Messages

1

Investing & Make Money Discussion / Re: Investment 2019

« on: April 21, 2019, 08:19:11 PM »

I'm mainly looking for low cap coins as there's a far greater upside to these. Obviously, there's more risk involved, but proper research plays an important role in finding potential rising gems.

Since both privacy coins and smart contract platforms have done so well, I'm looking for potential stars in these sectors. Presently, I'm considering Elrond Network in the smart contract space since it can do 3750 tps per shard on a live blockchain. This is unique because all other scalability chains did not deliver anything close to this amount on a live network.

As for privacy coins, I'm looking at VEIL because it is addressing a key problem in the privacy coin space, and that's to advance the Zerocoin Protocol to a point where even basecoin transactions are anonymous.

The cool thing about both of these projects is that they are self-funded to date and are led by teams that involve people from already successful networks. While Elrond is led by a NEM architect, VEIL is led by the founder of PIVX.

2

Trading / Re: Short or long term investment

« on: April 21, 2019, 08:01:25 PM »

I prefer long-term investments. However, I feel in the Crypto space, a few months is considered long-term. Usually, projects need some time to see real adoption and deliver major development updates. Minor pumps may happen in the time-span of just a week, but it takes, at minimum, a quarter or two to see some real progress.

I picked up a new coin called VEIL about 10 days ago and it's moved up from 26 cents to 31 cents since then. As a short-term trade, it's already quite good for me. However, I know the project team is working hard to deliver the most advanced privacy coin to date, and given that it's being led by the founder of PIVX, I expect some decent partnerships will roll out once development has progressed deeper into the roadmap. Considering these factors, I feel the upside potential of a long-term hold could be good.

So, you should do your own research in your holdings and see which one of them has a good upside potential.

3

Mining / Re: BTC Mining vs Buying

« on: April 21, 2019, 07:44:49 PM »

Whether to mine or buy BTC is a major question faced by anyone interested in the future potential of a network that integrates PoW consensus. For all cryptocurrencies acquired as block rewards on PoW networks, it's important to compare the coin price and mining cost. BTC break-ever on the latest rigs needs electricity to be less than $0.1 kWh. That's not available to everyone and anyone seeking to invest in BTC but lives in a country with expensive energy, the answer's clear: buying is better.

However, for certain alt-coins earned as block rewards on a PoW network, as is the case with the privacy coin VEIL, the price difference between cost of mining and exchange price can be a lot and thus the profit margin makes mining a good option (almost) no matter the cost of energy. VEIL's up about a 100% in just a month, but the network hash rate hasn't been able to rise at that pace. Thus, there's a strong arbitrage to be benefitted from due to the deep gap between mining cost and exchange price.

4

Trading / Re: Your greatest trading regret?

« on: April 21, 2019, 07:31:22 PM »

I personally don't make short-term trades much. I usually end up holding something for weeks if not months before I see some real gains. My biggest regret was passing over BTMX in November when price was just 1.35 cents; now, it's up 10x and it's ATH gain would have delivered 20x+ gain.

My biggest regret of 2019 so far.

However, there's plenty of other coins I'm looking at.
I bought some VEIL at 26 cents and now it's touching 31 cents. It's still at < $5M mcap so I expect some good potential here. I'm mainly interested in it because it's one of the few deeply technological ventures that is focused on privacy coins.

5

Mining / Re: mining is profitable?

« on: April 21, 2019, 07:26:05 PM »

Yes and no.

Asking if mining is profitable is an umbrella question. Mining some coins is profitable while mining others is not. You can monitor BTC hash rate to check when the network is too competitive; right now, the hash rate is picking up again and BTC is barely touching the break-even point if your electricity is $0.1 kWh. If you're in possibly Norway and can enjoy that $0.04 kWh energy bill, you can mine practically anything at a profit.

However, for anyone facing a higher energy bill, altcoins are a better alternative. New coins that are largely under the radar typically may have a high margin between exchange prices and cost of mining the coin. Just be sure that the exchange has enough volume to absorb your sales. Veil Project's VEIL tokens are going well on the exchanges and have pretty liquid order books. The token price went up by nearly 100% recently so the gap between cost of mining VEIL and exchange prices is quite high. Plenty of profit margin here.

6

Mining / Re: What is the fate of the mining industry in New York and will you survive the dig

« on: April 21, 2019, 07:15:58 PM »

BTC mining is heavily reliant on electricity costs but both electricity costs and BTC price vary constantly.

