Part 1 - Sell your profits and make back the principle ASAP. (self.Particl)
What's my background? Well I was a noob with no trading experience. But I saw the bitcoin
chart and read the papers on it in early 2012. I could see the exponential tangent rise in price
pretty early based on it's perceived scarcity dynamics and valuation at $30. I swore I'd buy a $7k
worth at the time but put it off for various ultimately dumb reasons (lack of knowledge on
wallets, FUD from mainstream investor friends).

Around 10 months later I cried in my car on the way home realising if I'd committed to
that purchase I could have sold then (or even now) for $200k.

I stopped thinking about money, technology or cryptocurrency for almost 2 years and
focused on my day job (being a Doctor).

June 2016 and a random Vox article about Ethereum popped up on my radar critiquing
it's rise to $10 from 30 cents following the announcement of 'the DAO' weeks prior to
it's infamous fall.
The Ethereum concept of smart contracts had me hooked and I was thrown back into
cryptocurrency; a moon-child expecting a meteoric rise. Indeed I bought my $6.4k worth of ETH
in at $12 per piece (530 ETH total) and watched in bloom to $11.13k when ETH price hit $21
around 2 weeks later.
I didn't really understand the technology. I ignored an article Emin Gun Sirer pointing out the
security vulnerabilities in the DAO; at the time I didn't really understand what 'the DAO' (or
even a DAO) was, or it's significance.
I didn't understand what I was buying or the implications on price of anything built on top of
it, if something went wrong.
All I cared about was I had a gut feeling. Bought at the right time and felt euphoric knowing I'd
made an almost 100% return in 2 weeks.
Days after that article by Emin, the DAO hack occurred. I watched the price of ETH dive.
I had plenty of opportunities to sell at profit; at least 5 in total but I simply held my ETH
believing it's better to blindly hold.
What's my regret from this?

Not selling 225 ETH at $21: 21 x 225 = $6.4k i.e the size of my initial investment.
Imagine getting really lucky, making 10x the annual return of most S&P500 investors (10%) in 2
weeks then not removing all risk by selling enough of my winnings to make my initial
investment back when I could.

I would have eliminated all risks of trading after since that 305 ETH would have been
"free"; there would be zero overall risk to holding it for eternity!
Lesson 1: Don't blindly hold your cryptocurrency investment forever regardless of
entry. Choose it wisely and when it does rise, decide a decent enough percentage return (50100% is perfect for beginners in cryptocurrency or the risk averse) sell enough to make back
your initial investment.
...
If you don't really understand cryptocurrency or the asset you hold, I suggest a 100% return
should prompt you to consider selling half your stack; convert that half back into fiat or use it to
invest in another asset which you think is going to grow. You'll wind up diversifying your
portfolio quickly. The sell point to recover your principle doesn't have to be 100% return; it can
be much lower or much higher but ultimately you should have one because for the vast
majority of cryptocurrency tokens, blindly holding forever without checking relevant news,
price and developments on them is incredibly risky.

You'll also help keep the price up of the asset in the long term for everyone if you do it
this way - I'll explain how in subsequent lessons.
The good news is that after this happened 3 more times I finally realised I had to learn
something. That's where the next lessons come in and don't worry, it'll all tie into why I'm
posting soon enough.
Part 2:
FOMO. Fear of missing out.
So I told you about my biggest early success which turned into a mistake. Now I'll tell you of my
biggest early mistake which I turned into lots of little successes.
Bitcoin.
At the time I re-entered cryptocurrency scene I put $6.4k into ETH. The story of what happened
there was told in part 1.
Well the other thing is I believed a bitcoin breakout was occurring. I watched it unfold right in
front of my eyes.
Around mid May 2016 when I decided now is the time to get into cryptocurrency I thought;
"lets not put all my eggs in one basket. ETH may not go up for whatever reason".

1 Bitcoin was $450 then.

It had been ages since I'd looked into buying cryptocurrency but I was serious. It took
me a week to find a decent exchange to buy my ETH and BTC reliably from.

The price of bitcoin went up to $460 in that time.

I transferred my $12.8k fiat into said exchange, eager to buy my ETH and BTC in 50/50
proportions.

The damn transfer took almost 2 weeks to clear.

The price of bitcoin went up to $540 by the time the funds had arrived in the exchange.
I said to myself. "Nah, it's too expensive now. It's not going to go up further".

But it did.

Fear bit me. I placed a buy order at $580. Fear bit me again: I cancelled it immediately.

The price went up over the week.
FUCK. It's $685 now... I have to buy. It'll keep going up! But it's so expensive now I wont put too
much in. 1 bitcoin bought.

1 week later on June 16th the price of bitcoin reached $760
It's going to break the $1200 high. I don't know why it's going up. Something about China and
Brexit in the cryptopress. I don't fully understand it but I see a trend... It'll keep going.

I buy 7 more bitcoin. I relax and ignore the price for a few days.
I read some vague bitcoin 2016 price predictions going as high as $5000 - No reasons given but
it gives me hope and makes me complacent.

June 20th, correction. Now worth $730.
SHIT. No hold. This is just a stall, it'll keep going up!

June 22nd: 1btc = $622.
Oh shit.

After several days deliberating I eventually sell cashing some my bitcoin back into fiat at
a total $700 loss.
...
FOMO. I hope this story demonstrates it nicely. This is the psychology of the uneducated trader.
The guy who doesn't live by the minute staring at the charts. The lazy guy who doesn't learn
about trader psychology, ignores the mainstream news cycle, has bad press sources and listens
to endless noise without filtering it out to find out the real factors that drive price rises and
falls.
The market is mostly irrational until you realise how rationale it is (i.e. you learn what factors
make it tick).
Every subsequent lesson is used to address FOMO.


