The Great Crypto Propaganda Machine

With new 'crypto news' websites popping up daily, including commentary of the one and only so called 'crypto-experts', I felt the urge to share you my opinion.

I can understand it's hard nowadays if you are new to the crypto world to know where to find the best source of information. The problem is: there is no such thing.

First of all, please note that crypto-currency related news websites are not run by government bodies to provide the most accurate and unbiased information. All crypto currency related websites are made by regular joe's, like you and me. With so many people searching for news each day, hoping to find something that can tell them if their investment was good or bad - they seem to be getting a large and undeserved share of the market. These websites are run by people who are involved in cryptocurrencies themselves and try to extend their reach as much as possible, gaining power over a certain asset, to partially control it. With the crypto-sphere covered in shades and shadows, calling an unnamed source for instance usually gets you nowhere in real-news of the real-world, yet in crypto this seems to make it very mysterious and 'more likely' to be true.

Most of the news is made up, opinionated, biased and even news-websites have issues trying to find experts for quotes. Most of the 'claims' they make are actually often unverified and false claims.

You have to picture that cryptocurrencies are like soccer teams. If you would go on the street and ask a fan of Barcelona who is better, Real Madrid or Barca, you probably know the answer without asking. Same goes for 'who is the best team, who has the best players, who is going to become world champion', you know that - when it comes to sports - the least news worthy would be asking a random fan. Yet this is all what is happening in crypto currently. A 'trading fund' that trades in '100 digital currencies' names 2-3 of the biggest currencies a 'scam'. It's obvious they didn't invest in these crypto's, and because they want people to invest in one of their 100 currencies, they hope this can push them towards those.

Everything is a joke, everything is fake, there is no real news. You have to do your own research every time - and whenever someone states 'this is no financial advice' - know that they are about to give you financial advice, they just don't want to be held responsible when it turns out they are wrong.

Crypto news websites are not driven by accuracy, or driven to give you the most unbiased information possible. They are driven by clickbait. Sometimes it pays off to write a complete bullshit and negative post about a coin as it would drive people mad, you get hundreds of free retweets and - best part - other websites will actually copy your story as they 'fomo' in, hoping it would provide them with the same amount of views and tweets.

Just try to do as much research as possible, create your own opinion as everyone has a hidden agenda, everyone invested in some crypto and they will cheer for the ones they invested in and boo on the ones they didn't invest in.

XRP - Price rising by volume & usage

XRP - Price rising by volume & usage

It has been a while since my last blog about Ripple and XRP, so I decided to write about how the volume of trades caused by FI's, companies and banks would influence the price of XRP.

The misunderstandings.. 

 

I've seen a LOT of tweets and posts with negative comments regarding the position of XRP for banks. Some seem to be really disapointed by the fact banks don't 'have' to hold it. I really don't understand why people are limiting themselves thinking only 'if people hold' would be positive for the price. This is a misconception. 

By allowing banks to not hold XRP and still be able to use xRapid, Ripple manages to include potential customers to their business that would otherwise stay away. Know that some countries do not allow banks to hold crypto and some boards refuse to believe in crypto too. By allowing xRapid for banks and FI's without 'holding' this means banks will not be subject to price volatility that would otherwise potentially bring certain costs on paper by date-valuation that would affect their numbers. Conservative banks that would otherwise feel 'left out' can now safely participate in innovation.

In addition to that, not being 'forced' to hold XRP would allow banks to avoid realising a loss on their XRP investment. How? Well, if a bank/company of FI buys XRP for 1$ and the price goes to 0.80 cents, they can 'keep' their XRP untouched and buy the XRP needed for the transactions during the time the price is below their original buy in price - meanwhile they can accumulate more XRP to lower their average buy in point. When the market goes above 1$, they can use XRP and generate a profit from their first investment, and they will need to restock eventually after using up their XRP holdings. Either way, a bank will only realise profit and never realise a loss by doing smart investments and usage - restock when the market is down, usage when the market goes up.

Volume makes the price go up..

