Monday, June 21, 2021

TA and market prediction is worthless. Change my mind.

Just saw this gem of random bs in /r/bitcoinmarkets:

Current Crypto Bitcoin, Ethereum Trend indicators And BullshitCompany tools

Cryptocurrency prices have taken some sharp moves to the downside over the past seven days, to a three-week low as further pressure from China sent Bitcoin and Ether to the bottom end of the short-term ranges. Fred Eshram, the co-founder of Coinbase, issued a price warning about an approaching ‘ death cross’ where the short-term range is broken below the long-term average.

Bitcoin has lost over 20% and is down by more than half of its April peak of almost $65,000. Today alone, bitcoin is down 10% and ether 12% and broke through key support of $2,000.

The pressure from China started when the provinces of Sichuan on Friday ordered mining projects to close. Production of bitcoin in China accounted for 65% of the global production last year. The PBOC also issued a notice to a number of financial institutions concerning cryptocurrency transactions.

Michael Burry - the Big Short investor - has warned that the mother of all crashes is on the horizon and Main Street losses will approach the size of countries.

On the flip side, Billionaire investor Steve Cohen says, “I'm doing a deep dive into crypto and I’m fully converted”. Michael Saylor and Microstrategy have purchased another 13,000 bitcoin for approx $490 million and now have 105,000.

To remain bullish, in the short-term, it is vital that bitcoin holds $30,000, and ether needs to get back above $2,000 for the bulls to stay in control. Consecutive closes below $30,000 and $2,000 would indicate that the short-term trend has changed. The bears would seize control, and on the downside, the targets would be $25,000 and $1,500. After such an aggressive pullback we would favour going long if we can hold these levels but would want a buy signal from BullshitCompany to confirm this.

BullshitCompany Shows Double-Digit Returns in June But – BullshitCompany does not care what direction the market moves because BullshitCompany is designed to help you make money in either direction.

If you followed the signals just since BullshitCompany was introduced on June 1, for Bitcoin, you would be up 20% in the past week and up 12% in the past 7 days, and up 11% overall in the month of June. Contrast this to the actual performance of Bitcoin which is down 8.7% in the past week and 2.7% on a month to date basis, and BullshitCompany is up 20.8% in the past week and 13.8% month to date compared to simply holding Bitcoin for the same period.

If you followed BullshitCompany since Jun1 you would be down 10.45% in the past week and down 6.4% since the beginning of June. This is not as bad as Ethereum which is down 12.5% in the past week and down 14.7% since the beginning of the month. As a result, BullshitCompany is 2.1% better than holding Ethereum in the past week and 8.3% better for the month to date.

The BullshitCompany Team

Access your Advanced Subscriber BullshitCompany Forum.

Now, let's take a look at the valuable information included in this market "analysis".

We start off with five paragraphs of restating news of the last few days/weeks, follow up with a bit of baseless wishful thinking about "support levels" and stuff "they" would "favor", finally close with three paragraphs of marketing speech trying to make shorting seem like some magic "we don't care what the market does" skill.

Literally no relevant information is included in this, still people treat it as if it were some DD.

Same goes for any TA post you have ever read. It's just the guesswork of a random person having about the same merit as doomsday prophets moving their targets everytime their prophesized Big Event^tm doesn't occur.

Here, let me try:

Today we've seen Bitcoin break through its support level so a course correction is inevitable in the short term while in the long term we can expect it to move in the opposite direction before returning to previous levels sometime down the road. With MACD showing movement up and down, Bollinger Bands go below and above the recent trend lines.
Bulls would need the price to rise while bears like honey and prefer a downward trend.

Subscribe now to my irrelevant ramblings so I can make some money while you continue to lose on trying to time the market.

Don't forget to praise me to high heavens when I luck out "predicting" a price movement and tell your friends for 15% off the yearly subscription.

Sotheby's Accepts Bitcoin or Ether Bids for Diamond Event

https://cointuta.com/forums/topic/sothebys-accepts-bitcoin-or-ether-bids-for-diamond-event/?feed_id=256174&_unique_id=60d14fe8af7b7

Max Keiser And Stacy Herbert To Host “F*ck Elon” Bitcoin Maximalist Event On July 8

https://cointuta.com/forums/topic/max-keiser-and-stacy-herbert-to-host-fck-elon-bitcoin-maximalist-event-on-july-8/?feed_id=256180&_unique_id=60d1501baa4fe

How Tether's potential collapse could affect Algorand?

I've been reading up on Tether's shady history and it honestly sounds like a ticking timebomb for the entire crypto space. For those unaware, I'd recommend this video which gives a basic overview: https://youtu.be/-whuXHSL1Pg.

In a nutshell, it looks increasingly likely that Tether (a USD stable coin) doesn't have the liquidity to cover the amount of Tether coins in circulation. They're minting new Tether out of thin air and using it to buy other crypto/do whatever they want with it. The price of Tether isn't pegged equally to the USD as they claimIf you look at the Tether's coin minting vs. Bitcoin price, they follow an eerily similar trajectory. So if people flock to exchange their Tether back to fiat, Tether will come crashing down and likely bring a major chunk of the market with it. How far it'll fall is speculation at this point, but from the looks of it this could be a massive event. Tether is currently the 3rd largest coin by market cap and is used extensively to buy/trade crypto.

Algorand is the project I believe in most, and I'm not selling regardless of what happens here, but I'm curious if anyone has information on Algorand's resiliency in an event like this. Any other information on what's going on with Tether would be appreciated as well.

Cheers fellow algonauts 🙏🏻

Quick silly question.

Usually i buy a few alt coins each month. I track all my buys with tax software koinly. Here is my question.

Usually i have to buy Bitcoin as a trading pair to get these alts i want. Everybody knows every time you sell bitcoin it's a taxable event.. so each time i buy these alts i'm getting taxed...or am i?

If i'm buying bitcoin and selling it straight away for an alt, the price will be relatively the same as when i bought it. I keep thinking i'm going to somehow get some huge tax bill, but i really shouldn't, right?

Can someone confirm this that is much more savvy with taxes than me.

Sotheby's Accepts Bitcoin or Ether Bids for Diamond Event

https://www.SunDispatch.com/sothebys-accepts-bitcoin-or-ether-bids-for-diamond-event/

r/ethereum - Sotheby's Accepts Bitcoin or Ether Bids for Diamond Event

https://www.SunDispatch.com/sothebys-accepts-bitcoin-or-ether-bids-for-diamond-event/

Risk Management Advice from a Former Professional... Gambler (aka Practice Discipline)

Hey gang, ex poker player. Made quite a bit of coin in my day playing poker that I reinvested into successful businesses. Lost a lot of it promptly YOLO'ing the market decades ago well before the days of WSB because I wanted to retire early and figured I could retire early or keep working anyways. Learned the hard lessons, stayed focused on business and away from the market.

So why on Earth would you listen to me? Precisely because I've been a dumbass in all my dealings (poker, business, stocks) but have stuck each one through long enough to learn from my silly mistakes. I feel that Thetagang has given me much more tools in the quiver and want to pay it forward by helping those with... ahem, degenerate tendencies, and even those without, to understand some proper risk management. So on with the show.

Rule #1: Always Assume the Worst Case CAN Happen

Lady luck loves nothing better to take her big dick and deflower your naive optimism at every opportunity. Have a bet that you think is a sure thing? Great, can you "define" what a sure thing is in numbers? Cause if you can't, it's undefined risk and that means you have no idea what you are dealing with. Selling naked call / put options is an undefined risk (unlimited loss). Selling vertical / calendars is a DEFINED risk (you know what you can lose/gain).

I know what you're saying, "Hey granto, XYZ will NEVER hit that strike or ABC could never go bankrupt, it's impossible!". And of course, I'll say, it's impossible like the chance of a country defaulting on their bonds right? Like Russia in 80s which blew apart LTCM, one of the fastest rising stars in the hedge fund world with the smartest dudes around?

See the thing is, once you start thinking "It can't happen" or "The chance is so small.." then that's when you're fucked because you're replacing analysis with hope (or worse, ego). See the thing is, 99% isn't impossible. And 90% sure as HELL isn't impossible. And if you can't understand how your trade can go sideways, you are not the smart shark that you think you are. You are the fish. That's why any veteran trader (and I hardly call myself one) rolls their eyes at someone saying they make 1% a week selling FDs.

Rule #2: Size Your Bets Accordingly (SEE Rule #1)

If you think you've got a 60% winning bet, do you go all-in? Fuck no. 80%? Nope. 90%? Still no!

This is where Kelly's criterion comes in (good Reddit thread here. In a nutshell, even when you are at a high probability of success, if you make that same bet multiple times with a outsized portion of your assets, you will go broke due to the law of large numbers.

Example: You sell 1 standard deviation SPY call options (approx 30 delta) which assumes your contact expires worthless 68% of the time. Well since you're smarto pants here, you realize 68% isn't THAT safe, but two standard deviations (~95% win rate) would be very safe. So you sell 7 delta calls each week jacked to the tits. You're playing it safe, right?

Well, math comes out that your 95% trade over 13 trades (0.95¹³⁾ comes out to a 51% trade. That means if you max your bets for a mere 3 months, you're a coin flip chance of having an assignment. This is why they call it "picking up pennies before a bulldozer" and why everyone says "It works, until it doesn't".

So how much should you bet? Most people say never more than 5-10% of your portfolio on any one position; and I mean that any one position should only have risk exposure of said 5-10%. If you short GME/AMC/MEME using 10% of your margin, then god bless and pray to not meet your maker because your risk is once again, undefined (unlimited). The reason the 5-10% exists is because you need to assume that your position can/will move against you AGAINST ALL ODDS and you need to limit your damage and exposure.

There are MANY, MANY smart players out there that have gone bust simply because of poor bankroll management. Once you're wiped out, you're gone. No more bets, no more opportunities. Even a 50% loss sets you back YEARS. When the game is based around compounding numbers, any significant portfolio losses is incredibly damaging to your ability to play the game.