Few things in the Crypto space remain static and that's why it's worth looking into rising alts to keep updated with mining opportunities with a wide margin between price of acquiring a coin and cost of electricity need to acquire a coin. An example would be VEIL, which was listed at the start of this year.

Because the price has shot up over a 100% in the past 30 days, the cost of acquiring a coin is now a fraction of the exchange prices. At least for the time being, this is a good mining opportunity.

7

Crypto Discussion / Re: Do we need blockchain technology?

« on: April 16, 2019, 11:47:11 PM »

Sorry OP, but I think you don't really grasp the value-additives of blockchain technology. I'll offer an easy rebuttal to one of the assertions you made.

An ad management system on blockchain? - We already had Google Ads & Facebook Ads.

These are ad marketplaces. Both provide the means to purchase ad placements on the two tech giants' flagship platforms, subsidiaries, or partner channels. With that settled, let's address some of the key issues in the marketing industry: fake data.

Much of the advertising industry is fueled by fake data. This is particularly dangerous because most CMOs are bent upon integrating as much data as possible in every campaign. Because the interactions between an audience and the digital ad placement provider happen on closed networks, marketers have to either accept the data given to them or waste an incredible amount of resources to verify the legitimacy of the data. Neither of these is optimal.

Were a proper blockchain-enabled ad management SaaS to be delivered, the marketers would have instant transparency over the source of interactions on a public chain. This could even be through a private sidechain accessible to the marketer.
And marketing is just one example.

You mentioned the undeniable use of Bitcoin, but bare in mind that while Bitcoin pioneered decentralized value transfer and wealth storage; others blockchains have stemmed this solution in other meaningful territories.

A solid example would be privacy coins. The likes of Zcoin, Zcash, and Veil offer a unique solution for those who want a private channel for value transfer. Of course, not all blockchain developments will rule on top, but there's a lot of competition presently because of the nascent stage of this sector. Even within privacy coins, Zcash has attracted a community because of its novel use of zkSNARKS; this can be dangerous because that removes supply audit. Meanwhile, Zcoin, whose founders often point out the flaws of zkSNARKS, is a privacy network upon which most transactions are publicly visible because most people trade with its Basecoins. As a solution to this, Veil provides anonymity over both Zerocoin transactions and Basecoin transactions. Blockchain projects are just getting started and their long-term value won't be obvious just yet. While Veil can provide a key solution to anyone seeking a completely private transaction, a new blockchain-enabled ad management system could provide a key solution to marketers that want to refine their data samples.

8

Crypto Discussion / Re: Which alts will survive?

« on: April 16, 2019, 11:28:38 PM »

Your question is way too broad. Note that while BTC exists primarily as a store of value and a medium of payment, other coins exist to deliver other value-additives.

When it comes to alts, the smart contract chains take up most of the headlines. Ethereum, NEO, EOS, and Tron are fiercely competing to be the chains that enable the smart cities of the future. They may someday face stiff competition from new launches like Zilliqa. Smart contracts offer a solution to wide for just one chain to dominate the entire sector. It's highly unlikely that just one blockchain will take over all smart contract solutions. There's a higher chance that these chains end up differentiating themselves, and this is already visible in the case of Tron, which has quickly become a blockchain for gambling. Meanwhile, EOS may have a lot of gambling applications, but it also hosts some very creative games.

Then you get enterprise blockchains. These entail some form of sidechain solution to stem off private chains for enterprises to maintain the security of their proprietary data. This space isn't that competitive yet but there are some high-flying competitors here like LTO, aergo, and LITION.

Of course, privacy coins are in a league of their own, and it certainly is possible to offer better privacy than the competition. No single coin is there yet but there's a lot of development in this space. Some commenters have already mentioned VEIL, which is an example of a privacy coin that's going through some fast-paced development. While Monero and Dash are leading the way, developments in the Zerocoin Protocol could deliver the best priivacy coin to date. Veil's development team is trying to advance the Zerocoin Protocol such that it integrates the best aspects of existing privacy coins. Like Zcoin, VEIL uses Zerocoin Protocol so it leaves no means of traceability. However, unlike Zcoin, VEIL integrates Monero's RingCT technology on its Basecoins, and that allows VEIL to have privacy on both the Zerocoin transactions and the Basecoin transactions.

To sum up, the question should be trimmed towards which altcoins will survive in various value-additives that blockchain technology can provide.