FOMO is a form of greed and when timed right and decisively can lead to great sudden
gains.
However when FOMO is timed wrong and indecisively, hesitantly then it can lead to
great losses.
Greed is good - it got you here. Greed is bad; it can ruin you.
You need enough greed to make the jump, and to make it early and fearlessly. That's how you
make the most out of other people's FOMO.
...
FOMO can be good... It can be bad
I have made 5 significant trades based off FOMO in my early days of trading. 3 of them went
bad. 2 of them went good. Lets analyse them:
-NAVcoin-
-My friend told me about the NAV. I didn't really understand it. I read the website and
whitepaper and felt unimpressed. The price was up though so I bought some anyway. I bought
close to the peak price at 0.000097btc/NAV, held it a few days before it corrected to
0.000089btc/NAV. I should have sold it immediately.

It fell to 0.00004btc/NAV before I sold some. I'm still a bag holder believing some
unlucky soul will someday pump this 'altcoin' to 0.0001btc/NAV at which point I will
reduce my position.

To reiterate my disdain for NAV: Their website claims they were the world's first
anonymous cryptocurrency at a time when XDN, Monero, Shadowcash, Boolberry and
many other anon coins had been around for years. That sort of outright lie should be
seen as an immediate red flag and anti-buy signal.
-Synereo AMP
My friend who is pretty good at day trading altoins asked me about this during their
second crowd sale when price was 0.00032 btc/AMP which I bought 0.24 btc of ($150 at
the time).

Again I didn't really understand the technology or concept. I read the whitepaper, still
didn't get it and I wasn't very impressed with what I'd read.
I ignored the fact that the tokens represented IOU's for a to be built product (with no
alpha/beta).
I assumed that just because the developer had an association and working relationship
with Vitalik Buterin (inventor of Ethereum) that the coin could be a good long term hold.
I was overdiversified at this point and I didn't have time to follow the AMP news
cycle. The price eventually halved to 0.00016btc/AMP one day. I read the rumours of a
fallout between the lead developer and CEO and instead of ignoring the real and
probable possibility of that leading to a company breakdown (narcissists who air their
dirty laundry so publicly are not fit to run a company unless it's into the ground).
I decided to stick to hopium and hold assuming a resolution would be reached and the
team would keep working forward together.





I should have sold again when I read the transcripts of the arguments between Dor and
Greg's skype and realised these guys had the psychology of little children and beyond
blind hope I really didn't see a resolution was possible. Perhaps someday that AMP price
would recover.

I capitulated and sold the AMP at 0.00004btc/AMP i.e. $30 or net loss of $120.
Can you see the mistakes I made there? All noob errors, assumptions and emotional hopium
ignoring my wilful ignorance and lack of underlying belief. Thank god I hadn't bought more
and placed FOMO money only in proportion to my belief in the project it was representing i.e.
here I spent very little of my total capital pool in cryptocurrency.
-XAURUM
My friend who is really good at pointing out shitcoins during FOMO asked me about this.
It billed itself as, "the golden blockchain".

I read the whitepaper and went, "what the fuck, this doesn't make any sense, they talk
about exchanging their coin for physical gold but don't explain where they get the gold
from or how they can afford it." - It was the worst white paper I've ever read and
sounded really scammy.

I buy some anyway thinking it will probably get pumped at some point, and maybe
because the team are Eastern European that there is some EE language whitepaper
somewhere that better explains how this coin can increase it's gold value over time.
Once again I was hooked on hopium.

3 month later it loses 33% it's value and I sell all at a 33% loss. Again thank god I bought
0.15btc worth
-MONERO/XMR
I got really lucky with this one.

I liked the idea of an anon coin and got in <24 hours of the announcement their
currency would be endorsed and used by Alphabay and Oasis (darknet markets).

I could see the value of a truly anonymous currency in darknet market trading.

I held through the pump to the peak having bought a decent stack at $2 and $4 with
ecstasy to see it reach $15 per XMR. This trade combined with my next cancelled out
almost every loss I had incurred.

I figured I'd hold this for the long term. I downloaded the monero simplewallet as I
heard of issues with their 3rd party wallets and was not happy leaving assets on a
exchange if I did not have to.

It took me a 2 days to synchronise the network on first go. I hated using a command line
interface and realised that the average DNM user would not use monero to transact
with until an integrated GUI was released.

I had second thoughts when I realised that Darknet markets get taken down or
'disappear' (usually as an exit scam with all their customers money) all the time. Silk
road may have built bitcoin's fiat base but even it went down after 3 years via the FBI. I
resolved to take profit then at around $13 per XMR before the shit hit the proverbial
fan.

During this time my XMR node crashed and I had to resync from scratch just to access
my funds. From the point of transferring from exchange to wallet and back, my funds
had been locked out for almost a week.

I wasn't going to spend 10 XMR to use their rumoured to be buggy on-line wallet either.

I finally sold a bunch at $11 and again at $8.80 not long before the Oasis Darknet market
decided to exit scam with a bunch of their customers bitcoin and XMR and crash the
price down to $4 again.

In hindsight holding it would have been fine. But going back to lesson 1; always make
sure you sell to earn back your principle first; In cryptocurrency 100% plus return
should always make you consider selling half your stack.

As the XMR trader sub once stickied: "making money in cryptocurrency is easy. Keeping
it is the hard part".
-Shadowcash-Once again, I got really lucky. I was in the right place at the right time.