Rule #3: Set Loss Boundaries and Know When To Exit

This is really important. Unlike the top two, which are based on hedging against the unknown, Rule #3 is hedging against your dumb ass self. Why? Because every gambler has that moment when he says: "Fuck this, I'm doubling down!"

That's a GREAT sign? Why? Because it's your own personal stop loss indicator, so that you know you are no longer able to trade rationally. Once you're angry, bitter or trying to win back a loss, now you're in gambling territory my friend. Emotions are high, you want to prove to yourself, Mr. Market, your wife who rolls her eyes that "No no no, I am toooootally right!". Sure thing bud, but let's cool off first and exit your trade and put down your phone before someone gets hurt".

Creating pre-defined exit boundaries are a requirement because it takes the decision making process out of the equation when you are least capable of making a decision. Otherwise, when your short on AMC is going to the moon and your face is melting off, you're not screaming at the invisible buy-side action telling them how right you are and that you'll hold until your account implodes.

Closing gains from 50-80% seems pretty common here. Selling insurance means that losses can quickly escalate far beyond your basis so it's important to put in your stops before it gets away. Where is your own risk tolerance, but mine is is variable depending on the volatility and delta, but as a general rule, if you set your losses to match your gains or even at double, you've at least defined an exit point.

The all too common theme at a poker table is the solid player who loses a big hand that he should have won, then proceeds to go on tilt and proceeds to take a single loss into a whirlwind of loses trying to make ever riskier plays. So of course our next rule is...

Rule #4: Don't Risk What You Can't Afford

I know I'm going to get hell for this, but trading on margin (without well defined risk params) is an invitation for the reaper. Again, if you don't understand how your trade can go south, trading on margin is NOT FOR YOU. If you're hedged with delta all which ways with tight stops, then play big league ball all you want. If your thesis is that SPX goes up 7% per year annualized, margin interest is 4% and your bright play is piling into nothing but high beta SPX plays... then please god re-read rule #2.

I'm sure I'm clear on this already, but if you don't understand or have conviction in the bet you are making, then don't make the bet or make it manageable (small). Most disciplined investors either throw an allocation into a "safe" asset such as an indexed ETF or mutual fund, then put the rest aside for gambling and fun times. That way, if you get caught in the worse way, you're not panicking or on a bender trying to recover. There were dudes in here yelling the end was nigh with a 3% correction a few months ago and if they rode the major crashes like '08, I can't even imagine how jacked they would be. If you're going to gamble, do it responsibly.

When I was young, the worst thing that happened was getting a fuck ton of margin, having a big ego and making a rash of successful plays early. Idiots success is a hell of a drug. A margin call is a hell of a morning wake up. LUCKILY even my dumbass was smart enough to stash away a pile of money to protect it from myself. Which leads me to...

Rule #5: You're Not That Smart, So Don't Bet 100% On Yourself

The rule we all hate. I hate it with a passion. I really enjoy being smart. I'm great at a lot of things. I am not, however, smarter than the market. But, after much hard lessons, I do have enough self reflection to realize that I enjoy options exactly because of it's gambling like nature. And if I keep telling myself that my bets are because I am smart, I may eventually begin to delude myself into thinking so and not question my dumb ass decisions.

Let's face it, we all know (or SHOULD KNOW) that the majority of hedge funds don't beat the market. Holding index funds will beat just about any other strategy time and time again. Yet why do we do this? Because it's fun... and because we all think just mayyybe we'll continue to beat the market, because maybe you currently do or think you can.

So don't get ahead of yourself. You're not the next Buffet. A YOLO play with 2000% returns does not make you a smart investor. Getting away with selling insurance in a bull market doesn't make you an smart investor. It doesn't make you stupid either. But over 20 years, let's see how you do. And if you're a billionaire, fucking kudos to you and your big dick. To everyone else, stay humble, donate to your local ETF.

Rule #6: Don't Force Opportunities, Be Patient for High Probability Scenarios

I've often sat down at a game and realized that it's just not a good game for whatever reason (slow pace, grumpy players, bad cards, etc). The wrong thing is to sit down and try to grind out when there's nothing to be gained. This is where the Bogle / Buffet type investors have it right, because they just jam their meat into SPY and let it slow cook for a few decades while they enjoy the sunlight, outdoors and get shit done.

Thetagang is thetagang for a reason... it's great to just sit and let your thesis play out and hopefully take your winnings. But sometimes I've invested a lot of time into my current plays and just don't have a good one out there that I have conviction of. So I won't force it or concentrate my bet. I always know it's time to chill out when I think "Hmm... this is going slow, maybe I'll just sell a few more CSPs on the same ticker on another date/strike". Because when I do, that violates Rule #2 for bet sizing.

Each player/trader has their own set of signals they they go by. If I'm not getting most of my signals, then I'm just not going to play, because otherwise I'm gambling. It's like shorting/buying AMC. Do I have long term thesis that I'm willing to stick to? Or am I just hoping to run in and scalp? If I believe it will collapse, then I'm at least going to look for a number of entry point indicators to go in vs just willy nilly jumping in.

Rule #7: Never Forget You Are Trading Against a Headwind aka The House Always Wins

This isn't exactly risk, but don't ever forget this rule, especially since we're all trading options here. The bid/ask spreads will murder you if you are going in and out of them frequently. Many spreads hover around 10%. The terrible ones are over 20%. Plus you've got your brokerage commissions on top. If you're round tripping 200 options on a vertical call with a 10% spread, that's 20% + $260 (@ 0.65 per trade). That is a HUGE headwind. Now obviously as thetagang, the hope here is the value decreases so that you're closing the call at a much lower value so the spread at close is a much smaller % vs your basis.

That said, being a monkey trader that is maxing out margin, being forced to close trades when you don't want to, or playing too many highly volatile stocks that stop you out of a trade before your desired point is a big win for the house. Say your monkey thesis is that ZIM is going on a bull run, you sell a put, only to have it turn against you the next week, you're now in a difficult position of accepting your thesis is wrong and closing out, waiting it out until you hit your safety eject number, or stubbornly hold until the cows and margin call comes home.

Rule #: Be Aware That You Have Blind Spots

I should probably call this "Beware of Black Swans" or improbable events that are outside of what you think is probable. This concept was made famous by Nassim Taleb, an options trader who made hundreds of millions by "exploiting" the Black-Scholes options pricing model, which Taleb claims does not price options correctly (too cheap on the edges, too expensive near the money, due to the gaussian curve not representing risk properly... but I am not a mathematician, so please don't skewer me for my ad hoc summary). In English, this is rule #1 on steroids - it's not just the worst situation YOU can think of, but what's the worst case situation you CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO THINK OF?

Many people think this is like a futile exercise because how can you hedge against say, an asteroid or nuke from North Korea that falls into "acts of god" realms of probability. But as we saw with BTC, China is moving against BTC in a major way and miners are moving to the US. Will the US ban Bitcoin? Obviously, I don't know but the probability exists. How you trade that is beyond my pay grade. But, if you aren't even cognizant to the fact that BTC could be banned then you are trading with a blind spot.

So, this goes closely with Rule #5. You're just not that smart or reflective enough to see your own shortcomings.

.. Anyhow, my dumbass thought this would be a pay it forward for those who may be on the path to making the same mistakes I once did. Thank you to everyone here that contributes and continues to have patience. I am still learning and appreciate you all.

TLDR: Risk is overrated. Concentration makes you rich. Losers exit out a trade early. Your gut knows what is right. Markets always go up. Markets price in everything perfectly. You're the fucking champ with 20/20.

Can You ID the Event that Marked the Top of this Market Cycle?

This is some text to satisfy the minimum character requirement for posts, so the bots don't go all crazy and sweep this shit under the rug.

There is one event that marked the top of this current market cycle for Bitcoin. Do you know what it was?

April 14, 2021: Coinbase IPO

https://preview.redd.it/t5l8zin4ro671.jpg?width=1479&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=663c5e884bf01e19c46a53517b6ece0a3bbddc2e

Ignore the reassurance posts, no one knows what the future holds

Crypto could bounce back next week, go into a 2-3 year bear market until the next Bitcoin halving, or, while somewhat unlikely, yes, it could totally die off.

Yes, really.

Anything can happen, black swan events can happen.

Anything else is just people reassuring themselves.

Yes, you could 'delete app and come back in 5 years' and not be rich at all.

It could all go to 0. It could also all go 1000x. Or somewhere in between. Who knows. Not me. Not Michael Saylor, and not even Elon.

Everything is speculation.

Let's hope for the best, and hope that we end up making it.

If possible, DCA what you're willing to lose throughout a bear market. This may not be a bear market, but in general.

$120 in Free Bitcoin + Earn Crypto Interest! Celsius - Gemini - Coinbase - BlockFi

Celsius - $90 Free BTC

Celsius pays industry leading interest rates on a wide variety of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. Currently they have over 21 billion USD of crypto assets and are continuing on an aggressive growth path. In addition to earning, you can take fiat loans out against your crypto balances to avoid a taxable event. The cherries on top are weekly interest payments, no lock-ups, and FREE withdrawals!
Please note, you DO NOT want to withdraw any crypto from your account while the promo/referrals are ‘locked’ for 30 days. Doing so will likely cancel both bonuses.

Referral Code: 1080288f9a
Referral Link: https://celsiusnetwork.app.link/1080288f9a
Reward: $40 BTC
Eligibility: New Users
Details:

Sign up for a Celsius account with my referral link: https://celsiusnetwork.app.link/1080288f9a
Make sure the referral code is populated during the signup process / first step of the app with your name. It cannot be added after your wallet is created
Complete the KYC / Verify your identity
Deposit $400 or more of crypto into your account in your first deposit. You will receive the $40 of BTC in 30 days, but can see a pending deposit in your BTC wallet

Promo Code: HODL50
Reward: $50 BTC
Eligibility: New Users
Details:

Tap the © in the lower right corner of App > Select Profile > Select Promo Code
Tap ‘Enter a promo code’ and type HODL50
Deposit $400 or more of crypto into your account. You will receive the $50 of BTC in 30 days, but can see a pending deposit in your BTC wallet

------------------------------------
BlockFi - $10 BTC
BlockFi is a platform which lets you earn on your cryptocurrency balances with interest being accrued daily and paid monthly. In addition you can trade crypto for free and take fiat loans against existing crypto balances.
Referral Code: 70ad1c7e
Referral Link: https://blockfi.com/?ref=70ad1c7e
Reward: $10 BTC
Eligibility: New Users
Details:

Sign up for a BlockFi account with my referral link: https://blockfi.com/?ref=70ad1c7e
Deposit $100 or more of fiat or cryptocurrency
Maintain the balance for 30 days (No withdraws!) and the $10 will be deposited the second Friday of the month after the promotion is earned.

