How's it going everybody. I'm going to talk about cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. A little background about it how you
can invest in it and the risks involved.
Now I'm a beginner myself and I did my research just enough so that I would be comfortable investing in it. I know you can get a lot deeper into in terms of the implementation the types of crypto currencies the way it works. And actually how actually mined things. This is all kind of transparent you don't necessarily need to know every single detail in order to invest in it wisely. But it is important to know a little bit of the background.
Now I'm a beginner myself and I did my research just enough so that I would be comfortable investing in it. I know you can get a lot deeper into in terms of the implementation the types of crypto currencies the way it works. And actually how actually mined things. This is all kind of transparent you don't necessarily need to know every single detail in order to invest in it wisely. But it is important to know a little bit of the background.
Cryptocurrency Background
Crypto currencies is
kind of like this you have a whole bunch of computers on a network on the
internet. They all have a thing called lectures which keeps track of all the
transactions. Now cryptocurrency is a decentralized network which means every
single node, every single computer has a copy of this ledger of every single
transaction there is. Now every single node can actually have a concave version
of this ledger.
Currently this ledger which holds all the transactions that ever
been completed since the beginning. Is roughly ten the 30 gigabytes and it's actually
growing. The whole decentralized network constantly checked itself for error. So
if an attacker comes in and tries to modify one single computer. And tries to
feed this to other computers. Other computers are going to complain about it
and not going to allow this fake transaction to go through.
The thing I like
about cryptocurrency is that the number of coins is actually fixed. From the
very beginning. Now not all of them may be discovered yet because they have to
go through this mining process.
Bitcoin vs US Dollar |
This is very
different in the crypto currency because the number of issued coin stays the
same. Much like gold where the amount of gold stays the same. And therefore
there's a rarity to it and due to this rarity the value of gold is kept. And I
expect the value of a digital currency to be kept as well.
You can see as the US
dollar goes down and down the value of the digital currency would go up as
compared to a United States dollar.
What is the main difference between bitcoin and ethereum
Now what's the difference between Bitcoin
and Ethereum. Bitcoin is just a digital currency itself. However Ethereum you
can attack on all these other different services on to the blockchain and essentially
do fancy things with it. And that's why people like to use as a area more than
Bitcoin.
For example you can set
up the Ethereum to do something like a Kickstarter where people can actually pay
into it. And it would not actually be duck from their account until certain criterias
are met.
There's a lot of different groups that are trying to change
the way Bitcoin works and they can never agree to something. Because of this is
kind of going to be like an HD DVD versus a blu-ray battle the digital currency
that's going to win is the one that's easier to use.
Now I see Bitcoin
it's kind of slowing down although it is the most popular right now. Due to
this blockage of all the different ideas of how Bitcoin should be changed. So therefore
they're going to be in a gridlock and nothing will happen. And therefore it's
just going to slow down in terms of usability compared to the Ethereum.
How to buy bitcoin and ethereum
Now you wonder how
the heck do you buy into this because sometimes you have to run a server or
something this gets really complicated. Personally I just go to one of the
largest exchanges coinbase.com.
I actually bought one Ethereum this is at the cost of $255 and I've gained about 26% since maybe a month ago
that I bought this coin. You have to understand that digital currency is highly
highly speculative. It's kind of like currency traded you never know where it's
going to go based on policy or whatnot.
For example the Ethereum got hacked a while back someone sixty
million dollars from the server. However the creator said no you can't take 60
million dollars. So then they kind of went back on the ledger and just kind of
forked it and they call the new one Ethereum and the old one is called the
Ethereum classic. The classic one started off about $2 and now about $20.
Normal ethereum is about
$320 as of today on blockchain brokerage. Now I like it here and better because I like the idea that
thieves wasn't able to get away with the 60 million dollars however the theme classic
people just think oh yeah you know this programming is immutable. You should
not be able to change it no matter how what happens.
Now that's two ways
of thinking about it kind of side on the etherium side rather than the classic
side. So I bought more a theorem instead. Now I want to give a case on why I
should buy things that holds their value a lot better such as crypto currencies
or gold.
However cryptocurrency is a super duper volatile just one
day it can go like 10%. I just bought a ethereum, I bought at 250 and went up
all the way to like 350. That's like a hundred dollar gain. How many percent
gain is that. it's like 33% and then it just dropped back down $30 this is
another 10% down.
So you can expect it's going to go up 30% down 10% one day
up with other 20%. You know it's just going to move all over the place. And you
just have to expect this, however if you think about long term let's say 10 to 20
years.
The US currency in year 2000 let's say you have $1 then you
know how much it's worth today it's about 71 cents to that dollar. Now if you
held $1 worth of gold it's going to be worth a lot more than one dollar.
Since year 2000 there's an inflation of about 2% per year. Now
over 17 years this equates to about a 40% of inflation so the average price of
things if it was one dollar back then today it's going to cost you one dollar
and 40 cents.
Now you just can't look at inflation and just go all my
currencies is going down in value but at the same time your wages has been going
up as well. So what you really want to look at it's not at the actual value of
this dollar. But rather how much you can buy per your income every single year.
Back in 2004 to
average expenses as a ratio of income is about 55% this includes housing, transportation,
medical costs, food etc. Now fast-forward 10 years in 2014 people actually have
this 74% to buy the same exact stuff. This is a 19% increase of cost relative
to your income.
Your income may be increasing
but the costs are increasing a lot faster. All this boils down to that your
buying power is actually being reduced. In light of all this you may have a
chunk of investable assets and you put it in an investment account and it's
growing at 6 to 8% every single year.
Now yet this beats
inflation however if you keep any of this in cash such as in a savings account.
Which earns you only 1% the inflation of 2% along with wage is outpacing your expenses.
It's going to create an effect where your money is kind of shrinking about 1%
every single year. And over a long time this is a lot.
When I looked at digital currencies is highly speculative so
I wouldn't want to put all my investment money inside a digital currency of
course. Couple years ago a friend told me about a guy who invested in Bitcoin
really really early on and he invested in just about a thousand dollars and it
grew 1,000%. So guess what $1000 turned into a million dollars. So he put in in
something highly highly speculative and he got a really good gain from it.
You can imagine for anything
that's so highly speculative you may gain 1,000 fold or you may actually lose
it all. If maybe Bitcoin just folded. One thing's for sure I think buying
digital currency is actually a lot better than lottery tickets or going gambling
with the same amount of money. When you gamble at a casino the long-term gains
is actually very very negative the more you play the more you're going to lose.
So in light of all this
my comfortable range of investing in something like this maybe about five to
ten percent of your portfolio. Your
portfolio is the amount that is over and beyond what you save your emergency
fund. So if you have an emergency fund and anything over this. This is what you
should use to invest. Out of this five to ten percent, I would stick about 25%
in bitcoins and 75% in ethereum.
Investor or Trader
There's pretty much
two ways they can go about doing this. You could be an investor or you could be
a trader. Now if you choose to be an
investor that typically means that you would purchase some cryptocurrency and
hold on to it.
Basically you could be holding on to it for a few months or
even a few years. And hoping that that value of that cryptocurrency will
appreciate. Now if you choose to be a trader you typically focus on short term
profit. Meaning you would purchase a cryptocurrency and utilize the volatility
of the market to sell in and out of trades.
Basically it goes
down to the buy low sell high now if you're anything like me you're probably
going to be a mixture of both. I do have some coins that I hold long term as
long term investment so I'm not too concerned about the fluctuation in prices.
However there are
other coins that I do trade short term and I do utilize that fluctuation to get
quick profits. So it's really up to you to evaluate what your goals are and
what level of risk you're willing to take.