I noticed this one shooting up whilst looking at the charts and decided to buy a bunch.
My entry was $0.70 per SDC. It went to $1.30

My only regret was not committing more bitcoin to it with my gut feeling especially
when the trend chart was pointing out the obvious (a bloody rocket up in price).

I subsequently read about the Shadowcash project. Learnt about Umbra. Downloaded,
used and really liked Umbra and decided that there is real potential for a fully
anonymous, double escrow marketplace with private chat client that exists integrated
to and is secured by it's own blockchain.

The Umbra client worked like a dream. It synched in <2 hours, transactions were almost
instantaenous and the whole thing was very easy to use. It was easy to see how a
marketplace platform could be integrated and very easy to see how this could become
the de facto marketplace to replace traditional DNM models that existed on centralised
servers (and were thus that much more vulnerable).

I bought more SDC (a lot more) at $1.30 and decided to hold and stake it.

I read more about the economic PoS model and SDC's supply dynamics and decided to
hold even more.

I am very happy holding SDC to this day. The reasons why I will elucidate in further
articles.
...
Lessons:
 When you are in the right place at the right time, commit fully.
 As soon as other people say FOMO, it's already too late.
 As soon as you feel FOMO lasting more than an hour it's too late.
 You can lose BIG with FOMO so if you don't understand what you are buying and why,
but merely following a chart then always buy small to minimise potential losses and
maximise reasonable safe gains.

If you don't understand something or don't believe in it never blindly hold it after
you've bought it regardless of whether you are selling at a loss, or a smaller gain than
you desire. Sell those altcoins sooner rather than later to buy altcoins you do
understand and believe in and you'll regret it way less further down the line.

There is always opportunity elsewhere or at another time if you are looking or willing to
be patient.
...
I no longer join FOMO rallies. I've seen them end too badly, suddenly and unless I know the coin
well I often time entry too late. Most of the time you will too.
Yes you might get lucky but it's better to know when to buy a cryptocurrency coin early and
why. It's far better to know what makes a cryptocurrency work; what gives it value for the long
term; what makes it worth holding in spite of price corrections.

When Warren Buffett talks about buying something and holding it, never forget he also
means buy it at it's intrinsic value or less. Once you've bought anything above it's
intrinsic value (i.e. more than what it is truly worth), you are subject to risk of loss and
the subsequent fears of loss with panic selling, anxiety, panic buying and missing out on
golden opportunities being a consequence.
With this in mind the next lessons will deal with cryptocurrency valuations, price metrics and
identifying coins of value, worth holding. We'll eventually talk about crypto strategies that allow
you not to worry about screen checking the exchange every minute as well as one's that do.
By the end of this I hope you'll know enough to pursue any mix of trading/investor strategy you
want with improved success!
Part 3a
Introductions: I'm joskye. A cryptocurrency investor and holder.
...
Hi again. This is the third part in our ongoing series on how to trade better and determine
intelligent investments in cryptocurrency for the future.

In part 1 I talked about the importance of selling enough to make back your principle
investment i.e. if you buy something at $300 and it rises to $600 in value, sell $300 to
eliminate all future risk of personal loss e.g. if that asset falls to $150 in value after
(which can happen easily since suchvolatility is very common in cryptocurrency). In
cryptocurrency trading/investments a 100% return of investment should always
prompt you to consider selling 1/2 your stack.

In part 2 I talked about the psychology behind fear of missing out; i.e. the dangers of
buying during a sudden rise in an asset's price and how to make the most of such rallies
whilst minimising the risks involved in joining them.
In part 3 I will now discuss Cryptocurrency valuations, price metrics and identifying coins of
value, worth holding:
...
Part 3a:
What makes a coin worth holding: The value proposition
What makes anything worth holding? How much of themselves is a person willing to put into it
- that's how much.
Cryptocurrency is largely driven by faith. It is a speculative enterprise i.e. people mostly put
money into cryptocurrencies believing they will go up in value in the future; their plan to sell at
a higher price when it does.
Currently most cryptocurrencies serve no function than being currencies in themselves.
Unfortunately these currencies are largely not recognised by governments, most institutional
investors or companies are legitimate stores of value or legitimate currencies of transaction. As
such legislation and rules around the world regarding them vary considerably and are often
absent.
There are very few cryptocurrencies that have legitimised backing, are insured or supported by
enterprises that are insured for their loss and essentially there is little to protect you if you lose
money through them.
So why do people bother putting money into cryptocurrencies it in the first place?

Well some of them do have a good use or potential for good use beyond speculation.
If the present and future value of a cryptocurrency is driven purely by speculation then you are
essentially gambling by putting your money to buy that coin and joining the pool of other
gamblers who are doing so. You are essentially joining a ponzi scheme and waiting game hoping
you've gotten in early enough and convinced enough people to buy more of the asset you hold
at slightly higher prices until a price is reached that you can cash out at (or until that thing
becomes so big that everyone starts using it as their store of value).
This type of dynamic essentially underpins the mentality of most investments and trades
i.e. buy low and sell high. I'd like to add buy early for investors since buying during a low in an
already established asset may be setting yourself up for being forced to sell at a lower low later
(especially if you don't understand the fundamentals of that asset).
If however the present or future value of a cryptocurrency is driven by some service other
than speculation which can attract and drive fiat currency into it's ecosystem then it is
potentially valuable.
I.e. will people actually use their USD/Yuan/Euro/GBP/Yen/INR etc to actually purchase the coin
in question to do something useful with it (other than gamble on it's future price).
There are some cryptocurrencies which satisfy this criteria:
...
Bitcoin
It is not a currency, it is a remittance system and store of value. It has a reputation increasingly
to being seen as a digital version of gold.