------------------------------------
Gemini - $10 BTC
Gemini is a US-based regulated and licensed cryptocurrency exchange. Its offerings include low cost trading, 10 free monthly withdrawals, the ability to earn on crypto balances, and an upcoming credit card.
Referral Code: grnz6l5fx
Referral Link: https://gemini.com/share/grnz6l5fx
Reward: $10 BTC
Eligibility: New Users
Details:

Sign up for a Gemini account with my referral link: https://gemini.com/share/grnz6l5fx
Complete KYC / Verify your identity
Link your bank account and deposit $100 or more
Activate ActiveTrader Mode by going to Settings > Exchange > Trade Interface. It's FREE and will lower the trading fees as low as 0.03% and it will open other trading pairs.
Buy or Sell 100 USD of any crypto within 30 days of opening an account and Gemini will deposit your bonus of $10 worth of Bitcoin within a day.

------------------------------------
Coinbase - $10 BTC
Coinbase is a leading US-based and publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange. Its offerings include the ability to trade a wide range of coins, a wallet, and free crypto via its Earn platform.

Referral Code: walter_kja
Referral Link: https://www.coinbase.com/join/walter_kja
Reward: $10 BTC
Eligibility: New Users
Details:

Sign up for a Coinbase account with my referral link: https://www.coinbase.com/join/walter_kja
Complete KYC / Verify your identity
Link your bank account and deposit $100 or more

Buy or Sell 100 USD of any crypto within 180 days of opening an account and Coinbase will deposit your bonus of $10 worth of Bitcoin within four days.

$120 in Free Bitcoin + Earn Crypto Interest! Celsius - Gemini - Coinbase - BlockFi

Celsius - $90 Free BTC

Referral Code: 1080288f9a
Referral Link: https://celsiusnetwork.app.link/1080288f9a
Reward: $40 BTC
Eligibility: New Users
Details:

Sign up for a Celsius account with my referral link: https://celsiusnetwork.app.link/1080288f9a
Make sure the referral code is populated during the signup process / first step of the app with your name. It cannot be added after your wallet is created
Complete the KYC / Verify your identity
Deposit $400 or more of crypto into your account in your first deposit. You will receive the $40 of BTC in 30 days, but can see a pending deposit in your BTC wallet

Promo Code: HODL50
Reward: $50 BTC
Eligibility: New Users
Details:

Tap the © in the lower right corner of App > Select Profile > Select Promo Code
Tap ‘Enter a promo code’ and type HODL50
Deposit $400 or more of crypto into your account. You will receive the $50 of BTC in 30 days, but can see a pending deposit in your BTC wallet

Sign up for a BlockFi account with my referral link: https://blockfi.com/?ref=70ad1c7e
Deposit $100 or more of fiat or cryptocurrency
Maintain the balance for 30 days (No withdraws!) and the $10 will be deposited the second Friday of the month after the promotion is earned.

Sign up for a Gemini account with my referral link: https://gemini.com/share/grnz6l5fx
Complete KYC / Verify your identity
Link your bank account and deposit $100 or more
Activate ActiveTrader Mode by going to Settings > Exchange > Trade Interface. It's FREE and will lower the trading fees as low as 0.03% and it will open other trading pairs.
Buy or Sell 100 USD of any crypto within 30 days of opening an account and Gemini will deposit your bonus of $10 worth of Bitcoin within a day.

Referral Code: walter_kja
Referral Link: https://www.coinbase.com/join/walter_kja
Reward: $10 BTC
Eligibility: New Users
Details:

Sign up for a Coinbase account with my referral link: https://www.coinbase.com/join/walter_kja
Complete KYC / Verify your identity
Link your bank account and deposit $100 or more

Buy or Sell 100 USD of any crypto within 180 days of opening an account and Coinbase will deposit your bonus of $10 worth of Bitcoin within four days.

$GTII GLOBAL TECH INDUSTRIES GROUP, INC. SUCCESSFULLY UNVEILS CRYPTOCURRENCY TRADING PLATFORM, AND SETS A TIMELINE FOR FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS AND ENHANCEMENTS

Source: https://flashalert.me/?symbol=GTII&source=PR&referer=https://stocktwits.com/&url=https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/06/21/2250529/0/en/GLOBAL-TECH-INDUSTRIES-GROUP-INC-SUCCESSFULLY-UNVEILS-CRYPTOCURRENCY-TRADING-PLATFORM-AND-SETS-A-TIMELINE-FOR-FURTHER-IMPROVEMENTS-AND-ENHANCEMENTS.html&s3=GTII/2021-06-21/14-10-53_000000/glob/f08f46c3ba20cc557cd6879762b9092c/GLOBAL-TECH-INDUSTRIES-GROUP-INC-SUCCESSFULLY-UNVEILS-CRYPTOCURRENCY-TRADING-PLATFORM-AND-SETS-A-TIMELINE-FOR-FURTHER-IMPROVEMENTS-AND-ENHANCEMENTS.html

June 21, 2021 14:09 ET

New York, NY, June 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Tech Industries Group, Inc. (OTCQB: GTII) (“GTII” or the “Company”), www.gtii-us.com , a Nevada corporation, announced today that the successful launch of its cryptocurrency trading platform, “ Beyond Blockchain ” occurred on Friday, June 18 th . By end of day Friday, the site had accommodated a steady stream of both GTII shareholders and curious first-time visitors, and also welcomed those new members who successfully opened their own digital accounts by setting up their personal digital wallets.

GTII shareholders can go to www.beyondblockchain.us and open a digital wallet. The beyond blockchain platform is the only place where any digital dividend distributed by the Company would be made available for review. The Company is working with legal counsel and hopes to announce a token dividend date once it has been approved by the Board of Directors of the Company.

David Reichman, CEO of GTII , commented, “Our GTII tech team is closely monitoring our visitors, and has already been able to ascertain and suggest improvements to the site interface, as well as updating the site’s offerings based on trading preferences. Next up, will be the launch of our mobile app , as we continue to bring the world of digital fine art trading and tokenization directly to our shareholders, allowing them to use a variety of their own devices, helping to make their experience personal and unique to them.”

Beyond Blockchain enables customers to trade cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin SV), FX, commodities with other assets to be added in the future such as fractionalized interests in tokenized fine art. As the online wallet is expanded, it will be able to house tokenized and fractionalized assets that the Company may distribute to its shareholders.

A bout Global Tech Industries Group, Inc.: GTII, a publicly traded Company incorporated in the state of Nevada, specializing in the pursuit of acquiring new and innovative technologies.

Please follow our Company at: www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GTII

Safe Harbor Forward-Looking Statements :
This press release may contain forward looking statements that are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve risks as well as uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those anticipated or expected, including statements related to the amount and timing of expected revenues related to our financial performance, expected income, distributions, and future growth for upcoming quarterly and annual periods. These risks and uncertainties are further defined in filings and reports by the Company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Actual results and the timing of certain events could differ materially from those projected in or contemplated by the forward-looking statements due to a number of factors detailed from time to time in our filings with the SEC. Among other matters, the Company may not be able to sustain growth or achieve profitability based upon many factors including but not limited to the risk that we will not be able to find and acquire businesses and assets that will enable us to become profitable. Reference is hereby made to cautionary statements set forth in the Company’s most recent SEC filings. We have incurred and will continue to incur significant expenses in our development stage, noting that there is no assurance that we will generate enough revenues to offset those costs in both the near and long term. New lines of business may expose us to additional legal and regulatory costs and unknown exposure(s), the impact of which cannot be predicted at this time.

Words such as “estimate,” “project,” “predict,” “will,” “would,” “should,” “could,” “may,” “might,” “anticipate,” “plan,” “intend,” “believe,” “expect,” “aim,” “goal,” “target,” “objective,” “likely” or similar expressions that convey the prospective nature of events or outcomes generally indicate forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of this press release. Unless legally required, we undertake no obligation to update, modify or withdraw any forward-looking statements, because of new information, future events or otherwise.