 

Now the second part: Why would XRP's price go up if a bank just buys and sells XRP in the 4 seconds of settlement? Wouldn't the 'dump' of the sell kill off the momentum it caused by buying XRP in the first place? No - it wouldn't. If this is your train of thoughts, you are missing one key point into it: missing the part that every time you sell it is considered a purchase on the other side, and every purchase you make means someone sold to you. Let's be real about it: we don't sell below our investments unless forced or during a crisis, the same applies to everything in economics. You don't buy car-parts for 200$ to sell it for 150$ to customers. So, the market maker who 'bought' the XRP from the bank, is not going to sell it below the price it bought it for, so the addition of an incredible amount of volume by usecase would generate a growth in the market based on the nonstop usage. It has been said that xRapid will search all exchanges and determine the lowest price to buy the XRP needed for the transaction and sell it into the fiat needed to complete the transaction on the other side. They will not sell it below the price of what they bought it for, so by definition it would mean that the price would move up. Volatility will lower, the growth will be steady and every 'dip' would mean there is an opportunity to buy more XRP to stock up if needed. 

Volume is 'key' to the price since it indicates an ongoing demand. With an ongoing demand that is calculatable, the supply of it is able to ask for a sharper price - since the price of XRP doesn't affect the usecase in a negative way, even better, the price movement upwards would be beneficial for everyone (less XRP needed to move an X amount of money - XRP is a vessel of value, the bigger the price, the more it can carry). 

The future? 

 

The only thing that would slow down the gains of XRP would be temporarily caused by the banks selling off amounts they are holding - until they need to restock. This gives a nice fluctuation in the price, causing small ups and downs where banks can make their moves accordingly.

This is just the 'usecase' part - adding to that comes speculation and trading just like we see in all the other crypto's, currencies and stock.

Hope this clears things up!

Im out,
Mr.H

Telegram and Crypto

Telegram and Crypto, what you need to know

When I'm bored I sometimes open my telegram app and join the crypto channels that I subscribed to. It's fun to see, especially during heavy price movements, the way people act during these movements. Since there are a lot of new people joining crypto every day and trying to find the channels that brings them the most exclusive news, you see new people joining the telegram chat of groups daily. I thought it would be nice to explain a few things before you make your move, so you understand better what goes on in those channels so you won't accidentally get FOMO'd into buying or selling something that you actually don't want yet.

First of all, understand that just a few people are on telegram. Even though groups look big (10k-30k people) they often bring very few volume and the discussions there are mainly just investors vs. investors, but both with a different plan. I've made an easy way to differentiate the people there so you can ignore most of the messages and pick up the ones that are important.

'OMG SELL ALL!!1!'

The first group I want to address are the ones crying SELL. Often in repeat, sometimes with unbiased arguments and mostly seen as annoying. Why would a person take the effort of logging into telegram, joining a channel and just nonstop repeat SELL NOW SELL ALL.. Well, this is because they either sold themselves at a certain point and want to buy back at a lower point, or if their buy-in order is under the current price, so they 'hope' by telling people to sell theirs that they can lower the price and enjoy a better entry point. Sometimes people who sold want to make sure they made the right decision and would hate it if there would have been an opportunity that they could have sold for a higher price. You can simply ignore these people completely, but a lot of people start to question them thinking 'what do they know about this coin that I don't?' and 'oh god, people are selling! Maybe I made a wrong choice!'.. If you honestly think that you should get your trading advice from kids, think again. Do your own research, buy in stuff you believe in. Some of the crypto's I invested in didn't take off for months and are now suddenly 3000-5000% up. Make a plan before you start, value the price. Remember, the only reason you should buy a cryptocurrency would be because you think it is undervalued or if you need them because of the use-case.

BUY BUY BUY!!

These guys are usually 'investors' (often very small stake, $100 investments) that just bought in and want to make sure they made the right move. Insecurity kicks in the second they bought something 'oh god I wish I bought the low-point, I would hate it if it turns out I could have bought more for less!' and this changes them into nonstop BUY BUY BUY callers on the channel. Since most of the investors from the channel already bought in earlier, others usually respond positive towards people that call for BUY - but remember they are on it for their own gains.

JUST HODL!!