It is similar to gold but unlike gold it has no direct physical presence. Gold and is mainly
a store of value (rather than it's use in jewellery, cosmetics, therapeutics or electronics
which forms a minority of it's market cap) but Gold's physical properties make it
vulnerable to seizure, taxation and legislation. Gold also has storage fee's and is difficult
to transport; it's speculative value as a store of value is derived from faith in it and it's
cultural history.

Unlike gold, Bitcoin is comparatively extremely easy to transport in very large quantities,
very easily over short spaces of time. It has sufficient money (USD, Euro, Yuan, Yen, INR
etc) to give it decent liquidity i.e. enough people are using it now that if you bought
$10,000 worth of bitcoin today, chances are good (that because enough people are also
transacting bitcoin at less, simillar and greater quantities) you could sell it somewhere
else straight away for $10,000.

Because of these reasons Bitcoin's price also fluctuates in a manner similar to Gold i.e.
conditions which create global or regional economic or geopolitical uncertainty favor an
increase in it's price whilst conditions which favor global or regional economic stability
and growth favor a drop in it's price.

Bitcoin however is too slow to be a useful currency. It takes 10 minutes for a transaction
to be processed and can take an hour for said transaction to be cleared. Obviously if you
were waiting to buy a pint of milk from the local shop, you wouldn't do it with
Bitcoin because you'd be waiting around a very long time for it to clear. However for
much larger transactions where you might not want to wait days (e.g. bank transfers)
but can afford to wait a few hours, Bitcoin is surprisingly versatile.
Bitcoin has the cultural and historical advantage of being the first cryptocurrency. It is also still
the largest cryptocurrency by a long way with the largest marketcap i.e. price per bitcoin [$952
as of writing] x the number of bitcoin in circulation [16,074,687] which is $15.3 billion. Compare
to it's next biggest competitor Ethereum which has a marketcap of $700 million (i.e. only 4.57%
of Bitcoin's).

Gold in contrast has a market cap of $6.8 trillion i.e $6800 billion i.e. Bitcoin has a
market cap that is only 0.22% of Gold!

The upside to this is that if more people feel that Bitcoin is a legitimate alternative to
gold, demand for Bitcoin will surge and since the Bitcoin supply is relatively limited, it's
price will shoot up massively - There is a big chunk of money waiting to be gained by
eating into the Gold market cap!

If you believe Bitcoin could replace Gold as a more portable, cultural store of value then
invest in it. However I warn you there are problems because the software behind bitcoin
needs significant upgrades to support increased transaction loads without breaking and
due to various reasons (mostly self interest among people who profit from producing
Bitcoin) this is being significantly delayed and possibly not happening. I am uncertain if
Bitcoin will continue to remain a viable investment in the long term if it does not
address these issues.
Bitcoin's value proposition is that it is a store of value. It may not be able to sustain this
without significant upgrades to it's underlying software.
...
Monero (XMR)
Bitcoin does not have anonymity inherently built into it's software. Therefore if you buy and sell
Bitcoin especially on cryptocurrency exchanges (where user registration is required), it is
possible to trace whom Bitcoin is being transferred from and to.

In contrast Monero is fully anonymous. You cannot see whom Monero is sent from and
to, nor can you see how much Monero has been sent.

It has good liquidity, is actively trading and is gaining increasing recognition and respect
from cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

Obviously this is useful if you wish to transact in things you do not wish seen!

Otherwise it essentially has many properties similar to Bitcoin.
For this reason I see Monero as Bitcoin + anonymity. I.e. it's value proposition is as store of
hidden wealth. I also believe it does not have the issues that bitcoin does namely, same level of
mainstream recognition, spotlight of regulatory awareness and developers do seem to be more
focused on achieving better scalability and transaction times (it already does 10-20 minute
verification time vs bitcoins 1 hour) which gives it better potential as a currency presently
compared to Bitcoin.

Although there are a lot of illegitimate uses for private transactions and value storage,
there is a far bigger global market for legitimate, fully secure and anonymous
transactions for large existing financial institutions (e.g. investment banks and the
international services that provide settlement between them).

This sort of market cap dwarfs gold. However this type of up-scaled usability will not
occur until the transaction verification times are much faster (nanoseconds) and the
protocol is enhanced to cope with much larger transactions volumes and frequency at
that speed; We are a long way off that.
I do believe fiat stored in Bitcoin will gradually transfer into Monero boosting it's value. I am
not sure Monero though can presently bring fresh fiat currency (USD, Yuan etc) into it's
ecosystem beyond outsider speculation in future price.

However it's value went up massively when the largest current darknet markets (a type
of anonymous marketplace where illegal goods and services are often traded) Alphabay
and Oasis announced their endorsement and use of Monero. This has given Monero a
first mover advantage and attract scores of speculators into it's ecosystem.

This is also where it's major present use case and value proposition is; in the
settlement of anonymous transactions on darknet markets and a potential successor
to Bitcoin. Darknet markets are what drew fiat money into Bitcoin and helped make it
the store of value it is now.
If those darknet markets crash, XMR's value could still go down considerably (until it
matures and gains a larger market cap)... and it did when when Oasis market
disappeared along with it's customers money.

