If you are 35-years-old, and you have lost faith, you are no longer going to buy gold. That was for your parents and your grandparents. You are going to buy Bitcoin.
Prof. Damodaran has been a long-time sceptic of cryptocurrencies. It’s good to see that even ‘Wall Street’s dean of valuation’ is coming to terms with Bitcoin.
@StonePitbull Do you have any suggestions on choosing the exchange? Looks like there is no leader where it’s backed by government. Looks kind of tricky for crypto investors on choosing the exchange.
In India there is no regulatory clarity over the status of Bitcoin, and as such it is operating in the grey area with no guarantee of investor protection, say against cheating by exchanges. But bitcoin is different from other digital assets, like stocks which needs a trusted third party (demat account) to guarantee your ownership. Unlike stocks, you can take your bitcoins off the exchanges, in your self custody which no body can deny or take away. I will talk on this more, but first the question of exchanges.
I have used Zebpay and Wazirx. I have heard of Paxful and Coinswitch Kuber, and they seem to be good options too. You may use any of them, and you can invest any amount, to buy fractions of bitcoin. But there are only two valid reasons to keep your bitcoin on exchange-
If the above does not hold for you, then you should learn how to take custody of your bitcoin. It is simple, just download a Bitcoin wallet app (I recommend Bluewallet) and create your wallet. It will create a 12 words seed phrase. Back it up (not online, but say on a piece of paper). You can restore your wallet on any good wallet app using those 12 words. And you are good to start sending or receiving bitcoins to your wallet.
What if someone hacks your phone and steals those 12 words?
If you only intend to stack sats (bitcoin’s fractional unit), then you can set up a watch only wallet. To do so, you need to export xpub (from additional settings) from your wallet and use it to create a new wallet. This wallet can only show the amount of bitcoin you have and receive bitcoin. It cannot send bitcoin. Now delete your live wallet. If any hacker hacks your phone, they cannot access your 12 words seed as you have deleted them from the phone. They can only get the xpub which is only good for seeing wallet balance and sending bitcoin to your wallet.
What if you want to send bitcoin from your wallet but you do not want to enter the 12 word seed into your online phone. There is an alternative if you have a working old smartphone. Just download the Bluewallet app to your old phone and put it into airplane mode (you may also forget wifi information for additional safety). Now enter the seed phrase into your old phone and restore your wallet. It will show 0 balance because it cannot access network. There is no way to hack your seed phrase if you never bring the old phone online again. Now,
You could pick any popular global exchange as long as you are using it only as a gateway for trading cryptos. Never leave your crypto on any exchange. Even a publicly listed exchange like Coinbase has its share of users complaining that their account got shut down out of the blue and funds were not returned.
I personally have signed up for WazirX, Binance, KuCoin, OkEx, FTX, TradeOgre. I used WazirX to deposit INR (last year), bought crypto, transferred it over to Binance/Wallet. My personal picks are Binance and KuCoin for trading, after you use an Indian exchange as fiat gateway.
KuCoin does not even require KYC and allows you to transfer your Stablecoins (USDC) with near zero fees
@Divyanshu_Bagga / @StonePitbull Thanks for the valuable information. Would like to know your thoughts on https://www.vauld.com/.
Which acts as exchange/crypto bank that provides Interest On Your Crypto such as Savings/FD. Its similar to https://blockfi.com/.
| Token | BTC |
|---|---|
| Savings Rate (Apy) | 4.60% |
| Fixed Deposit Rate (Apy) | 6.70% |
| Borrowing Rate (Apr) | 7.50% |
Initially thought of buying crytos via Wazirx/CoinDcx and hold it. But came across vauld (provides interest weekly) and got confused with QUS is all these options are safe, what happens if exchange shutdown?
If the above options are not safe, thinking to go with @Divyanshu_Bagga suggestion of using bitcoin wallet app, instead of keeping it in exchanges.
Hearing about Valud for the first time.
BlockFi, Celsius and Nexo are the more popular ones.
BlockFi is under a regulatory tussle in multiple US States
Celsius Founder Alex Machinsky aims to disrupt the (racist) Banking System like he put the Telephone Cos out of business by building VoIP.
I am an active user of Celsius.
These platforms are crypto banks (only better because they don’t treat rich and poor differently in matters of collateral). There are not FDIC insured and act as custodians of our cryptos. Whichever one you are choosing make sure you are doing your due diligence. They are slightly more secure than exchanges but requires you to trust the company.