Now this is actually funny, because most people that are in the channels are holding anyway - but everyone has a different motive. Let me kick off saying that - as a longterm holder - I really do not care one small bit if someone else sells, buys or holds. Volume is volume, and you need all 3 to make it work. But holders that cry HODL are actually sneaky people, why? Because the reason they call on you to please hold what you have is because their exit point is nearing and they want to dump their stack at a high price. If you are truly a holder, you don't care what the price will be tomorrow or next week, you have set up a plan for years to come and your targets have been set and adjusted towards whatever the markets bring.

In a way, all three of these people are just short term focussed groups that will miss out when the day comes, they are the people that give the real holders profit as they will FOMO into every move the chart makes and create the volatility of the market. I'm thanking them for the effort they put in to make my investment a success, but please don't act on any of these people. Set up targets before you purchase, after you have done this a lot of times you don't really care what the market will do in the next few months, your longterm plan is not based on current events but played on the future that will come for crypto. Whenever I go to sleep, I know that I can wake up to a 100% profit or a 50% loss of my stack. I also know that all gains and losses are temporary, as I know deep down in my heart that the more people that come into crypto will drive up the demand of all the 'good' picks and that taking time to research what you invest in is more important than your initial buy in point. 

Good luck with trading, and enjoy telegram!


I'm out
Mr. H

A different view to value XRP

A different view to value XRP & future predictions 

In for some controversial reading? Something that has a different approach on how to value the price of XRP? Well, here is my vision.

First of all,

As I've explained in previous blog, the usage of XRP for me is already determined. Ripplenet is getting a great support and I came to an understanding that with xRapid currently closing up the Alpha stage, the new users are not able to use xRapid + Ripplenet. As soon as it gets released into beta (or possibly skip beta) we will see a significant increase of XRP adoption by banks.

Anyway, we are not to talk about that, I guess it's pretty obvious bank adoption would drive the price up. I'm going to try to see how I see the future value of XRP. A lot of people in crypto always talk about market cap, they measure it by the value Bitcoin has and then divide the share they assume the coin they discuss to have a certain value of that in the future. Conservative thought, weird to see in the crypto space as we all try to fight the world from being too conservative about crypto. Yes, of course, if the value of bitcoin goes to 100.000 USD, the rest of the alts do move along with it, but is there really a maximum by stating up front that the market cap of a coin should never pass bitcoin?

The artificial limit in extend to bitcoin

In crypto - not passing bitcoin as bitcoin is sacred might be an obstacle that will remain for many years. But you will have to understand that XRP is different. XRP doesn't move in the cryptoworld like the other crypto's do. We already see that even after announcing great news, the tops and bottoms are less volatile than the other crypto's. What will happen when the volume really kicks in? People are saying 'banks will never pay more than a few $ per XRP as it would mean the transactions will cost too much for it to be the top pick' but is this true? Transaction costs can be scaled down in the future when needed, and knowing that Ripple wants XRP to remain the cheapest, it's unlikely that they wouldn't change it.

Another thing I hear a lot is that banks would not be interested in a higher priced XRP as they would 'not be willing to pay for it' but that's the exact opposite of what will happen. XRP is a vessel, the larger XRP will have as value, the more value can be transferred. And banks have a lot of value to transfer. This would mean that banks would benefit if the price of XRP goes upwards. How far can it go? Well, in my understanding, it would go as high as the banks need it to be. If they want to transfer a trillion payments per day, they will quickly run out of XRP and will have to buy more. So, the price will keep increasing once it is adopted and used.

The limit of XRP

What will be the limit? Well, that is hard to estimate, when more and more banks use it, less XRP is there to go around so the price of XRP must go up from that point. There will be a moment in time where the price is 'satisfying' and should be stable from that point, you can then see XRP as a currency. And what about the market cap? Well you can calculate one, but will it limit the price? No! And why not? because the use case doesn’t care for the market cap as a limit but as a starting point. 'today we can send out x-amount of billion, tomorrow this may be x trillion. The value should always be aimed higher for future growth, so I can no longer say 'XRP could have a maximum amount of [random number] in dollars'. 

If you follow this path you might understand how bright the future for XRP would be. It also indicates how insignificant we as 'traders' in regards to XRP - our influence on the price will stop completely as soon as it’s being adopted by the banks, we will just ride along with the world as XRP will be used more often and perhaps create more use cases, like the XRP credit card where it would be possible to pair with all currencies in the world so you would no longer need to have 10 different currency bank accounts as a business who trades overseas.