It is not unique in it's function or potential value proposition. My warning about holding
Monero for the long term is that it has competition for it's function not just from Bitcoin itself
but from other anonymous coins such as Zcash, DASH (which provides instantaneous
settlement) and SDC. Perhaps more importantly, Ethereum (ETH) is now planning to implement
optional anonymity (via zSNARKs) in it's transaction network; if it does when combined with
Ethereum's own functionality and well defined development roadmap (that will likely several
second verification times in late 2017) would render XMR potentially redundant.

The other issue I currently have with Monero is that it uses Proof of Work (PoW)
algorithm which increases it's transaction verification times, and encourages constant
selling on creation (with formation of mining cartels and subsequent minority led
development and price manipulation) rather than accumulation and holding.

This is in direct contrast to the Proof of Stake (PoS) or PoS/PoW hybrid model of coin
creation. The differences will be elaborated later (and more thoroughly in a separate
article but essentially I believe PoS encourages holding rather than selling leading to
better price stability, reduced volatility, gradual increase in value over time and better
resistance to price manipulation (including leveraged short selling) by day traders.

Indeed if Monero switched to PoS or hybrid PoW/PoS it would eliminate almost all the
issues I currently have with it (by making it a more stable store of value); incidentally I
have similar issues with Bitcoin.
...
Ethereum (ETH)
The first cryptocurrency which was built with the specific intent of incorporating 'smart
contracts' into it's platform.

Simplified, smart contracts allow for much more sophisticated settlement systems and
formulae than simple transfer to and from orders and in the future provide the means
through which access to these services and indeed services themselves can exist solely
on the Ethereum blockhain.

If we work on the premise that blockchains (the technology that underlies most
cryptocurrencies) whose entirety of verification is distributed across multiple computers
around the world are inherently more secure, stable and harder to take down or
maliciously alter than traditional centralised databases, then there is obvious value to
institutions who may wish to use such systems to improve the existing security of their
services.

More importantly smart contracts allow for trustless settlements i.e. settlements which
do not necessarily require third party verification. This means that it could remove the
need (and thus expense) of middlemen in a number of existing financial and nonfinancial real world settlement systems.

It has extremely good developer support and a growing base of large companies (e.g. JP
Morgan, Santander, Microsoft) willing to support it or using it. It is also functional and
versatile with a clear development roadmap that includes PoS (a system that I believe
encourages a gradually increasing or otherwise stable price), improved scalability and
most importantly sub-second transaction times.

There are also services already being built on top of Ethereum scheduled for launch by
mid 2017 which in themselves could draw fiat currency into the Ethereum ecosystem
(although this may take a few years for the effect to become fully apparent and some or
indeed all of them may not succeed).

As such in it's present form it's price is a speculative figure derived from the above
potential.
The value proposition for Ethereum is that it allows for complex, trustless settlement systems
to be built on it. This is a huge deal because the scope of applications is wide and although the
technology needs to mature (to support greater transaction volume, frequency and more
secure functionality) the sheer amount of fiat such a platform could attract through conversion
of traditional centralised settlement and contract services to more secure decentralised
platforms is very huge.

This is such that many blockchains such as Hyperledger, Lisk, Counterparty, Rootstock,
Tezos and Synereo are being built to try and compete with Ethereum.

Additionally in late 2017, Etherum plans to switch to PoS from Proof of Work mining
(the means through which the Ethereum blockchain is verified and new Ethereum is
minted to Proof of Stake which in my opinion will make Ethereum an amazing store of
value.
...
PARTICL (PART) (formerly Shadowcash SDC)
The value proposition is a double escrow, fully anonymous, decentralised privacy platform
which incorporates private chat, private marketplace and secure, trustless private settlement
system into one platform that is fully integrated into it's own blockchain.



There is no other blockchain that is attempting to do this right now (there are some
non-anonymous decentralised marketplaces).
If Particl launches it's marketplace and it's marketplace becomes active, it will generate
revenue and draw fiat money direct into the Particl ecosystem.
This will give it something that many cryptocurrencies currently do not actually
have: A valuation fully independent of speculation. At this point Particl will have a basic
calculable and true intrinsic value measurable in the amount of fiat currency (USD, Yuan,
Euro etc) flowing through and stored in it. To the financially trained it will have a real
P/E ratio.
Particl has multiple features that make it an excellent store of value: Low coin supply,
potential for great demand, near instantaneous transaction verification times, ability to earn
interest for simply holding it.

Indeed one of the biggest immediate factors that made me switch to Particl was using
their devs previous Umbra client for Shaodwcash to store and stake my SDC which
allows me to earn effective interest on my holdings by leaving the Umbra software
running on my laptop.

Since the Particl network is verified via Proof of stake (PoS) rather than Proof of Work
(PoW); doing this does not use up valuable CPU/GPU resources on my 3 year old laptop
(which I would have to if I attempted to mine Monero or Ethereum via their current
PoW algorithms) allowing me to continue using my laptop for work and gaming. I am
not penalised for having a slow computer. I am instead rewarded for holding my
SDC to verify it's network rather than wasting computing time and electricity to mine
and sell it.

I mentioned a major issue I had with Monero was it's usability and the difficult usability
of darknet markets in general.
Particl is incredibly easy to use and is heavily focused on usability. This is absolutely essential
to it's end users: customers who seek convenient easy and speedy secure anonymous
transaction. This will be a dream come true for traditional users of darknet markets.
To explain why lets elaborate on traditional darknet markets where in order to transact
anonymously you have to:
1. Download the TOR browser.
2. Learn how to use it.
3. Buy XMR or Bitcoin.
4. Learn how to transact with these coins *safely* (yes this is still an issue with XMR in spite of
it's built in privacy).
5. Learn how to and where to find reliable secure darknet markets.
6. Create accounts on these markets to access them *and*
7. Have faith that the websites and the highly centralised (and thus much more vulnerable)
servers hosting those markets you use will not get shut down, not disappear with your money
and not betray your transaction details and potentially identities to the authorities should they
be infiltrated by them.
Whereas with Particl's market place this process will become:
1. Download the Particl client.
2. Buy some PART on an exchange and transfer it to your Umbra client.
3. Browse the Particl marketplace and transact securely, safely and anonymously.

