“Off The Record technics” to invest in Cryptocurrency

(Note: All views expressed in this article are solely the personal point of view by the author and is not, by any means giving financial advice nor is the author a financial advisor).

The first part of this article will cover the fear you have to deal with the so-called dirty crypto world, the second part will focus on tactics and strategy to use to begin step by step in crypto trading.

Before any development, let’s summarize the situation of the market.

A Halloween crypto landscape market

If we look at the trend, cryptocurrency market is down (even freezes during winter time) and so far, the blockchain based project has launched too many ICOs that have disappointed users by failing to offer real products at their conclusion.

Rules of the game on the ICO market change every month. And the latest statistics of ICO projects says that many are not familiar with the changing landscape. At the beginning of 2018, 44% of companies failed, never reaching a Soft Cap (source bitrates news)

Chart: Dynamics of ICO success in fundraising. Source

• “Soft cap” is the minimum amount required by a project.
• “Target” is the funding goal as stated by a project’s team.
• If a target is not stated, then we use a “hard cap”, which is the maximum amount a project hopes to achieve or the technical limitations of the crowd sale.

ICOs cumulatively raised $300 million in September 2018, a huge difference from the $2.4 billion recorded in January 2018.

As Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin said:

“There are also not good enough incentives for people to produce information to help people determine which projects are worth participating in. I think in the medium term, getting funds with ICOs will get harder, regardless of whether or not regulation is implemented.”

This, for investors, is really good news! Less ICOs but with better projects, regulations, and higher quality investments.

So, what does it mean for a non-geek newcomer if you want to jump into the Crypto world?

Fear, you will have

Let’s talk about why most people are hesitating to invest in cryptocurrencies. Let’s be clear, most of the time it’s seen as the dark side of finance: scams, a negative reputation, and volatility equals risk.

Here are some obstacles usually consider when making your decision to get into the crypto world:

• In some countries like China, it is simply banned
• Financial Regulators (such as Security Exchange Commission) are putting a huge pressure to try to implement rules (but it will take time)
• People have limited financial investment education
• Your friends lost a lot of money (including me)
• Technology is too new and still difficult to understand
• It is difficult to understand the blockchain project concept
• Tax rules (government will request a cut of the profit, even if the rules have yet to be clarified in black and white).

All these points are obviously good reasons for not wasting time and money on crypto investing as it appears eerily similar to the “dot-com bubble”. At times, it even seems like a crisis is peering around the corner! However, even with the dot-com crash, there were still some companies that were worth investing in (the right ones invested at that time are worth millions now) but I won’t mention any specifics here. It was the right time because when the bubble crashed shares got really cheap! The bubble is just a high speculation creating a global crash but that does not mean that all companies are worthless. As some investment gurus would agree, take the opportunity to analyze companies that will survive because of their strong business concept and high potential ROI value.

So based on these factors, when should you invest in the crypto world? The answer is simple and similar to traditional trading:

As Soon As Possible.

For many reasons,

• This is the winter period for blockchain: ICOs have many bad results, investors lost their money, some start-ups have failed to deliver what they promised. Crypto value is down, therefore, it’s cheap to acquire.
• The competition level is not high, only from the technology perspective;
• The big institutions did not take the power of the market yet;
• You can get high returns on this market if you manage wisely your portfolio;
• Blockchain awareness is increasing, so people will buy more based on logical reason than trying to make a quick win without understanding the technology behind. It’s the best time to kill bad speculation.
• Technology is more and more recognized. We are not talking about the ban but regulation and application for a big project in the supply chain, food chain, bank system., etc. Look at Ripple with already 40 institutions using the platform. I bet the bank will find a way to save millions of dollars in operation transaction costs.

Now, you make your decision to invest, here are the “Hush Hush pieces of advice” to help you.

Read articles in crypto news websites and make contact with experts (consultant) that will help you in your investment strategy. It takes time to connect with the right person to get the right information amongst a plethora of advisors. You have a risk to pay for the information or analysis but nothing is free and you should take it as a training/investment to avoid you to lose.

What you can do as a minimum to invest:

• Buy some bitcoins: It is still the reference today like the gold. This a HOLD Position.
• Invest in the top 10 of crypto that deployed solutions and has a volume of transaction. In another word, the top of the cap market. Select your leaders 3 to 4 and one of them (or more) will compensate for the loss of the others. In this case, you won’t be trapped on an unpredictable event on a specific coin. And believe me, a lot of bad stuff can come up around here, from manipulation of syndicates, regulations, false information spread in the network via some crypto web news (even without their control).
• Be the “Wolf of Your Street”. Assess the market with good information (that’s the challenge) and good contacts. Your goal is to predict the best point of entering the market, predict when coin prices will start to fall and close your position.
• Patience and experience is key with a strong emotional intelligence. No panic is allowed!
• Mining is not something I recommend today as new technologies are coming to transform the activity and the industry is now managed by big unit plants.
• Invest in ICO: My favourite subject and I would say the riskier. Do your due diligence before any investment. Use some ICO listing website giving rates and calendar. Develop and expertise by looking at what happened on Startup versus their initial rating. Don’t scan all the new ICO, it’s impossible! Select the niche you like and that you know well, request expert support in the domain (reports from recognized experts)
• Option: you can use ICO Mutual funds. They are specialist in Startup and select the right gold mine to invest for you in exchange for a fee or % interest.

  Because tactics are nothing without strategy, here’s my “hush hush strategy”!