Conclusion

In the future, the value of XRP is unlimited as the market cap is unlimited. There is no reason why it should 'stay in the path created by Bitcoin' as it has no correlation with Bitcoin nor bitcoin's value in the future. If XRP goes to 10$ that would be great but it could easily go beyond that if the banks are in need of a higher price to transfer money around. This is my vision on the price and the reason why I'm seeing XRP as a solid long-term investment!

I'm out,
Mr. H

Why we should stop fudding great innovative and upcoming technology regarding blockchain and support eachother, especially now the world is watching us

Why we should stop fudding great innovative and upcoming technology regarding blockchain and support eachother, especially now the world is watching us

The closer we are at our goal.. the more it seems that we actually don't really get along too well. It's heartbreaking to see this happening while we actually share the same goal: mass adoption of crypto currencies and blockchain tech into the rest of the world. What can we change?  

Mr. H - December 8th, 2017

8:30, the bell rings..

There we are, as a bunch of kids in school, explaining to newcomers what lunch tables and clubs to avoid, what to wear and what to do to become popular. We educate them while we prepare ourselves to our own 'next step' in our schoolcarreer.

The same applies for the cryptoworld, except in crypto - instead of sometimes giving the most accurate and correct information - we try to drag the attention towards risky investments by presenting fake news and misunderstood rumours trying to gain a few cents on 'our' picks. Non-stop fights on twitter - instead of educating each other we just go to war. This mindset is not only very very short term, but also damaging the entire community.

If you want crypto and blockchain to be a success, you have to be open minded about a lot of things and stop ignoring great tech and innovation just because you forgot to buy the coin or token 'when it was cheap' hoping that this will justify your decision back then for not 'jumping in'. 

To give a small example, Ripple. The hate against Ripple is currently 'successfully' blocking its gain that it should have, making it one of the most undervalued coins there is. The Ripple community will reply by comparing facts they have gathered and put other coins to a sceptic review, the same with Bitcoin - Litecoin - Ethereum - Dash - IOTA and so on. Before this turns into a big war, we should try to unite and allow the coins to gain ground in the non-crypto space. This will be beneficial to all other currencies. 

I'm not saying 'don’t be sceptic' or 'don’t question anything', please continue because we have to ask the questions to make sure everyone stays on the correct path. 

If Ripple/ IOTA succeeds in its mission, what would that mean for the crypto world?

Well, for starters, it will open up the world for more institutions to see the benefits of blockchain. This will allow them to look further than just the tech that will help them, but also gives opportunities for other area's to be taken very seriously. If we continue to show the entire world we are not even allowing success for cryptocurrencies that are 'not minable' and 'run by a business', you miss the point where the semi-regulated crypto's are the bridging connection between massive world adoption and market cap growth we all desperately chase. 

Same goes for IOTA, who would have known this crypto would suddenly gain 15x its value in a week just based on a partnership where the details remain uncertain? It is something we should fear or love? My opinion is that we are sending this 'team' to compete in the real world, and I would rather see the team we are sending to be drained in excellent leadership - something I miss and will express to anyone who wants to know, but do I want it to fail? Definitely not - but I hope that the concerns of the community will be taken highly into consideration and they will understand that they are a frontrunner for other crypto's. Screw it up and you might set it all back a few months, exceed expectations and you will create a bright future for everything.

This has nothing to do with 'you should definitely invest in these coins', it has nothing to do with that, just that we - as a crypto community - damage ourselves by trash talking others.

We are no longer in the small league now, we moved on to 'high school' and some moved even higher. As you all remember (assuming you all went to school) the setup and popularity chasing ideology that you had when you were in school were turned upside down whenever you went up that ladder. 

Conclusion

The whole crypto community will benefit from the success of Ripple. The whole community will benefit from the success of IOTA. We have passed the point where we can change the future of these coins, they are no longer in our control but at the developers and companies behind it, but we can speed up massive adoption if we can mature about it and allow this success to happen.

Im out,
Mr. H