That's pretty convenient by comparison.

Unlike traditional darknet markets, Particl does not exist on a centralised server but
rather utilities the blockchain technology to exist simultaneously as a whole on all the
computers supporting it. This makes it inherently more secure against traditional forms
of cyber attacks and account hacks that apply to traditional web based services.

Never underestimate the effect of convenience and security in bringing more people
(and fiat currency) into cryptocurrency. PART could be a big gateway through which this
happens.

Indeed the Particl roadmap includes mobile stakable clients and other features designed
for it's easy and widespread distribution and use.

I believe because of this Particl could create a paradigm shift in the way anonymous
transactions and settlements occur.
In summary I think Particl can be a very useful application as a privacy platform for private
communications and transactions.
...
ICONOMI (ICN)
 In it's simplest form it is an index fund of certain cryptocurrencies i.e. it represents
several million dollars worth of USD and Euro that have been converted into a mixture
of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Dash, Maidsafecoin among a few others. The value of
this portfolio will fluctuate and it's composition will periodically change depending on
whether the coins it represent fail to or achieve certain criteria.

It will also incorporates a fund management platform that is to say in layman's terms, it
will be an air B&B of investment advisors and fund managers in cryptocurrency.
Those two points constitute it's value proposition. By nature of the way it works it has an easily
identifiable P/E ratio based on the amount used to create the fund ($10.5 million) against the
current value of that fund based on it's

If you believe the total marketcap (total valuation) of crptocurrency is going to boom
through 2017 and the next few years (and it has massive room to do so given the
marketcap and limitations of Gold along with emergent non-speculative usability of
certain cryptocurrencies) then ICN is possibly a very good token to buy and simply hold.

The price of ICN is currently $0.33. Based on it's initial valuation of $0.14 per token this
would give it an approximate P/E ratio of 2.36. This is falsely assuming the total fiat
value of the index has stayed static.

In reality the ICN index has increased 30% in value so as of writing it's true P/E ratio is
($0.33 / (0.14*1.3)) = 1.81.

Compared to other currencies where the intrinsic P/E ratio is infinity this is incredible
and represents amazing value for money even when compared against traditional stocks
(e.g. GOOG shares as of writing have a P/E ratio of 33).

So for absolute beginners, the risk averse and long term investors, ICN may be the
safest and most profitable token to invest in over the long term.
Risks to be aware of are the possibility of regulation restricting or banning the ICN token,
a general decline in cryptocurrency marketcap and poor performance in multiple coins
composing the ICN index which would bring the value of ICN down significantly.

...
Summary lessons
The first rule in investing or trading in a given cryptocoin is deciding if it has a value proposition:
1. *Can it draw fiat currency (USD, Euro, Yuan etc) in such a way as to give it a valuation that is
fully independent of pure speculation?*
2. *Is it unique?*
3. *Is it rare?* A limited supply with a low or negative inflation rate will lead to increasing price
as demand goes up.
4. Are there significant risks associated with the value proposition?

Many cryptocurrencies on the market are both rare and unique but have no viable nonspeculative way of drawing fresh fiat into their ecosystem: I believe these coins are
potentiallly more prone to failure in the long term.

Many coins attempt to pass off their value proposition as rarity alone. This is not a
unique feature; don't be fooled by one's that claim this either; it is the most common
scam in cryptocurrency.
The emergence of regulation in cryptocurrencies is an inevitability that will occur as it's
popularity and marketcap grows. Be very aware of the sorts of regulations that could be
applied to the cryptocurrencies you invest or trade (including regional and international
bans) in and consider carefully the impact of those regulations on that currency's
marketcap and price!


There are certain other cryptocurrencies and tokens I haven't mentioned. Mainly due to
time and also because I have some reservations about them. I would however
encourage you to look at tokens such as Augur (REP), Dash (DASH), Digix (DGD), Waves
(WAVES), Factom (FCT), BlockCDN which I believe have interesting value propositions
(and thus real long term value) and compare them against other tokens such as eBitz,
Xaurum, Potcoin, onecoin and Nav (which have a number of red flags).
In the next article I will cover lesson 3b: Price metrics and valuations. It will be much shorter I
promise but equally informative and we will cover topics such as price determination, impact of
speculation, price manipulation, whales and their impact and the impact of bitcoin on the
entire cryptocurrency ecosystem!
...
Part 3b:


In part 1 I talked about the importance of selling enough to make back your principle
investment i.e. if you buy something at $300 and it rises to $600 in value, sell $300 to
eliminate all future risk of personal loss e.g. if that asset falls to $150 in value after
(which can happen easily since suchvolatility is very common in cryptocurrency). In
cryptocurrency trading/investments a 100% return of investment should always
prompt you to consider selling 1/2 your stack.
In part 2 I talked about the psychology behind fear of missing out; i.e. the dangers of
buying during a sudden rise in an asset's price and how to make the most of such rallies
whilst minimising the risks involved in joining them.