I personally keep 60% of my crypto portfolio in Wallets. The rest 40% is earning interest on Celsius.
Celsius and BlockFi both have referral code bonuses.
Not financial advice.
Thanks @StonePitbull for the reply. Looking into all possible options to invest in crypto and the taxation. Will start investing, after getting enough confidence on the crypto banks/exchanges.
Though, i have basic idea on blockchain and its potential (Done few poc’s on hyperledger fabric and ethereum). Still novice to crypto investments and information given by you are very much helpful.
And in future if I choose to go with celsius/blockfi will ask for your referral codes 
I disagree. If you only want to hold your bitcoin in self custody, and engage in peer to peer trading, then yes, we have made a decentralized system which can work without any government engagement.
But if you want to lend your bitcoins for extra return, or hold your bitcoin on exchanges, you would want some regulator overseeing that these lenders or exchanges don’t run away with your money. In India, we don’t have any clarity over the status of bitcoin, let alone hoping for regulator to protect investor’s rights. As such I would not put any large amount on any exchange. That said, I do have a small amount lent on Zebpay for 3% return.
Hey @StonePitbull @Divyanshu_Bagga and All,
Have anyone used Cointracker before?
Recently I came across from a popular youtuber Ali Abdaal and just searched on the Internet and found this is backed by top Investors and Angel /Venture firms.
It supports all the exchanges and wallets to give a portfolio overview and also tax calculations based on country.
As far I searched from the internet reviews, producthunt website and reddit posts I am convinced that this reliable company.
Just want to know a quick review from any of you guys who have already used in this thread.
Also it has referral code bonus. 
( you know what I mean 
)
Then, @StonePitbull - I Inboxed you for celsius referral.
Do we need sats on-chain for using BTC-Lightning on Bluewallet?
No, you don’t need on-chain balance to use lightning wallet. You need on-chain balance to create lightning channels for running your own lightning node.
You can use the lightning wallet on Bluewallet without running a lightning node. You can think of lightning wallet as your cash wallet, while on chain wallet as your bank account. Just as you keep large amount in your bank account, you should keep large amount of bitcoin in on-chain cold storage. From time to time, you will need to load your lightning wallet with a small amount, and once loaded you can make a number of micro-transactions. Lightning wallet like Phoenix provide btc on-chain address where you can send your bitcoin to load your wallet. For Bluewallet, you can use exchange service like Fixedfloat. Fixedfloat gives the ability to exchange bitcoin for lighning bitcoin and vice versa.
No, I haven’t. Outside for Bitcoin, the only cryptocurrency I can understand was Monero, which is mostly similar but has better privacy features. Its only caveat is that it is not decentralized enough and developers can change its consensus rules without much resistance.
Anyone for the NFT’s here?
According to Wikipedia " A non-fungible token (NFT ) is a unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain, that certifies a digital asset to be unique and therefore not interchangeable.[1] NFTs can be used to represent items such as photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital files. Access to any copy of the original file, however, is not restricted to the buyer of the NFT. While copies of these digital items are available for anyone to obtain, NFTs are tracked on blockchains to provide the owner with a proof of ownership that is separate from copyright."
I have heard from my US friends that they have started looking for investing with negligible of their networth. However based on discussions no one really knows what to buy. People are buying JPEG’s from art sellers. They get authentic owner rights however its a JEPG image and anyone can use it anytime. There are instances of first tweets, images of famous celebrities getting bought and sold. I have gone through numerous links but if anyone has actually bought any, please let me know from where and how did you zeroed it on buying it.
Few of the links that I have gone through.
As you say, NFT provides a proof of ownership over digital art (jpegs, mp3), but there is no means to enforce the ownership as anyone can copy and enjoy these art pieces. There is a legal framework of copyrights which enforce ownership over digital arts. Maybe NFT investors are betting that someday copyrights will be replaced by their NFTs.
The NFT bet is different from bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital token that exists in the Bitcoin blockchain. As such its ownership is proved and enforced in the Bitcoin network through mathematical guarantees. You don’t need any legal framework or government backing to enforce bitcoin ownership. Since the supply of bitcoin is fixed, and it has better monetary properties than fiat or gold, the bitcoin investment is a bet that hard money (bitcoin) will replace soft money (fiat, gold) irrespective of government actions.
On the other hand, for NFT to be successful, government will need to integrate it into their existing framework of copyrights. There is no economic law (like hard money replaces soft money) that will ensure eventual adoption of NFT, and this bet depends heavily on government stance. I don’t base my investments on government’s goodwill.
