Tier 3

Vechain

VeChain is a global leading blockchain platform for products and information. VeChain is the world’s leading Enterprise-focused dApp/ICO platform for products and information. It aims to connect blockchain technology to the real world by providing robust infrastructure as well as IOT integration, with scalability up to 10,000 tx/s and pioneering in building real world applications. This is being achieved through partnerships and collaborations with innovative brands and industries. As of today, VeChain has established partnerships with PricewaterhouseCoopers, DNV GL, Renault Group, KUEHNE+NAGEL, D.I.G., China Unicom, etc., and accumulated extensive experience in an ever expanding list of industries including pharmaceuticals, liquor, auto, luxury goods, retail, logistics, supply chain,food and cold storage and more.

None for today.

 Tier 3

REQ

SUB

LINK

Tier 4

XBY

BNTY

TAU

WISH

TRAC

PHR

How to read this portfolio: Ticker: Contains the ticker code for the coin. You can search this ticker in Coinmarketcap to learn more about the coin. The color denotes the risk tier by our evaluation. Dark Red = T1, Dark Green = T2, Dark Blue = T3, Light Blue = T4 (Colors in the Ticker column do not interact with the colors in the other columns) Cost Basis = Our average purchase price for this coin. Current price = The average price of the coin based on the exchanges it is listed on. Strategy = What we plan to do with this coin. Staking is receiving dividends for that coin. Master node is also staking, but with a higher return rate for having a (large) number of that coin. Stop = Our exit point, if it exists What do the colors mean? The colors in the ticker column represent the risk profile of that coin. The colors in the other columns reflect what sector(s) that coin belongs to. Some coins belong to multiple sectors, which is indicated by multiple colors. The colors correspond to our 7 categories in the graphic below

Tier 2 coins are those coins which have performed extremely well, we have a large amount of assets with, and we believe will continue to operate with high marks. What separates these coins from our Tier 1 status is a flaw or they haven’t yet proven their defining feature, though we believe they will.

 

OmiseGO

OmiseGO ($OMG) is classified as a Dividend and Utility coin. OmiseGO is a Southeast Asia-based company creating an e-wallet that will make transfer of assets and currencies possible. Merchants and users of the wallet can transfer whatever asset or currency they desire. For example, you could use your ethereum, bitcoin, international fiat, or even your airline points to buy groceries using the e-wallet app on your mobile phone. Transfers can happen across borders, or even while traveling abroad. Unlike Western Union or PayPal for example, the fees are almost negligible, and the transfer is instant. Because it’s based on a blockchain, there are no intermediary banks necessary and users don’t need bank accounts to access those funds. This is especially good for migrant workers who send money home and often don’t have bank accounts and are forced to use expensive wire services instead.

NAVCoin

NAVcoin ($NAV) is a Privacy coin with upcoming Platform features. NAVcoin has been around for 3 years. It is not minable, instead being based on a Proof of Stake system in which stakers earn 5% annual returns. Theoretically this means there could be 5% inflation on the supply, however, that would require every coin holder to stake, so likely there will be very marginal inflation between 1 and 3% year over year. It is a currency originally based off of Bitcoin version 0.13, which should tell you it’s got a good foundation from which to build its feature set. Being based off Bitcoin, it currently is a method of transaction, with notable upgrades in the form of Segwit (with possible lightning network integration in the future) and 30 transaction times with extremely marginal fees. That’s great but a lot of coins have that going for them, so thankfully we’re just getting started with the real interesting pieces of NAV. The first and currently only implemented feature, NavTech is a unique dual blockchain technology. Essentially, NAV runs on these two blockchains in order to completely disconnect the sending wallet (your wallet), to the receiving wallet (where the money is getting sent). Think of it like a VPN, NavTech completely strips the sender’s details so the transaction is completely anonymous. The anonymous transaction space has really gotten big lately, with Monero’s recent price action and Ethereum’s implementation of ZKSnarks being two big examples that come to mind.Moving on to the roadmap, there are two big upcoming features for NAV:

• The first is Polymorph, which is a really cool blend of Nav’s anonymous transactions and Changeally’s instant exchange. What this means is that, for example, I wanted to pay someone in Bitcoin but I wanted to do it anonymously. Polymorph would take my bitcoin, turn it into navcoin in order to be processed and sent anonymously using the Navtech dual blockchain, then turned back into bitcoin at the to be sent to the receiving wallet. This will certainly set NAV apart, as it guarantees anonymous transaction for all of the coins on changeally. This is huge for exposure, and a great opportunity for NAVcoin to gain trust, which is absolutely critical anonymous transaction coins.  
• The second big upcoming feature is ADApps, or Anonymized Decentralized Apps. This is also a huge potential win for Nav as there is already a huge amount of interest in the crypto space surrounding Dapps, such as Ethereum and Omni. Adding in the anonymous layer would attract projects that would value the anonymity. Nav is still in the planning stages for this project so it could still be awhile before it comes to fruition, but we should see the whitepaper for it soon, and if they could be first to market with ADapps that could prove to be a killer feature for them as it would give them first access to the interested demographics.

ICON

Simply put, ICON ($ICX) is a massive scale blockchain Platform that allows

• Decentralized Application (DAPPS) – Build DAPPS on ICON Platform like on Ethereum and NEO. Yes, soon, you will see ICOs happening on ICON platform for different DAPPS
• Interchain (Interoperability with Blockchains) – Allows different blockchains connecting to one another through their protocol. ICON is fully compatible with traditional blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum and in future can bridge other public blockchains such as Qtum, NEO and many others to achieve their mission statement – “Hyperconnect the world”
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Use of AI to ensure all nodes contributing to ICON Republic/platform are rewarded fairly and not to have certain powers over distribution policies. AI will continue to learn a variety of variables to determine optimal distribution policies and achieve complete decentralization.
• Decentralized Exchange (DEX) – ICON will integrate different DEX protocols on their platform to facilitate exchange of ICX and other future ICON platform currencies. Bancor protocol will be their first DEX protocol when mainent launches this month end and Kyber and others will follow. Not just throwing Kyber’s name out there, it was confirmed they are working with each other, official partnership yet to be announced.

Ripple

Ripple ($XRP) is a real-time Payment protocol for anything of value. It’s a shared public database, with a built-in distributed currency exchange, that operates as the worlds first universal translator for money. Ripple is currency agnostic and has a foreign exchange component built right into the protocol. Ripple acts as a pathfinding algorithm to find the best route for a dollar to become a euro or airline miles to become Bitcoin. It will look at all the orders in the global order book. The case for XRP comes down to the following: 1) Payment systems work best with bridge assets to focus liquidity. 2) There are good reasons to expect a cryptocurrency to be the most popular bridge asset. 3) There are good reasons to expect that cryptocurrency to be XRP.

• Open, decentralized payments will have lots and lots of assets, including national currencies of all kinds and cryptos. A significant fraction of payments will be among assets that aren’t the most popular. Using intermediary assets to settle those payments concentrates liquidity and reduces spreads.
• National currencies are always tied to jurisdictions and can’t be universal. Systems built around them will never be as open and inclusive as systems that aren’t.
• XRP settles faster than any other major crypto. It higher transaction rates than other major cryptos. It is beat by others only by the amount of liquidity available today. And, most importantly, XRP has a company that is devoted to making sure XRP succeeds for this specific use case.

Tier 3 coins are those coins which we have moderate investments and we believe have a possibility of high performance in the future, but as of yet have not shown enough performance to reduce their risk profile. Tier 3 coins are coins which are moderately risky, but due to our risk analysis of the project and team we believe have minimal chance of failure. 

 

Tier 4 coins are coins which we have minimal stake in, are highly risky, and we are contributing no more than 2% of our portfolio to. These coins represent the outer fringe of our risk analysis, in that we have little information to work with, have little insight into the coin’s performance, and at the very best we are making an educated guess that they will be successful. If a coin performs well and proves that it has a commitment to its compelling feature, it will be moved to the Tier 3 status.  

 

With today’s mostly sideways movement, we did not take any action as we anticipate that the market, unsure what to do, is going to drop once more.

There was an (arguably silly) article published by CNBC today that claims that crypto will hit a total market cap of 1 Trillion this year with Bitcoin hitting 50,000. While articles such as these are fun to dismiss or fantasize about, we want to make it clear that no one knows the future (even us!) and just because someone is a “hedge fund manager” or “expert” does not mean they have a crystal ball that lets them have insight on some arbitrary valuation. While this prediction is in the realm of possibility, understand that there are infinite possibilities. Personally we believe that crypto will hit 1 trillion and Bitcoin will hit 50,000 one day, but we’re not about to make asinine open-ended predictions about when that will happen. People who do that are simply guessing, even if they’re making an educated guess.