In part 3a I discussed The importance of a value proposition and the absolute need for
any cryptocurrency you invest in to already generate or have the potential to generate
revenue in a manner completely independent of it's speculative value as dictated by
daily market prices.
Part 3b continues where I left off with a discussion about price metrics specifically, what
determines the price and the importance of liquidity:
...
The day traders:
As I mentioned in my previous article, as of writing almost every cryptocurrency is determined
purely by speculative value.



Thus the absolute price of a given cryptocurrency is determined solely by the day
traders and specifically the last price it was agreed that currency would be sold at with
confirmation of that price by a buyer who bought it.
People say lots of things determine the price; marketcap, liquidity, value proposition,
revenues generated by the coin, the number of said coin in circulation but ultimately it
comes down to the number of buyers and number of sellers competing for that coin.
Perhaps the other thing is the size of said market relative to the money held by the
players in it.
For instance in cryptocurrency Bitcoin is still the biggest player in the game. It carries a per unit
price of $900 per coin. There are currently 16,090,137 (16 million) coins in circulation giving it a
total marketcap value of [$900 x 16090137 =] $14481123300 or 14.48 billion USD.

This is 85% of the current cryptocurrency marketcap. (The total marketcap of all
cryptocurrencies as of writing is 17.17 billion USD.)

Compare and contrast Shadowcash (SDC) which has a unit price of $1.27 with 6,616814
coins in circulation giving it a total marketcap value of [$1.27 x 6616814=] $8392766 or
8.39 million USD.

Thus Shadowcash in comparison to Bitcoin is a tiny cap of the cryptocurrency sphere.
Shadowcash has a total value that is only 0.06% of Bitcoin when comparing marketcap's.
Shadowcash looks even more meagre compared to the total cryptocurrency marketcap with
only 0.048% of the total cryptocurrency sphere.
To any Shadowcash holders despairing at this point, relax. There are over 707 cryptocurrencies
trading as of writing and SDC holds the 27th ranking in terms of market cap. In such a
competitive field, filled with scams that's pretty good. Moreso when you consider that SDC is a
legitimate technology and is currently probably very undervalued.
...
Lets look at the rich list for bitcoin:

The top holder has 124,956 Bitcoin valued at $1,12460400 or 1.24 billion USD.

The top SDC holder has 1027261 SDC valued at $1,304621 or 1.4 million USD.

Thus the wealth of the top SDC holder is 1.16% that of the wealth of the top Bitcoin
holder.
Why did I just talk about this?
 Well they say that a big fish can easily occupy, make a splash in and empty a small pond
just by diving in.
In cryptocurrency I see this happening on the markets all the time. Indeed market
manipulation effects every single cryptocurrency eventually.
...
Market manipulation!
Large holders of valuable, high marketcap coins will often make multiple small volume
purchases of less valuable, low marketcap coins. Often this will follow announcements
regarding developments in that low marketcap coin.

An example of low volume ordering is buying 1 SDC at $1.20, 0.5 SDC at $1.2001, 5 SDC
at $1.2010, 3 SDC at $1.21, 10 SDC at $1.22 and 0.11 SDC at $1.24, but then leaving
someone else to fill the order for 100 SDC priced at $1.242.

Thus by spending $23.77, in low volume purchases the buyer can raise the market cap
of SDC from ($1.20 * 6,616814 coins) $7.94 million to (1.24 * 6,616814) $8.20
million! (4.2% increase).
Low volume buying in a market with low daily trading volume can gradually drive up the price
attracting an influx of buyers into that coin; often they will make larger volume purchases of it
which helps drive up the price much further. This will trigger a further chain of buyers
experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out, detailed in Part 2) who will drive up the price even
further. The price will pump. Often will smaller cap cryptocurrencies this may result in a
sudden 20, 40, 60 or even +100% increase in value often over a very short time space (1-2 days,
1-2 weeks maximum).


Often the original purchaser who triggered these events will have accumulated a lot of
said cryptocurrency cheaply prior to or during the early stages of the pump and will
wind up selling the majority of his/her's purchases when the price reaches a
peak; usually when the daily/hourly trading volume on that coin starts to decline but
sufficient buyers are still available.
This results in a sudden or often more gradual dump in the coins value, usually by
falling by 75% or more of the rise.
The only way to discern if the sudden rise in coin value is due to pre-rigged market
manipulation is to look at:
 the value proposition of that coin (discussed extensively in part 3a of this guide)
 the order book
 the depth chart
 the pattern of change on daily trading volume (and liquidity)
 the price charts (15 minute, hourly, 1 day, 3 day, 7 day, 1 month, 6 months)
 the news cycle relevant to that coin
You are looking for organic, gradual growth based on a solid value proposition. Sudden large
spikes in value should make you pause and wonder if it's worth waiting for a gradual correction
(organic drop) in price before entering your buy order.
Do not fall for a pump and dump. Stick to the lessons covered in previous parts of this guide
(especially part 3a and 2) and you will be much less likely to lose money in the long run trading
and investing in cryptocurrencies.
...
The pattern of change on daily trading volume, the order book and liquidity:
Lets look at SDC and Bitcoin again. This time we are going to compare the daily trading volume
(last 24 hours) in USD.


In the last 24 hours (dated 8th Jan 2016), SDC traded a total volume of $26,033. This is
0.01% of all USD daily trading volume on exchanges and only 0.39% of the total
marketcap of SDC.
In contrast Bitcoin traded $163,306,776 ($0.16 Billion) over the same 24 hour period.
This is 76.15% of USD daily trading volume on exchanges and only 1.12% of it's total
marketcap.
I'd just like to use this opportunity to point out and reinforce the idea that day traders not
holders dictate the daily price of an asset. I'd also like to point out daily global trading volume
on Forex is $4800 billion which makes Bitcoin a very small fish in the broader arena of global
finance and trade i.e. Bitcoin is still very vulnerable to all the price manipulation tactics and
liquidity issues I am going to be describing in this article by bigger players with richer pockets.

