raspberry Pi Zero. You might think this is crazy, and it is a little. I’m mining something called Magi coin. Honestly, I don’t know much about it. I may have to look into it more later.

With my Pi running, it looks like I’m getting .5k hash a second, which is super small, but still something, especially considering my Raspberry Pi uses very little power.

Here is what the mining looks like via my ssh connection.

I’m not sure if this is making or losing money at this point. The rewards are super small and my electricity is $.20 a kilowatt hour. The Raspberry Pi also runs the Nyancoin Price bot, which you can find here. So 5v * 1 amp is 5 watts or .005 kwatts, which times .2 is $.001 an hour to run at most.

However, I have been running into a few issues. One, the mining seems to cease whenever my ssh terminal is closed. Two, in total I have run the miner for 20 hours or so. In that time, I have mined 0.00314006 Magi. At a price of approximately $.5 a magi coin, this is not very much. And I know I have spent more than 3 hours mining. So it seems this experiment was not profitable for me at this time.

Here is the video that inspired this adventure.

�� TOP 5 SCAM COINS YOU REALLY WANT TO AVOID ��

Here is an interesting video on the coins with scam like characteristics.  I haven't personally researched these except for some work on bitconnect. Speaking of which, the section of bitconnect here is spot on, check it out.

Introduction Post 2018

Have you been hearing lots of rags to riches stories about Bitcoin and want to know what all the hoopla is about? Well, I can’t guarantee you will get rich but you are in the right place.

Welcome to the BTC+, a Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency blog. BTC+ has a plethora of content, from “how to” guides to investigative reporting.

If you are new to Crypto, why don’t you start by getting a wallet?

Or you could also check out my ebook.

It outlines the process of getting your first $50 of Bitcoin. So a 16.5 times return on investment! Wow!

Or you can also check out some of my free content here

Or some of my most popular posts:

About Earthcoin

Dogecoin

Or some of my favorite posts:

Jamie Dimon

James Altucher

Basic Crypto Guide

The Pattern of a Ponzi

Ponzi’s often have a set of characteristics that help identify them. Some people will insist a ponzi is not a ponzi as they have been paid by the scheme, but this does not necessarily help their cause, as it is part of the pattern of a ponzi. At the second level of a pyramid/ponzi scheme it is critical people are actually paid, otherwise the scheme will stop right there. If the fraud just persists one level after the creator, the profit won’t be all that great.

As you can see with this crudely made graphic, the ponzi requires exponential growth to continue. It can continue a little while, but will eventually reach a critical mass, a point where it is no longer possible to attract enough people to pay the upper levels of the pyramid. This is where the owners skip town to run the scheme again somewhere else. Everyone else generally ends up with nothing.

There is a very good reason I am a blogger, not an artist.

Another critical part of the ponzi is that the method of making money is overly complex, or simply not explained (look at my past posts for more on this).

99 bitcoin recently reported on a possible ponzi scheme. Note how USI seems congruent with a typical ponzi scheme:

There is little information about the founding team. This would definitely be the case if they plan on skipping town after everything shuts down, or if they did that in the past. Further, it seems there is evidence that the founders they do know about seem to have been involved in fraud. This doesn’t look good for USI.

So people might even think this reflects poorly on Bitcoin or on Crypto as a whole. Well, you wouldn’t blame USD every time a Ponzi was conducted in dollars, would you? Probably not. Hence blaming Crypto for this really isn’t that helpful.

Read more about my past reporting on Ponzi’s

https://btcplus.blogspot.com/2014/03/ponzi-schemes-oo.html

https://btcplus.blogspot.com/2018/01/honey-and-money.html

https://btcplus.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-atlantic-and-fed.html

https://btcplus.blogspot.com/2016/07/not-that-kind-of-hash.html

Nyan Parlement

I meant to write about this when it was news, but often times, I’m pretty slow at releasing content. Speaking of which, I am looking for guest contributors.

But about a year ago, I officially became a founding member of the Nyancoin Parlement. The parliament is an interesting system and is like a mix of a corporate board of directors and a legislative government body. The fundamental principle behind the Nyancoin Parlement is one coin is one vote. Nyan coin are used to give electing power to those in office. A coin can only be used to endorse one candidate at a time. One of the issues was if Coinaday should be the “Dictator pro tem” of the Parlement.

So if I wanted to vote Yes (which I did), I could use my 100,000 coin endorsement and vote on it. But if someone else is endorsed with more coins, they will overall have more sway than me. Overall whichever receives the most votes (in the form of coin endorsements) wins.

As far as I can tell, this seems to be the only system of its kind. But I haven’t conducted an exclusive search by any means.

There recently has been some activity in the Nyancoin Parlement, and perhaps some new exciting news will be forthcoming. Then again, it might take a while for me to write about it.

Buying, Selling and SAFELY STORING Bitcoin?! – Mining Adventure Part 4

Here is another more mainstream person getting into crypto. See my earlier post here.

Don't put money into what you don't understand

Part of the mission of this blog is to point out scams. Sometimes I suspect scams and don’t say enough. Here is another potentially dangerous site I am looking into. Buying mining somewhere else is a risky proposition, so be careful. The site does offer free mining, so maybe you can investigate it with me.

Here is an older story that I didn’t get around to publishing. ( Ref1, 2, 3)

What happened is this guy bought a ledger Nano, and included in the box was a piece of paper with additional setup instructions. This piece of paper was not from the manufacturer, it was included by the reseller. The buyer followed the directions which enabled the seller to steal all of the buyer’s Bitcoin.