Mike King
Princeton Research, Inc.
3887 Pacific Street, Las Vegas NV
702.338.2700

Cardano Rumor Rundown June 21, 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

We are crushing all the competitors in terms of assets staked! https://twitter.com/CryptoDiffer/status/1405854686209622018
All 345,501 of the people who have watched the Lex Fridman/Charles episode as of writing are realizing that Cardano could be the first project to put voting on the blockchain in a U.S. state. https://twitter.com/Cardanians_io/status/1406510106133606400 https://www.atalaprism.io/app

Previously Covered but still interesting:

The Ecosystem is getting even bigger every day we inch closer to Alonzo! https://twitter.com/TyIsDigital/status/1394345977952284676
The Cardano Foundation is out to do something incredible with supply chains as described in the fireside chat! In his previous Cardano Live appearance, Frederik Gregaard, CF CEO, also expressed a very healthy and sustainable perspective on what DeFi should become. He compared the current state of DeFi to just moving funds from your left pocket to your right pocket and taking profit. https://youtu.be/d8uPMZplfeM https://youtu.be/xbMSQUA1lss
The ISO model entering the capital formation toolbox in Cardano is going to make the stake pool game extremely interesting with SPOs scrambling to find the right balance between rewarding ADA and giving their delegators other things like tokens. Some stake pools could even become like portfolio funds with relationships with many different projects the tokens of which are given to delegators. Babel Fees could also play a role here for smart SPOs as they may allow access to a wide variety of tokens in the ecosystem that could be used to reward delegators with a sort of index fund exposure to a wide variety of Cardano projects.
May Cardano 360 coming one week from today (always the last Thursday of the month). https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1395117067960045569
New delegations from IOHK are out. Congrats to the selected SPOs. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1395087751746310156
The Cardano Foundation has released the full video of the Fireside Chat with Eva and Fred. Lots of questions answered on a variety of fronts. Very interesting remarks including that in discussions with financial institutions, Fred has found they are interested in exposure to the alpha provided by the asset class in general, tokenization of assets, and the yield provided by staking rewards. Fred counters that they SHOULD be far more interested in the Cardano standard including the concepts of reference accounts, programmability of money, and transaction metadata. https://youtu.be/JW6s9Jkyazg
In a video press release yesterday, the Fed finally admitted that it’s moving toward a central bank digital currency (just like every other central bank). This will eventually be impactful on Cardano and every other crypto ecosystem. https://youtu.be/WOAQxpG79Ag
The Treasury is trying to figure out how to get cryptocurrency regulation in a headlock. This will probably go hand-in-hand with the Fed’s March toward a CBDC. Afterall, what good is all the tracking and monitoring afforded by a CBDC if it’s easier for everyone to just use a non-central bank digital currency? Tax evasion in crypto is also obviously a target problem since we know only about 800 people a year paid taxes on crypto in 2013-2015. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/us-treasury-calls-for-stricter-cryptocurrency-compliance-with-irs.html https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-American-Families-Plan-Tax-Compliance-Agenda.pdf https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-taxes-overview
The Cardano Foundation has released the full video of the Fireside Chat with Eva and Fred. Lots of questions answered on a variety of fronts. Very interesting remarks including that in discussions with financial institutions, Fred has found they are interested in exposure to the alpha provided by the asset class in general, tokenization of assets, and the yield provided by staking rewards. Fred counters that they SHOULD be far more interested in the Cardano standard including the concepts of reference accounts, programmability of money, and transaction metadata. https://youtu.be/JW6s9Jkyazg
In a video press release yesterday, the Fed finally admitted that it’s moving toward a central bank digital currency (just like every other central bank). This will eventually be impactful on Cardano and every other crypto ecosystem. https://youtu.be/WOAQxpG79Ag
The Treasury is trying to figure out how to get cryptocurrency regulation in a headlock. This will probably go hand-in-hand with the Fed’s March toward a CBDC. Afterall, what good is all the tracking and monitoring afforded by a CBDC if it’s easier for everyone to just use a non-central bank digital currency? Tax evasion in crypto is also obviously a target problem since we know only about 800 people a year paid taxes on crypto in 2013-2015. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/us-treasury-calls-for-stricter-cryptocurrency-compliance-with-irs.html https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-American-Families-Plan-Tax-Compliance-Agenda.pdf https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-taxes-overview
Charles has now added the Jack Dorsey edition to his series of “Let’s Educate Crypto Adjacent Celebrities” videos. https://youtu.be/lMZ1xQzWtl4
...and still...KINGS OF THE GITHUB! May our reign never end. https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1395771379929255945
Some banks still won’t allow customers to buy crypto with their accounts. In 2021, this is still a thing. https://twitter.com/CryptoCardano_/status/1395933037192437763
Even the Pope is condemning Proof-of-Work? At least, that’s how the crypto community took a recent tweet. https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/1394993742226939905
Apparently, you can now have your own Stakepool run for you for $122/month in a Stakepool-as-a-Service arrangement. https://twitter.com/ChrisGraff/status/1396169061487333380
If you want to see how the Cardano NFT space has been heating up, you can check out CNFT resale listings at Lovelace Marketplace. https://lovelacemarketplace.io/all-categories/
Ethiopia awards new Telecom license as promised. The winner, a consortium including Vodafone, Safaricom, and Sumitomo; will invest $8 billion in their network in Ethiopia in the next 10 years and will cover the country in 4G. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-22/ethiopia-awards-new-telecoms-license-to-vodafone-consortium https://twitter.com/AbiyAhmedAli/status/1396060475184533505
Check out this new infographic explaining how World Mobile Works! https://blog.worldmobile.io/post/how-world-mobile-is-connecting-the-unconnected-infographic/
Cardano hits 1MM wallets! https://twitter.com/Cardano/status/1396331888093061121
Set your calendars! The May Cardano 360 is this Thursday! https://twitter.com/Cardano/status/1396331908632653830
Charles releases a 90 Day Countdown to Alonzo video. https://youtu.be/u6negi1yAQQ
Institutional inflows into Cardano get some coverage by the crypto press. https://cointelegraph.com/news/cardano-sees-largest-weekly-inflows-from-institutional-managers-coinshares
Charles and Kim Dotcom have a conversation about PoW miners possibly fleeing China with all of their hardware. https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1396964996693708801
Cardano gets a little coverage on NBC for it’s energy efficiency. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/cryptocurrency-goes-green-proof-stake-offer-solution-energy-concerns-rcna1030
Plutus Pioneers Lecture #7 is out. https://youtu.be/_EDJt55vOB0
Yesterday was ADA Payday with the end of Epoch 267. I hope everyone made lots of sweet delicious staking rewards! https://adapools.org/epochs
Paypal moving away from the “walled garden” model. This is decentralization teaching the legacy institutions a lesson. https://www.coindesk.com/paypal-will-let-customers-withdraw-crypto-exec-says
Charles is interviewed on Yahoo Finance where he explained: 1) how the lack of an obvious decentralized governance system in ETH and BTC will cripple their efforts as they attempt to scale and the founders/core developers start losing prominence, 2) the ADA EUTXO system is vastly more scaleable with it’s local state being so much more amenable to sharding than ETH’s global state system, 3) Cardano has a high willingness to bring on users in hypergrowth areas like Africa where ETH seems to have little interest, and 4) ETH does not seem to be as highly concerned with interoperability which might become highly valuable in the future. https://twitter.com/YahooFinance/status/1397593275826151424
Cardano 360 is tomorrow. Don’t miss it if you want to hear about all the awesome things happening with Alonzo (smart contracts), Hydra (scalability), and everything else! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1397549347592675338
The May Cardano 360 was yesterday and we had lots of updates including the Color Coding for the different stages of the testnet! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS33gRj9JYE
Alonzo “Blue” Era Testnet (through mid June; <50 user cohort) will include the basic functionality of the system for testing basic contracts . Initially the SPOs will be included, then some of the Plutus Pioneers will be allowed in, then a few of the outside development firms (Plutus Partners). The Plutus Partners will be working on specific areas including oracles, DEXs, stablecoins, NFTs, and DeFi. This will produce code and documentation that will be publicly available.
Alonzo “White” Era Testnet (mid June to mid July; <500 user cohort) will add more Plutus Pioneers and more functionality. They will develop various dApps and there will be interaction on the user side of these dApps. They will do some benchmarking at this stage.
The Alonzo Hard Fork Combinator Event requires a lot of different pieces come together at the same time. But, this is not their first rodeo and they have a lot of experience with this from the ITN, Shelley, and etc.
Alonzo “Purple” Era Tesnet (mid July to mid August; fully public) will involve a full public network with all of the Plutus pioneers, the Rosetta Api to the exchanges, Daedalus, hardware wallets, graphQL, and full functionality. The purpose of this phase will be optimization.
Alonzo “Red” Era Tesnet (August; a very short phase) will involve a new network where they can test scalability and stability.
Alonzo “Black” Era Tesnet (August; a very short phase) will be the final public testnet where they will ensure they have their candidate mainnet releases ready to launch on the mainnet.
They are committed to making sure there is a very large group of people who are familiar with using the Alonzo testnet by the time the mainnet launches.
Alonzo Mainnet (August-September). It’s looking like Alonzo mainnet launch was positioned in very late August through September in the infographics. That makes me assume there is a chance of August, much better chance of September, and also some chance of October or later. This is blockchain development after all. Also, we’ve waited years. Why care about a few weeks?
There will be another Plutus Pioneers Cohort later this summer.
Marlowe Run will be a browser product that can run on mobile or desktop. It can be linked to your wallet and be used to run Cardano smart contracts simultaneously on a distributed basis across multiple user browsers. The user interface is light years ahead of anything we saw in Marlowe Meadow or the Marlowe Playground simulations. It will include a library of off-the-shelf contracts.
There will be a Marlowe Webinar on June 3. Register here: https://webinar.marlowe-finance.io/
The ERC-20 converter was looking very intuitive and seamless in the new demo. It should be on the testnet in June.
Manuel Chakravarty gave a big update on Hydra (layer 2 scaling). Hydra will not require that the base layer be modified since it will be implemented via Plutus smart contracts. Hydra is actually a collection of protocols including Hydra Head and Hydra Tail. Hydra Head is a symmetric protocol where multiple participants will be online simultaneously for the whole period of the head exchanging messages. Hydra Tail is an asymmetric protocol involving a high performance server and many clients that may be mobile and could be offline for large portions of the tail’s existence. There will also be “inter head & tail networking” which will allow for a network of heads and tails. They have a published research paper on Hydra Head. They are currently writing the Hydra Tail paper.
Hydra is distinguished from other layer 2 protocols by its isomorphic properties. This means you will be able to run any smart contract that works on the base layer in a Hydra Head! This is very special. We won’t need special purpose contracts built out just for layer 2. There are some big implications to this. Since a Hydra Head is essentially just a Plutus smart contract, this means you can run a Hydra Head inside another Hydra Head. It’s turtles all the way down, guys. It sounds like they can do this iteratively as much as they want.
Aggelos also gave a good presentation on the importance of “skin in the game” in resource based consensus protocols (both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake) and its effect on promotion or discouragement of centralization. He explained how Ouroboros has built-in safeguards to prevent centralization including the K parameter (currently at 500) which caps total rewards per pool and the alpha parameter (currently at 0.3) which splits rewards into a 77% piece and a 23% piece. A pool can take its share of the 77% piece based on the pool’s total stake and its share of the 23% piece based on the pledge of the SPO. A higher alpha parameter makes it less attractive for individual SPOs to proliferate multiple pools since they can’t be as leveraged on their available pledge and still get as big a share of the 23% piece. This also discourages Sybil Attacks. As Cardano on-chain governance progresses, these parameters will be controlled by the community.
There will be a Cardano Goguen Summit in September. It will be hybrid digital/in-person.
Charles is helping to bring the cryptographer who broke SHA-1 to the University of Wyoming. The Cardano funded blockchain lab there could be on the road to be a powerhouse. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1398290866419105802 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiqun_Lisa_Yin
We don’t often get to hear from the engineers behind Yoroi over at Emurgo. But, here’s a podcast with Vicente Almonacid from Emurgo. Check out 12:50 where he mentions the dApp Connector (Cardano’s Metamask Equivalent). https://twitter.com/vacuumlabs/status/1397847633696280576
Check out this great article from Cardanians.io on the work being done at the University of Wyoming on a physical chip for transfer of private keys in day-to-day cashlike transactions. https://cardanians.io/en/cardano-can-give-crypto-a-cash-like-experience-58
Professor Aggelos Kiayias recently dropped a video explaining exactly how Mithril (apparently neckbeard dungeon master talk for elf armor) is going to allow for Perfect Cardano (ADA) wallets that combine the ease of use and convenience of light wallets with the trustlessness of full node wallets. We also learned exactly how Mithril is going to work. https://youtu.be/LhepJFCyWRk