I think we should have a separate thread on NFTs / Investing in art and other similar items. Even VISA has entered the game.
@Divyanshu_Bagga check out this thread
https://mobile.twitter.com/Melt_Dem/status/1430193040371732483
And for others…some crypto humor
I suppose if NFT attain the luxury/status symbol, it may have value without any form of integration with copyrights.
I will also prefer that this thread remains focussed on Bitcoin which in itself is a very deep subject. But the administrators may not want more threads pertaining to cryptocurrencies. Besides, looking at this threads activity, there seems to be very little interest in crypto. As far as bitcoin is concerned, most people feel they have missed the gains, and are reluctant to buy at this price. Including myself. I only heard of Bitcoin in 2017, and by the time I researched it and started seeing as something more than a tulip bulb, the price was already at 20k. But my best investments have been the ones where I overcame my reluctance to buy at a high. Besides bitcoin, I found myself in the same situation concerning Dmart. I only heard of it at the time of IPO and didn’t apply. The 100% listing gains made me curious, but by the time I researched it and built conviction, price was already at 1200. I am glad I overcame my reluctance and bought it. But not everything flying up is worth buying, especially the ones that even your non-investor friends start recommending. Recently got the recommendation of buying Adani ports from a person who doesn’t have capital to invest long term (in his words), telling me that Adani ports is soon going to double. If all the retailers have already bought it, without researching its fundamentals and hoping for some quick gains, then those gains are very unlikely to happen.
Now that exploit is in the wild, it can be replayed on other networks like Polygon, BSC, xDAI, Görli. Be careful, try not to do any economically significant transactions before things are cleared out.
— banteg (@bantg)
As a precaution, members of the crypto community have advised users against making significant transactions on Ethereum and other chains until the issue is resolved and the majority of nodes update to the latest version of the Geth software. “Stay away from doing txs for awhile till confirmed, unless you are sure you are submitting to latest geth,” DeFi developer Andre Cronje wrote (https://twitter.com/AndreCronjeTech/status/1431259003150012419). “Go for a walk outside, we all need it.”
A white paper by Fidelity on Bitcoin’s valuation as a function of supply and demand. A good read…
A friend recently asked me if they should continue to buy bitcoin as its price has increased a lot.
My answer:
How much return you make is irrelevant if you don’t have significant allocation. Making 100% return on 1% allocation is only going to increase your net-worth by 1%. Unless you are actively trading, you won’t be able to do serious research into large number of ideas, to continuously vet out new ideas which deserve significant allocation. A passive investor is better off playing the long term game. Do your research in identifying ideas that you can bet on for the long run. Even if you start with small initial allocation, with time it will turn into significant allocation in successful ventures while the failed ideas will get weeded out.
For me, Bitcoin is one such long term bet. It is trying to change the very nature of money that we use, and if successful, its consequences will be truly revolutionary, besides making us significant wealth for our early investment. It can fail, but every day FED prints more fiat paper while new users discover bitcoin as an appreciating store of value. With each passing day of its existence, its chances of successfully transforming into widely accepted money goes up. If you have a small allocation to bitcoin, don’t sell it to nail down quick profits. Let it grow with time into life changing wealth, and if possible, buy more along the way in small increments.
A practical strategy to increase your bitcoin without buying more at “higher” price. First identify the price at which you are comfortable buying more bitcoin, say P1. Take a small amount of bitcoin, which if you lost as price fell to P1, you will buy it back with some more. Put this bitcoin at risk on bitcoin derivative exchange (say on Kraken), to buy long position with liquidation point at P1. If the price indeed fell to P1, you will buy back the amount with more bitcoin to increase your allocation at a “cheaper” price. If the price continues to goes up, your bitcoin at stake will make you more bitcoin as profit. Either way you will increase your bitcoins.
Unpopular opinion: "The Truth Is You Shouldn't Own Bitcoin" | Raoul Pal - YouTube
Raoul Pal makes a compelling argument on why investing in Bitcoin does not make sense for traders. He says “If it’s a bull cycle, Altcoins will outperform Bitcoin and if it’s a bear cycle, you’re better off holding Stablecoins”
We cannot use old investors as a yardstick to evaluate crypto assets. Nor can we take anyone who calls a market index bubble religiously, cuz they won’t tell you when they are buying a la Ray Dalio. Some Tom, Dick, Harry Hedgie will always show up on CNBC or Bloomberg to tout how bubbly the market is.
Some like Buffet are clearly staying out because its not within their circle of competence.