Long story short, know what you are getting into. I don’t use a standalone hardware wallet, as it doesn’t solve one of the simplest problems with a physical wallet, it can get lost or stolen. Sure, you can save your key on a physical piece of paper, but if your home has a problem like a fire, this will not help you.

Here is another unrelated scam. Bitcoin is becoming mainstream enough that scams are also becoming more mainstream. Some of these scams are obvious even if the subject was USD rather than a cryptocurrency. For example, on reddit someone was claiming to host a giveaway where you give them .5 ltc and then they will give 10 ltc back to you. This scam is clear in USD as well. Some scams are more sophisticated. Like in the paragraph above. It's not obvious why using the private key contained in the Nano ledge box is a bad idea unless you are familiar with Cryptocurrency.

In short, don’t put money in things you don’t understand!

Robinhood

Hey, a short update post. Crypto adoption is getting mainstream more and more every day. Lots of non crypto people have been coming out as crypto people:

Tai Lopez (you can see some of his show here)

Amir Blumefield (you can hear on his podcast If I Were You)

the food guy

Acorns

CNBC

Robinhood will now enable you to invest in Crypto! That's exciting. For those of you who don't know, Robinhood is an app that lets you invest in stocks with no brokerage fees! Normally a trade costs at least 5 dollars, but not with Robinhood! Check it out here.

Also, a short note, the Reddit alternative, Emeopled, is now offline. They promised btc for every user, but it looks like that didn’t pan out. I don’t think they ever made a profit, or even revenue, as I don’t think I ever saw ads on the platform.

ICOs are dumb.

For a little context, an ICO is an initial coin offering. In essence, it is selling equity or ownership in a company. It is similar to an IPO, initial public offering, but with some major differences. There is mountains of paperwork and regulation that goes into an IPO. Some firms specialize in working with companies seeking to go public and help them meet the requirement ( I even worked at one of these). Some of the minimal requirements is audited financials, finding an underwriter ( like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, etc) , registration with the SEC and many others.

I mean, in some ways undercutting underwriters is cool, but at the same time, underwriters and other parties in the IPO process have an important role. In my opinion, the auditors play a huge role. Now, as an auditor, I’m probably a little biased. But with an ICO there is no guarantee what you are getting into. There are not required financial statements, let alone audited ones, as anyone can offer an ICO. In addition, there is not assurance the ICO is even in compliance with the law.

When auditors give an opinion on an IPO, it is a huge deal. Normally a party needs to be privy to sue. But in the case of an IPO if there is a material misstatement, anyone who experienced a loss can sue.

ICO also have be totally ridiculous. This has to be the craziest one I have ever seen. Literally they are advertising flying cars.

Speaking of which, here is a referral link to an ICO

In the past, I haven’t had much benefit from this, I tried signing up at Wcex.

But as far as I can tell, it didn’t work. The website doesn’t remember the account I made with them.

And don't forget. There with btc price dropping, now is the time to get involved!

Here it is on amazon! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XV3P3QD

James Alt(coin)ucher

This James Altucher has been advertising a lot lately, and if you follow this blog you probably have seen some of his ads.

He kind of looks like a crazier Malcolm Gladwell.

Anyways, it looks like he has gotten some mixed press on Yahoo, you can look at it here. But it's kind of easy to imagine a simple scam here. One, you establish yourself as a crypto expert. Two, you buy some altcoin. Three, you promote the altcoin. And four, you sell at inflated prices.

And that is how you  make big returns with low risk. Be Altucher. You can also see his Master class here.

Also if you have time, look here, some interesting news on Bitcoin’s price changes.

Well that's all I have time for now. More news always incoming. Lookout for my upcoming post on Nyan.

And If you are ready to get serious about bitcoin, take the plunge. Here is my book on amazon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XV3P3QD

Honey and Money

And here is a new site I tried this week. It's called honey.

Honestly, it looks like a ponzi scheme. It advertises rates that are simply impossible to achieve over the long run. Anything that requires upfront bitcoin payment for an annuity is probably a scam.  There are many, many scams that look like this. Hash Ocean and Hash Profit are both examples that I reported on.  I am also leary of other sites like BCC or bitclubnetwork.

A few telltale signs of a Ponzi scheme is that the way they make money is either unclear, or very complicated. For example, Hash Profit claimed to have a fancy system of mining that picked the most profitable coins, but for some reason, they only did limited mining on weekends, which was strange. There also was no evidence they actually did any mining at all, which is a dangerous sign. Lastly, look at the rate of return, a 4% daily rate means that in one year, $1 turns into to over 1.5 million…  Which is simply not sustainable.  Even a Ponzi scheme likely will have payment proof; the scheme works for a few people, who tell more people, each group paying off the last. As long as more people come, it will work. But as soon as there is a slowdown, everything collapses, sites shut down, and people lose everything.

To contrast this, let's look at something that seems to not be a ponzi scheme, coinbase. Coinbase allows you to buy bitcoin with fiat, or visa versa. I personally don’t use the service, as it requires quite a bit of personal information . Regardless, they have a clear business strategy. They make money on the bitcoin spread, they sell bitcoin at one price, a higher price, and buy it at a lower price. So every time a trade is made, they make money.
In short, check out Honey if you want, but it doesn’t have all that much to do to earn Bitcoin so maybe give this one a pass. Make sure to check out my faucets for some better sources of crypto.