In proof-of-work, bootstrapping can be done with blockheaders. This won’t do in proof-of-stake since we need information about stakeholder distribution to confirm block validity.
Mithril fixes this by being a cryptographic construction that enables a population of stakeholders to issue a signature consistent with certain constraints.
For Mithril to work in proof-of-stake, it needs three crucial properties: 1) it needs to enforce a threshold ratio of stakeholders before the signature is issued; 2) the pre-signature fragments must be independently verified and subject to public aggregation; and 3) it must be efficient in the sense that the final signature is of constant size and is logarithmically dependent on the # of stakeholders.
Stakeholders will issue special Mithril keys along with the normal cryptographic key material. Then at regular intervals, full nodes will test whether they can produce a pre-signature fragment. Only a random subset of stakeholders will be eligible to produce a pre-signature fragment. When a sufficient # of pre-signature fragments have been issued by eligible stakeholders then it will be possible to aggregate the fragments into a final signature.
This will be a checkpoint that will be verifiable with respect to previous check points all the way back to the genesis block. Such checkpoints will be cryptographic commitments of the relevant UTXOs.
Since the checkpoints will be trustless, a light client (i.e. wallet) will only need to verify the sequence of checkpoints up to the current time to trustlessly bootstrap.
The ecosystem is growing so fast, it’s hard to keep up with all the projects without these infographics at this point. https://twitter.com/Dr_shwetaPHD/status/1398783893638103040
The Cardano subreddit is at 487k users. Half a million isn’t far away. https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/
Epoch 268 is a wrap as of yesterday with 22.83 billion ADA staked. https://adapools.org/epochs
Check out the telegram AMA tomorrow with the CEO of World Mobile! https://twitter.com/ZwijBerg/status/1399377659105320962
A very interesting stat on Cardano user growth. https://twitter.com/cex_io/status/1398959088684445699
Don’t forget, the Marlowe webinar is this Thursday! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1399444331556225027
More and more people in the youtube sphere are jumping on the Cardano train. https://twitter.com/techleadhd/status/1399398373384351744
Reuters reports on an EU digital identity wallet project. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/eu-step-up-digital-push-with-digital-identity-wallet-2021-06-01/?taid=60b6e171efd84f0001b64ae1&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
The U.S. Currently has Issued Sanctions on Ethiopia, but they are not all-encompassing economic sanctions as with rogue nations, they have just barred entry into the U.S. for certain government personnel. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/world/africa/ethiopia-us-sanctions-tigray.html
Vitalik is saying it’s highly unlikely we see ETH 2.0 before late 2022. I’m guessing that means mid 2023 which will be after two years of Cardano slaughtering the entire ETH user base. Things are looking so bad that Vitalik says he doesn’t even like using the ETH 2.0 label anymore since he knows the changes will be more incremental. This is what early capitulation sounds like guys. https://cointelegraph.com/news/even-vitalik-buterin-is-surprised-at-just-how-long-eth2-is-taking
Cardano-Nervos cross-chain bridge to be built. This would be at least the second cross-chain bridge after the Cardano-AGI bridge. https://www.coindesk.com/cardano-nervos-force-bridge-network-first
Sundaeswap ISO delayed due to regulatory concerns. This brings up interesting questions for the whole space about requesting regulatory permission vs. possibly being forced to ask for forgiveness. https://www.sundaeswap.finance/posts/iso-update
Tim Harrison has announced that the transition to Alonzo Blue was successful. https://twitter.com/timbharrison/status/1400481879883649034
Finally, 500k users in the Cardano Subreddit! https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/
We got a nice update on the first week of Alonzo Blue. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1400876181122174977
And….still! Kings of the github! https://twitter.com/CryptoDiffer/status/1400744567956180993
Epoch 269 is in the bag with active stake of 22.77 Billion. Hope everyone made lots of delicious staking rewards! https://adapools.org/epochs
Binance has 63 stakepools charging 6%. Please stop paying so much for the right to stake your ADA. You don’t have to pay that much. You have a huge number of better options. You are literally giving away your ADA rewards to a large corporation. It’s easy: just download the Yoroi Chrome extension, send your ADA there, and pick from the 2k+ available stakepools right inside Yoroi. https://twitter.com/BraveHeartStak3/status/1401204563189940231 https://adapools.org/groups/binance-20 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emurgo&hl=en_US&gl=US
Nigeria Bans Twitter after Twitter censors Tweet from Nigerian President. This emphasizes the need for decentralized social media. A decentralized solution running on Cardano could fix this. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/04/africa/nigeria-suspends-twitter-operations-intl/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JilEb42q-CI
A Really Big Deal: El Salvador is on the verge of making Bitcoin legal tender in the Central American nation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uGOfqN2y9k
This could have huge ramifications for bank and accounting treatment of Bitcoin potentially including that banks might suddenly be allowed to handle Bitcoin as a foreign currency. Today it was BTC. But, wait until they find out what Cardano can do. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1401334421773504517
Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, also clarified that there will be no capital gains taxes on Bitcoin since it is a “legal currency” and crypto entrepreneurs will be given instant permanent residence. https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1401622548396314631
Bitcoin enthusiasm seems to be off to a great start among other Latin American politicians after the fervor around the El Salvador announcement. This will serve as a great gateway drug that only leads to Gen 3 projects and Cardano. https://twitter.com/gilson__marques https://twitter.com/carlitosrejala https://twitter.com/gabrielsilva8_7/status/1401965129051389958 https://twitter.com/FabioOstermann
We are always the Github Kings. It’s amazing. https://twitter.com/CryptoIRELAND1/status/1402011593995603975
Charles basically just laid out what 4th Gen Cryptos are going to be all about in his video yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkr1EKQrVeQ
Here’s a good Emurgo blog article on the use of Emurgo Trace in the Oil and gas industry. https://twitter.com/emurgo_io/status/1402339278097502210
IOHK gives us a closer look at everything being upgraded for Alonzo. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/06/08/a-close-look-at-the-software-running-cardano/
We’re currently at 71.52% of ADA staked. This is a pretty incredible ratio and shows the strength of the Cardano community. https://twitter.com/CardanoPoolPeek/status/1402378400803794950
SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce warns about the regulatory impulse being displayed by her colleagues toward crypto and the impact it could have on the stifling of innovation. https://www.ft.com/content/ae0d40a1-8a4a-4885-a6a7-b157e27b3311
El Salvador passes the statute to make Bitcoin legal tender in the country. https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1402827595339681794
Cardano gets more positive coverage on the Nasdaq website with a second article following the one from April 7 earlier this year. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/be-part-of-a-historic-crypto-moment-with-cardano-2021-06-08
Prof. Aggelos Kiayias releases an article on a tri-coin system called Stablefees that could fix the problem of appreciating transaction fees in crypto. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/06/10/stablefees-and-the-decentralized-reserve-system/
There’s very interesting speculation circulating out there about how El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption might impact relationships with the U.S. and the IMF. https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1403136968456765443
Elizabeth Warren is now talking about the U.S. needs to regulate crypto. https://twitter.com/BloombergTV/status/1402749016845262851
The mid-month Alonzo development update from IOHK is out. Alonzo blue is in full swing and they are working on “hello world round trips” going from the node to the ledger and back. Plutus Partners (third party functional dev firms) are working on different use cases ahead of the Alonzo launch. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1403314932968574981
Miniswap gives us the dev perspective on why Cardano’s Plutus is such an improvement over Ethereum’s Solidity. https://twitter.com/MinswapDEX/status/1403411522110427137
Here’s a great ETH vs. Cardano DeFi project comparison infographic. https://twitter.com/Coin98Analytics/status/1403397242707320835
Charles recorded for the Lex Fridman Podcast. It went over five hours. This is a big deal given that Lex has 1.12 million subscribers and it’s closer to mainstream than a crypto audience. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1403498549300584448 https://www.youtube.com/user/lexfridman
The Marlowe Webinar with Shruti is now available on youtube. Very interesting discussion of DeFi in general and also specific topics like “deep interoperability” in DeFi. Cardano is obviously already doing the very involved thinking about the future of DeFi. https://youtu.be/vzsUSG5CSj0
John O’Connor recently tweeted about a day where he “wrote a letter to a president” and “found a million users to bring into Cardano”. Sounds like the Cardano train is rolling along as smoothly as ever in Africa. https://twitter.com/jjtoconnor/status/1402565547716399104
Zach Guzman and Mike Novogratz get an opportunity to prove once again how extremely threatened they are by the fact that they can’t frontrun Cardano at this point. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1404100510525841408
John O’Connor appeared on the Disrupt Network Podcast. bit.ly/3znqyB7
President of Tanzania calls on the central bank to prepare for the adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. I wonder what crypto ecosystem already has experience working with an African government on a big crypto project and has partnered with a mobile company that is already bringing connectivity to rural Tanzania? https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1404126444863766533
Hedgefund Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones tells the world to buy crypto and certain other assets if the Fed doesn’t address inflation in their policy meeting that concludes on Wednesday. JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon concurs that the current inflation is very likely not transitory. This could be tremendously good timing for Cardano given our top five status and the impending mainnet launch of smart contracts. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/paul-tudor-jones-says-bet-heavily-on-every-inflation-trade-if-fed-keeps-ignoring-higher-prices.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/jamie-dimon-jpmorgan-is-hoarding-cash-because-very-good-chance-inflation-here-to-stay.html
With exploits like this one being all too common in the legacy smart contract networks, we’re not even going to have sell the Cardano use case for DeFi. The competitor networks have already made the case that something better must be on the way. https://twitter.com/zapper_fi/status/1404429179794362369
World Mobile CEO tweets out a tantalizing response to the Tanzanian President’s call for her nation’s central bank to prepare for crypto. https://twitter.com/MrTelecoms/status/1404375153191141377
If you are new to Cardano and you would like to get a handle on the terminology involved in the ecosystem, you may want to check out these Cardano flashcards produced by Coconut Pool. https://twitter.com/coconut_pool/status/1403442954434269185
While renewable energy is certainly a wonderful thing, there may be a problem with your technology when your path to compete on clean energy consumption involves you talking about harnessing the power of a whole series of volcanoes. Maybe just use fewer volcano’s and more proof-of-stake? https://twitter.com/_eLaPs_/status/1404125569093029889 https://twitter.com/gladstein/status/1402718041557725184
The Charles/Lex Fridman podcast has dropped. This is a big deal. This is a fairly mainstream podcast with over 1 million subscribers. https://youtu.be/FKh8hjJNhWc
Politicians in the legislative branches of Panama and Paraguay have now announced intentions to introduce crypto-related bills into their respective legislative assemblies. https://twitter.com/gabrielsilva8_7/status/1401965129051389958
New algorithmic stablecoin paper coming in the next few weeks from IOHK. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1405737563030183936
The bank of England is getting very serious about how it “may wish to limit migration” of money from the legacy system to stablecoins. Wow. Just another example of why it’s such an asset (no pun intended) that Cardano is prepared for regulation. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1405712468823842816
Check out the newly “pimped up” Cardano documentation. https://twitter.com/theSavaSavic/status/1405526615585480730 https://docs.cardano.org/
The Cardano Development Update for this week is out. https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/status-updates/update/2021-06-18/
Runtime Verification (architects of K Framework which powers Cardano’s IELE & KEVM) just raised $5.3MM in a round that included Cardano’s C Fund. https://runtimeverification.com/blog/runtime-verification-raises-5-3-million-to-advance-blockchain-security https://twitter.com/RosuGrigore/status/1405917218035097600
It’s a good sign that the top two crypto communities are spending so much time talking negatively about Cardano. You only focus your hatred on that which is most threatening. I’m glad to see we’re the biggest threat on their radar. https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1405194146063736840
Bloomberg just published a piece called “America Should Become a Nation of Renters”. While this statement is probably extremely polarizing for Americans, it can also be argued that the death of homes as the primary investment vehicle of Americans may open up a new wave of adoption in crypto as an alternative. https://twitter.com/bopinion/status/1405609396302979074
Cardano 360 is this coming Thursday the 24th! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1405067848452657153
It’s Project Catalyst voting time. You have until the 25th! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1406213172781060097