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, look into Monte Carlo simulations of crypto prices. As you can see from the price of Bitcoin alone, the standard deviation is quite expansive which highlights a degree of uncertainty and the underlying volatility of the asset. Basically, it’s only a little better than throwing darts at a board.

As a summary of Monday’s free Webinar, with some additional info added, check out our video on bear markets. Alternatively, you can watch the free webinar recording the in the archive in your member home.

We also summarized the points we made regarding yesterday’s SEC/CFTC hearing in this video. We suggest you check it out if you want to learn more about the future the US government is trying to make for crypto.

  In this section we’ll feature a daily ICO or new coin we think you should check out. Based on your country, you may not be able to participate in the ICO, but you will be able to trade the coin once it is listed on an exchange following its ICO (usually only a couple of weeks). ICOs are where a lot of money in crypto is made. Here’s proof.   That said, we should warn you: ICOs are highly risky endeavours and you need to mitigate any potential losses. Treat it as money you’ve lost the moment you contribute to the ICO. We are not responsible for the ICO’s performance. Today’s featured ICO / New Coin is:

Sapien

For flipping Neutral.

For long-term holding Neutral. Social media is a fickle area that relies heavily on the network effect — The biggest networks get bigger.

What is it? 

Sapien is a highly customizable, democratized social news platform capable of rewarding millions of content creators and curators without any centralized intermediaries.

From their whitepaper: “A multitude of theories behind human intelligence suggest how fundamental social networks have been to the evolution of our species, Homo Sapiens. Whereas thousands of years ago the primary objective of interaction was survival, we now interact for numerous reasons, ranging from business to pleasure. Companies like Reddit and Facebook have enabled us to continue this ancient practice of socializing, while simultaneously driving open-source innovations like React.js and GraphQL. Another example of the earliest social activity is payments. Bitcoin is the first successful implementation of a borderless, cryptographical store of value enabling us to discreetly send funds to another person. Yet it was Satoshi Nakamoto’s brilliant idea behind the coin, the Blockchain, that has opened the floodgates of innovation. Immutable, hashed data is stored in blocks that are chained together to create a distributed database, secured with cryptography. This new technology has begun to disrupt everything from healthcare to banking to consumer apps. It is quite likely that we are witnessing the early stages of Web 3.0. Our team believes it is now feasible to combine the innate human desire for social networks with the immense power of the Blockchain to give each individual unprecedented control over their online social experience. We intend to build a democratized social platform that truly serves its users, fueled by a flexible cryptocurrency, SPN, built on the Ethereum Blockchain.”

What is our verdict? 

What we like: Very clear passion and vision from the team. Idea has merit, even if it needs a lot of adoption to grow.

What we don’t like: Young team with little experience.

Website: https://www.sapien.network/

Whitepaper: https://www.sapien.network/assets/SPNv1_0.pdf

I am going to stick with the current list of holds and will not go into “swing” mode until we get a release off the bottom. If we see any coin showing particular strength I’ll detail a short-term swing. I can definitely see adding to my WTC position which is somewhat underweight as compared to Mav.

 

I am doing the majority of my Technical Analysis work on TradingView and Coinigy, and I have a BitFinex app on both my iPad and Android smartphone. All of these charting platforms call a TradingView API. TradingView is the 800 lb. gorilla in the Crypto charting space until the “established” players want to make a go at Crypto, like Ninjatrader, Tradestation, eSignal, Sierra charts, etc. My sense is that TradingView has such a head start that it will be very difficult for the big boys to make a dent in this space for a while. Until that point, TradingView has almost a monopoly in this space. If you have a particular tool that you think is superior, please let me know. You can access the BitFinex and TradingView platforms for free, however there are some paid features that you might want to consider depending on your needs, such as expanded watchlists, different study sets, account alerts, etc. Coinigy is a great tool for determining prices on each exchange, however I may not have access to the full suite of tools on TradingView charts. I am currently not using it as a front-end GUI for my exchanges, which it supports.I also use Blockfolio to give me a quick snapshot of my holdings, and find that it does an excellent job to aggregate all of my holdings into one easy-to-read snapshot of my cryptocurrencies, which are typically located in many different places.