~Army of Spies

Setup Achieved - A Bull's Take

So a number of us are very shaken, and that's to be expected. I just wanted to give my take of everything so that hopefully some of you can be reassured. As always, I am not a financial advisor, nor expert. If you don't feel comfortable investing, don't. As always, make whatever investments make sense for you personally, be it all in, small scale buys, options, w/e.

Do what makes sense for you.

Anyways, I'm going to give a brief history lesson on how I initially came into SOS, hopefully to add a bit of validity to what I'm talking about. Some of you might recognize me from some of the clarification posts and things of that nature, but I first got into SOS back when they did the $5 offering that knocked them down to 4. I initially looked at it from the naïve view that it was a good investment, because the only reason why it was at 4 and not 5 was that they just offered stock. Once that settled, it'd go back up to like 4.70, meaning a semi-quick 17.5% gain. Then I found out about the 'lawsuits'. That's when I did far more due diligence into this stock. I was here when it spiked to 6.00. I was here when HK was trying to establish coordinated buys. I was here. Watching, waiting for this setup.

The writing was on the wall all the way back then that this would happen to bitcoin, that China would go anti-bitcoin (at least publicly). It was clear due to a number of reasons. First, China has energy struggles. This is largely due to the rapid expansion that China has overall seen over the past few decades, but throw in aging infrastructure, or more aptly put, inadequate and corrupt infrastructure, then its clear that China KNOWS it will have upcoming energy issues. The second is the nature of the beast that is Chinese government. Over the past several years, they've increasingly reinforced a stance of tracking. The idea of social credit, the quickness to which they used tracking to tame coronavirus, and other events made it clear that this would be their stance. Tracking is good. What is not good is when people are taking their wealth, and throwing it into something that China CAN'T track. Chinese bitcoin had it writing on the wall. China has also motioned in the past towards this.

It has now come to pass. China is officially, fully, anti-bitcoin.

Despite the price, despite the red, despite the FUD, this is VERY good news for us.

The Setup

After I saw the setup that I'm talking about, and then later saw that SOS was looking into energy options in the US, I went all in. It was at this point that I knew that SOS saw the setup too. This setup is one that's simple to understand, once you see it.

SOS is a Chinese based company, with ample experience in the mining field. China is now anti-bitcoin. That means all of the miners (more than 50% of the miners in the world are Chinese) are now stuck with near worthless lumps of metal and components. Sure, some will continue to mine, trying to avoid the government. Sure, some will relocate, because they too saw the writing on the wall and set aside funds to facilitate these moves. However, more still will not have either of those options available to them. They will be forced into impoverished conditions due to forced closure, sitting on machines that are worthless to them. I'll say that last part again sitting on machines that are worthless to them. If only there was a company situated in China that could easily remove these machines off their hands, relocate them to another country, say one that they already have ample contracts in place for power, and start mining there.

SOS is that company. I was bullish, and still am bullish on SOS. Every spare cent I have is in SOS. Not because "but bigger than MARA", not because "But bigger than RIOT", not because "BUT MUH SQUEE...", but because out of all of the companies in bitcoin, SOS is very uniquely placed to profit off the exodus of miners as crypto transitions out of China.

Its going to be rough for a while. Bitcoin is going to get battered. Ethereum is going to get battered. You *WILL go red holding this stock, but as stated, they are setup for so much more green.

Just my take on this all this. As I said before, invest in a way that makes sense for you. I am not a financial advisor, so make your own damn decisions.

Setup Achieved - A Bull's Take

Do what makes sense for you.

It has now come to pass. China is officially, fully, anti-bitcoin.

Despite the price, despite the red, despite the FUD, this is VERY good news for us.

The Setup

Its going to be rough for a while. Bitcoin is going to get battered. Ethereum is going to get battered. You *WILL go red holding this stock, but as stated, they are setup for so much more green.

Just my take on this all this. As I said before, invest in a way that makes sense for you. I am not a financial advisor, so make your own damn decisions.

Max Keiser And Stacy Herbert To Host “F*ck Elon” Bitcoin Maximalist Event On July 8

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/industry-events/f-ck-elon-bitcoin-event-july-8-2021

Max Keiser And Stacy Herbert To Host “F*ck Elon” Bitcoin Maximalist Event On July 8 (x-post from /r/Bitcoin)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/o4xa6h/max_keiser_and_stacy_herbert_to_host_fck_elon/

Daily Outlook for June 21st 2021

Notable Events

Dow up ~1.6%, S&P up ~1.2%, Nasdaq up ~0.6% to start the week after S&P 500’s drop below the 50MA (~4182) last Friday and on stabilized bond yields.
No notable companies to report earnings today after market close, $PLUG to report earnings tomorrow morning before market open.
Fed speakers will get a lot of attention in the week ahead. Powell speaks Tuesday before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis on the Fed’s policy response and the economy. His remarks could be a highlight of what looks to be a slow, but volatile first week of summer for markets. New York Fed President John Williams will speak this afternoon at 3pm EST, while San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly and Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, will speak Tuesday. Other Fed speakers include Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard later this week.
Bitcoin dropped 7% on Monday, trading under $33,000 for the first time in nearly two weeks, on reports that China’s crackdown on cryptocurrency mining extended to the southwestern province of Sichuan. This follows similar developments in China’s Inner Mongolia and Yunnan regions, as well as calls from Beijing to stamp out crypto mining due to worries over its massive energy consumption. The Communist Party-backed Global Times estimates that more than 90% of China’s bitcoin mining capacity has been shut down.
Long-term Treasuries: 10yr at 1.47%, 20yr at 2.00% and 30yr at 2.06%.
Cryptocurrencies: $BTC ~$32,250, $ETH ~$1,900, $DOGE ~$0.22.

Tradable Opportunity Watchlist

RIOT, MARA, MSTR – down significantly after China’s crackdown on crypto-mining.

Lightning Network Capacity Breaks 1,500 BTC

The Lightning Network, a Bitcoin Layer 2 scaling solution proposed in 2015 by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja, has grown a lot in just a few years. Now, the network has achieved a significant milestone of housing more than 1,500 BTC in its channels, roughly $56.55 million at the time of writing.

HOW THE BITCOIN LIGHTNING NETWORK WORKS

The Lightning Network is a decentralized scaling solution for Bitcoin that abstracts small transactions between users away from the Bitcoin blockchain. It utilizes smart contracts to settle the final balance of those payments into the Bitcoin “base layer” while ensuring that all transactions abide by the rules of the Bitcoin protocol.

Lightning payments are thus not recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain — only transactions that either open or close a channel are. By not requiring the transaction fees or wait times that on-chain Bitcoin transactions typically do, Lightning enables its users to enjoy affordable, fast and private payments.

This works under the hood because the protocol creates a complex multisignatureaddress, also known in Lightning as a “payment channel,” in which the two participating users each hold a private key. This allows both users to share the funds in the address and have certain control in the channel, but prevents either one of them from acting maliciously to the detriment of the other. If one user makes a payment to the other, their respective balances in the payment channel are updated — which indicates how much of the total channel funds each user will get upon channel closure.

GROWTH OF THE BITCOIN LIGHTNING NETWORK TO DATE

Although the Lightning Network was proposed in 2015, it only launched as a beta in March 2018. Since then, however, the network has seen significant growth and adoption. An event that raised awareness of the network early on was the Lightning Network Torch, a Lightning payment chain facilitated by bitcoiners on Twitter. It generated excitement for the protocol, with some celebrities and influencers such as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and bitcoin educator Andreas Antonopoulos receiving the torch before reaching its final destination at the Bitcoin for Venezuela Initiative.

Later in 2019, the facilitation for fiat to Lightning on-ramps also helped increase Lightning adoption. Developers from companies focused on Lightning, such as Zap, Sparkswap and Escher, brought easier fiat-to-Lightning on-ramps to market with Olympus, for instance. And Zap has already created a new product, Strike, an application that initially allowed users to make Lightning payments with their bank account or debit card but has now evolved.

Perhaps the most recent of the Lightning Network’s advancements toward wider adoption relates to bitcoin exchanges adding support for the protocol. Bitfinex was the first major one to do so, allowing its users to withdraw funds directly to Lightning in 2019. Others have since followed, including Hodl Hodl, River Financial and OKEx, also providing the benefits of instant deposits/withdrawals and relatively low fees to their users.

The Lightning Network is showing itself to be an important tool in Bitcoin’s path to broad adoption and acceptance. With critics of Bitcoin claiming that the world’s first decentralized, permissionless and digital monetary network cannot scale, Lightning and other Layer 2 solutions show that yes, it can be done.

TLDR: The Lightning Network, a Bitcoin Layer 2 scaling solution proposed in 2015 by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja, has reached a milestone of housing more than 1,500 BTC in its channels. Lightning is a decentralized scaling solution for Bitcoin that abstracts small transactions between users away from the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitfinex was the first major Bitcoin exchange to support Lightning in 2019.

Max Keiser And Stacy Herbert To Host “F*ck Elon” Bitcoin Maximalist Event On July 8

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/industry-events/f-ck-elon-bitcoin-event-july-8-2021

Just for fun!

Thought we could use a chuckle on a yucky day😜

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/industry-events/f-ck-elon-bitcoin-event-july-8-2021

Max Keiser And Stacy Herbert To Host “F*ck Elon” Bitcoin Maximalist Event On July 8 (x-post from /r/Cryptocurrency)

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/o4vb20/max_keiser_and_stacy_herbert_to_host_fck_elon/

Max Keiser And Stacy Herbert To Host “F*ck Elon” Bitcoin Maximalist Event On July 8

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/industry-events/f-ck-elon-bitcoin-event-july-8-2021

[Winner's Thread #67] Omg! This is so unexpected! And I am so thankful! Just wow!

Firstly - WOW. I am blown away. I have bearly slept since I found out and am still trying to digest this and I think it will take some time. After stressful week due to medical issues, seeing me being tagged as a winner, cheered me up quite a bit. And I am so thankful!

So I will start by introducing myself - my name is Sabine, I am 27 years old. I am happily married and am expecting a baby to join our team soon. It is easy to lose the track of time after you enter the adult life - but 2 years ago I made a decision to finally enter University where I am studying towards Bachelor degree in IT and Design - with a future goal to turn my current hobby of 3D architectual visualisation into a full-time career. As for now I love making 3D kitchen designs and nursery set designs with a dream, that someday I will be able to make people happy with them.

I try to stay always positive and have always believed that when we as people come together - we can do great and amazing things. The past year has been hard for everyone, including us. As like many people - I lost my job due to pandemic. And for a couple of months we were scraping by, had limited food reserves and fell behind with our bills. We received help from foodbanks and I am so greatful for that. Ever since then I have been making weekly basket-full donations of food and other necesaties to foodbanks.

Couple of months ago my husband took on a job in another town due to which we had to move 4 hours away from where we lived. Due to costs of moving vans - we simply couldn't afford at that time to move our furniture - so we donated most of to local charity and people in need. We've been slowly putting money away for furniture since most of the money goes for baby stuff. :) So the money would go towards furniture for us, and bills. I will make sure to put away a part of the sum to donate towards foodbanks , but not less importantly - I will put another part of the money for next winner since this community just proves that despite the sad and scary events that are surrounding the world at the moment- there is more good than bad - and as I said previously - when we come together we can do amazing and life-changing things to others in need. Thank you so so much, it means a lot to us!

*** Everything listed should result in direct lines of payment to /u/Unsuitablelake. We ask all users to donate at least $1 USD.

The Drawing is also listed for users who want to see the results and confirm the validity of the winner. Drawing: https://reddit.com/r/millionairemakers/comments/o47bah/draw_67/

PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/unsuitablelake

Bitcoin: 1Ba9ViAK1NULmnEn1viUJfiywCFGFzZj9P

Bitcoin Cash: qpelvym2fmqvwkx5q4caz958eff3vzcwmqrrple8f4

Nano: nano_1cc8q9girzhpi39gr5sja7moyf74g3f4nryew746mab1b6p59rnf755tniym

Newer to Crypto? Here's a Summary of Useful Crypto Resources, Apps, and Websites

I've put together a list of hopefully helpful resources for crypto enthusiasts who have are entering the cryptosphere and starting to get their feet wet with buying, selling, and learning about crypto. I've been aware of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies since ~2013 when I began to see conversations about it on Reddit, but at the time wrote it off as a fringe interest or too complex to get involved with. Giant mistake, in hindsight. C'est la vie.

This is NOT a comprehensive list. Not by a long shot. These are, however, some of my favorite resources that I refer to on occasion. If you see something here you disagree with or you think I've omitted a resource that may be useful, please mention in the comments. I will also mention that I have nothing to gain from writing this. I have no affiliation with any of the organizations listed below.

Exchanges (centralized cryptocurrency purchasing platforms)

Coinbase - Accessible through their app or website. Coinbase is a good place to get your feet wet learning how to purchase cryptocurrency. The interface is simple and straightforward. They offer opportunities for earning free crypto. One caveat is that they charge high fees. Consider making your first purchase here, but don't linger on this specific platform unless you enjoy paying a premium to purchase. Market orders are the only type of purchase supported by Coinbase.

Coinbase Pro - This is the full-featured Coinbase platform. If you sign up for Coinbase then your credentials will grant you access to Coinbase Pro. Despite the Pro moniker, Coinbase Pro is free to use, with no subscription or one-time fee required. Coinbase Pro has lower purchase fees and offers a greater availability of cryptos for purchase. If your Crypto of choice isn't listed on Coinbase, check Coinbase Pro. The Pro platform also grants the ability to place limit orders, a useful feature if there is a specific price at which you wish to purchase or sell.

Binance.us - Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. Binance currently hosts a platform specific to the US market, i.e. Binance.us. If you're unable to find the crypto you want to purchase on Coinbase, try Binance. You can save on fees by purchasing and holding the BNB coin.

Kraken- A US based exchange that touts 24/7 customer support and low fees. You can choose to use their platform through the Kraken Pro app or your computer browser. They have an easy to use, clean interface. Kraken supports both market and limit orders.

FTX.US - Low fees, attractive UI. Web based and mobile app.

Gemini- A US based exchange licensed in New York. Gemini touts their focus on security. They have a mobile app or you can use your browser.

Security

Security needs to be your number one priority. The crypto space is new and mostly unregulated. There's money to be made and plenty of bad actors who want your crypto. These are the easiest steps you can take to secure your crypto.

Use a password manager and create secure, unique passwords for each account.
Enable two-factor authentication but DO NOT rely on your phone for receiving 2FA codes. Bad actors can use social engineering to change the SIM card associated with your mobile phone. Use a service like google authenticator, Authy, or freeOTP. An even better option is a physical key like the Yubiko Yubikey.
Address Whitelisting. At some point you will likely want to move your crypto from the exchange to a secure wallet. Even if you decide not to move your crypto off the exchange, address whitelisting can add an additional measure of protection. When address whitelisting is enabled, the exchange will permit withdraw of your coins ONLY to the verified addresses listed in your address book. There's often a set waiting period of 24-48 hours after adding an address to your whitelist. This allows you time to review changes to your address book if, for example, your exchange account is hacked and a bad actor attempts to add their wallet address to your address book. Whitelisting is also useful in minimizing copy/paste or transcription errors when transferring coins. Once your wallet address is whitelisted, you can perform a small transfer as a test to make sure you've entered it correctly. Hereafter you won't be required to copy/paste the address from your wallet to the exchange transaction page.
Custom email headers are useful for reducing the chance of falling victim to a phishing scam. You will select this option on the exchange security page and enter your own customized header word or phrase. This word will appear in the header of all email communications from the exchange to verify that the communication is legitimate.
Don't use public WiFi for anything crypto related.
Don't use the exchange apps to track your gains/losses.
Don't do anything crypto related on shared devices.
Write down your seed phrases and keep them secure.
Don't print out your seed phrases or store them on any digital device. Ever. Never ever.
Never share your seed phrase or private keys with anyone, ever, for any reason.

Staking

Staking is a method for earning passive income with coins that utilize the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. The short of it is that networks want coin holders to stake their coins because it increases the security of the network. When you stake your coins, and enhance network security, you are rewarded with more coins at a (usually) variable annual percentage yield (APY), i.e. interest rate. The rough analogy is earning interest on dollars in your savings account. However, when you stake your coins your rewards are paid in crypto rather than dollars. For example, if I stake Cardano ADA, my rewards will be paid in ADA.

The method of staking, APY, cooldown period, withdraw restriction, etc. will all be determined by the respective blockchain rules. Some blockchains, like Algorand, have simple and straightforward rules. Algorand holders automatically generate staking rewards by holding ALGO in their wallet. There is no need to delegate ALGO for staking and no need to claim rewards. Rewards are granted automatically.

Other blockchains, like Cardano, have more complex staking rules. This infographic explains the process far better than I can. You can see that there is a 20 day waiting period after staking before you receive your first rewards. Don't freak out when you don't see your rewards after the first week.

When in doubt, visit the official blockchain website for staking rules. Most blockchain projects also have subreddits that can be a helpful resource.

It should be noted that Ethereum is a special case, in terms of staking. Ethereum is a proof of work blockchain with plans to transition to proof of work blockchain (Ethereum 2.0) at a yet undetermined date. It could be late 2021 or 2022. There's no certainty. ETH holders can stake their ETH in some places, e.g. Coinbase, but you will be unable to withdraw your ETH until after the transition to PoS. This has both advantages and disadvantages. Advantages are earning yield on your ETH and more or less being forced to hodl, regardless of price action. Paper hands take note. The disadvantages are that your ETH will be locked up for an unknown period of time, so if you believe you may need to sell for fiat or sell to take profits, you will not want to stake. There's also the risk that the PoW -> PoS transition could be unsuccessful or hit a major complication, which could cause the price of ETH to drop dramatically.

Cryptocurrency Wallets

You have a number of options for storing your cryptocurrency. Wallets can broadly be categorized as custodial and non-custodial. Custody refers to the agent who holds and controls your private keys. A private key is your proof of ownership for your coins or tokens and grants you permissions to spend them.

Custodial wallets store your private keys on centralized servers. You do not control your keys and you do not have access to them. You rely on the custodian to keep your private keys safe and secure. The advantage of custodial wallets is that you can restore access to your account in the event of a lost password. Custodial wallets, however, are susceptible to hacker attacks. There is a risk of losing your crypto. E.g. MtGox and Blockchain.info were both hacked and users lost hundreds (thousands?) of bitcoins.

Non-custodial wallets store your encrypted private keys on your device. You have full control and access to your private keys. If you lose the device (e.g. phone) containing your non-custodial wallet, then you can restore your wallet and private keys using a mnemonic seed phrase. The seed phrase is a string of 12-25 words that will restore your wallet when entered. Word order is important.

If you want to read more about wallets, /u/niehle recently wrote an excellent primer here.

Hardware (the gold standard for security)

Hardware wallets are the gold standard for security. They are non-custodial wallets which work with multiple blockchains and allow you to restore assets with a single seed phrase. Hardware wallets connect to your device via USB or bluetooth when you want to make a deposit or withdrawal. It's important to understand that the hardware wallet doesn't actually store your coins; they reside on the blockchain. Your hardware wallet stores your private keys and your private keys are protected by a PIN, sometimes a phrase. This prevents your funds from being accessed in the event that you lose your wallet. Trezor and Ledger are the two industry leaders for hardware wallets. It is important to always purchase hardware wallets directly from the manufacturer. Buying from Amazon, eBay, etc can put you at risk of using a corrupted wallet.

Ledger- Seems to be the most popular option and offers two models: Nano S and Nano X. Coin options are more limited with the Nano S, but is a good option if you don't own many altcoins. See link for models comparison. Do note that Ledger exposed 270,000 customers' personal data to hackers in July 2020. Specifically names, emails, home addresses, and phone numbers were leaked. This leaves those customers highly susceptible to phishing attacks. See above for importance of custom email headers.

Trezor- Second runner up for hardware wallets. Trezor makes two models; Trezor One and Trezor Model T. Trezor has the advantage of Ledger in terms of screen size and supporting more cryptocurrencies, although they recently stated that they are not considering addition of new coins/tokens (probably needs to be confirmed).

Non-Custodial Wallets

Coinbase Wallet - A non-custodial mobile app wallet which can be linked to your Coinbase exchange account. Mentioned because this may be the easiest option for new crypto traders who get their feet wet buying with Coinbase. Supports BTC, LTC, XLM, DOGE, and all ERC-20 tokens. Does not support staking in wallet. In-app DEX support and NFT support.

Exodus- Offers both computer and mobile apps. Exodus can be used with your Trezor wallet, has responsive customer support (see their subreddit) and offers support for over a hundred cryptocurrencies. You are also able to stake some cryptos within the Exodus wallet, including: ADA, SOL, ALGO, VET, ATOM, etc. Also offers an in-wallet exchange, but the minimum exchange amounts and fees are high. You're paying for convenience with this feature.

Atomic Wallet - Supports a large number of coins and tokens. Allows staking of a large number of coins with attractive interest rates.

Trust Wallet - Supports a huge number of assets. Staking available for a limited number of coins. DAPP support in-app.

Metamask - A popular browser and app wallet that supports a large number of coins including all ERC-20 tokens. It is compatible for use with Ledger hardware wallets. This wallet can be bridged to the polygon network and is very popular with DeFi users. Note that the browser extension has a number of permissions that some consider risky. If you use Brave browser, you can limit this wallet extension's access to websites only when you click on the extension.

Custodial Wallets and Services

Why would you use any of these services considering 1) they hold your private keys 2) there are myriad options for excellent non-custodial wallets? Earnings potential. For starters, proof of work coins, like bitcoin, cannot be staked so you are unable to earn interest from those in your non-custodial wallet. (I'm excluding DeFi liquidity farming here).

Many of these services earning money by lending your crypto to institutions, similar to conventional banking. You deposit an asset, like BTC, and earn interest at a variable APY. A particularly attractive option if earning interest on stablecoins like USDC, USDT, or GUSD. Very simply, stablecoins are crypto assets linked to fiat currency, e.g. the US dollar. They very best stablecoins have 1:1 backing and do not vary significantly from their matched asset. Why is this an attractive option? Many of the services listed below offer excellent interest rates on stablecoins. Where your "high yield" savings account may offer 0.4% on USD deposits, the services below currency offer >10% APY on stablecoin deposits. Meaning if you have a liquid USD emergency fund sitting in the bank, you can move a portion to stablecoins and stop losing money to inflation.

If you want to read a comprehensive analysis of the revenue models and security for the institutions below, see Steve Sokolowski's report here.

Ledn.io - In terms of security, Ledn is the most attractive option for interest earnings on stablecoin and BTC. Ledn is backed by Genesis, a juggernaut in crypto lending. Ledn is transparent and undergoes proof of reserves attestations semi-annually.

BlockFi- Probably the industry leader by name recognition. BlockFi offers more currency options than Ledn, including ETH. They security is not as good - you may be familiar with a recent snafu where they mistakenly deposited BTC into user accounts and then allowed users to withdraw that BTC, which rightfully did not belong to them.

Celsius- Offers interest rates higher than many competitors and supports a large number of coins. Reportedly poor customer service, though I can't personally attest to this. Somewhat riskier business model that Ledn and BlockFi.

Nexo - Similar to Celsius in business model. Also offers attractive interest rates and supports a large number of assets.

Portfolio Tracking and Coin Performance

As mentioned above, you don't want to open your preferred exchange app to watch the progress of your crypto purchases. Consider using one of the services below to create a portfolio for tracking your profits losses. Some of these services offer an option to connect your exchange accounts for automated portfolio tracking. I can't in good conscience recommend that. Enter your transactions manually and consider reducing every entry by an order of magnitude to obfuscate your actual holdings.

CoinMarketCap- Accessible through browser or their app. An excellent resource for price tracking and coin education.

CoinGecko- Very similar to CoinMarketCap. Offers some coin performance metrics not available on CoinMarketCap.

Coin Codex - Haven't used this one personally, but they do offer portfolio tracking and real time prices.

Trading View - Useful if you want to do your own technical analysis.

Prices.Org - Crypto news, prices, and market insights.

Crypto Edutainment

There are seemingly inexhaustible resources for crypto education and entertainment. These are the content providers I favor.

YouTube

Coin Bureau - Hosted by a guy named Guy. Coin Bureau delivers excellent content about specific coins and status of the crypto market. Probably my favorite crypto focused YouTube channel. (Note that as of this post Coin Bureau is locked out of their YouTube account)

Benjamin Cowen - One of the best YouTube channels for technical analysis.

Rekt Capital - Another great channel for technical analysis.

Lark Davis - Good content creator. Has some useful how-to videos that can be good resources for beginners.

Podcasts

Bankless - An excellent podcast and YouTube channel. Bankless discusses the current state of crypto and hosts interesting guests. One of my favorites.

Unchained - Hosted by journalist Laura Chin, one of the first cryptocurrency journalists.

Lex Fridman Podcast - Not a crypto specific podcast, but Lex does interview cryptographers like Silvio Micali (ALGO), Vitalik Buterin (ETH), and Charles Hoskinson (ADA). Excellent long format interviews.

Decrypt Daily - Host Matt Diemer covers crypto news, prices, and hosts guests from the cryptosphere.

Twitter

Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) - see above

Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) - see above

Whale Alert (@whale_alert) - Useful for seeing what crypto whales are buying and selling.

Sam Bankman-Fried (@SBF_Alameda) - CEO of FTX and Alameda research.

Srinath Hariharan (@srinathariharan) - Has some good breakdowns of specific coins.

J.Li. (@FibonaccLi)- Interesting market insights and breakdowns.

Other Crypto Tools and Resources

The Coin Perspective - Useful tool for estimating coin price by market cap.

Bitcoin Stock-to-Flow Model - A model which attempts to predict bitcoin price based on current number of coins in circulation and the rate of production through mining.

Bitcoin Rainbow Chart - Plots historic price movement and overlays price category bands to help visualize buying/selling opportunities.

Ethereum Rainbow Chart - Similar to the bitcoin rainbow chart.

Bitcoin Dominance - Tracks bitcoin market cap share of the entire crypto market cap.

Bitcoin Dominance Index - Bitcoin dominance among proof of work coins only.

Glassnode Insights - Market news, analysis, and on-chain insights.

Congrats if you've made it this far. I hope you found something of use here. If there are crypto resources you find helpful then please share them in the comments section.