The numbers means that just because the marketcap of Bitcoin is $14 billion, that does
not mean that there is truly $14 billion worth of fiat currencies (USD, Yuan, Euro etc) in
Bitcoin; the total fiat volume is merely an estimate based on current price and number of
Bitcoin in circulation.
The daily trading volume also gives you an idea of how much fiat currency you can invest into
a given cryptocurrency before you suddenly shift the price.

For example based on the 24 hour daily trading volume for SDC I know that if I blindly
spent $15,000 (57% of the daily trading volume) buying SDC without any regard to the
price, I can be confident that I will likely cause the price of SDC to go up significantly.

In contrast spending $15,000 to buy Bitcoin (0.0092% of the daily trading volume)
without regards to it's price, I can be confident that it will not likely cause a significant
rise in the daily spot price of Bitcoin.
A sudden rise in coin price heavily out of proportion to the rise in daily trading volume should
be the first sign to alert you to a pump & dump scam.

It implies a low volume trading at low prices to trick the unseasoned trader to
perpetuate higher volume, high price buys.
 If daily trading volume cannot organically increase to sustain the price, it will eventually
fall when the original pumper (or group of pumpers) sell to take their profits.
Daily trading volume should show a steady increase over time with sustained buy support at
new price levels; this is a good marker of organic, sustainable growth.
 This does not always have to be the case! Sufficiently large price movements (several
1000%) can significantly raise the next absolute low in price for the mid-term (months)
even if that is several 100% lower than the peak!

Conversely declining trading volumes indicate loss of interest in the coin and a price that
is potentially more prone to and at risk of price manipulation with smaller amounts of
fiat/bitcoin (than if higher daily trading volumes existed).

Finally the fact that daily fiat trading volume for Bitcoin and Shadowcash is such a small
percentage of it's total marketcap reinforces the idea that price is set by day traders not
by holders!
...
For more detail you can now look at the depth chart:
The depth chart is very useful to know how much fiat currency is required to cause the spot
price of a given cryptocurrency to rise or fall by a given amount.

The depth chart groups different bids (buy orders) and asks (sell orders) by price and
volume e.g. 17.739 bitcoin worth of SDC are currently on sale at poloniex for
0.00117500 bitcoin each ($1.07 per coin) and 0.149 Bitcoin are on sale at the current
spot price of 0.00135750 Bitcoin ($1.24)

So as of writing, I can see (from the charts) to raise the price of SDC from 0.00135750
Bitcoin ($1.24) to 0.00181381 Bitcoin ($1.66) I would need to spend 26 Bitcoin ($23783).
NB the price of most cryptocurrencies is expressed in Bitcoin because it has the largest market
cap and daily trading volume of all cryptocurrencies by a very large margin and because with a
few exceptions (Ethereum, Monero) most cryptocurrencies do not have routes to directly
purchase via fiat currency without first purchasing Bitcoin.
 The depth chart shows me how many coins I can buy without significantly increasing
the price and how many coins I can sell within a given price range. It gives me an idea
of the liquidity and volatility of the market i.e. if I buy SDC right now and need to sell it
later today or tomorrow for fiat, what is the realistic probability I can get my entire
amount in fiat returned to me in the amount originally spent.
Liquidity is super important. People often complain about a market lacking liquidity but that is
often because they are trading in fiat volumes which far exceed the daily trading fiat volumes of
the cryptocurrency they are referring to. If you are investing or trading in a cryptocurrency,
always factor in the your personal liquidity and need for liquidity relative to that of the
cryptocurrency you are investing in. In other words don't expect to make a profit next day
selling 'cryptocurrency x' if the size your single buy order composes >90% of the buy orders on
the market for 'cryptocurrency x' that day (indeed in such a scenario be very prepared to sell at
a loss next day if you absolutely have to)!

The depth chart also gives me an idea of where significant supports exists (price zones
with large buy orders relative to the depth chart) to determine the true base price (in
conjunction with daily trading volume) and where significant resistances exist (price
zones with large sell orders relative to the rest of the depth chart) to determine what
the majority of sellers think the coin is truly worth. Be wary though as buy walls (large
supports) and sell walls (large resistances) can be moved at any time.
There are certain patterns on a depth chart that make me believe a significant, sustained price
rise is imminent: One example occurs when there is a very large volume of buy orders (>25% of
total buy volume within 5% of current price) very close to the current (spot) price, and
a very large number of sell orders close to but significantly above the spot price (approx 25%
total sell volume within 10% of current price) and especially if the total buy order volume is a
significantly higher percentage than it has previously been. This simply indicates high demand at
current price which may soon outstrip supply. Again I stress that these patterns can be
manipulated easily by wealthy traders.

It is up to you to study the depth charts and discern the patterns. You will learn more
about day trading this way.
...
The order book is another way of looking at the depth chart and allows you to see the specific
transactions occurring that compose daily trading volume by the second!
I find it useful because it allows me to identify:

If there is a string of low volume orders that can be filled to pump the price (or
conversely a string of low volume sell orders to dump it). This can play on the
psychology of the entire market as many people aren't simply aware of how the
manipulations occur; most people simply look at the price!

Where resistances to price change occur and how much money it will take to break
them (i.e. if I am day trading to make a profit via pumping, is it worth me spending X to
clear a sell wall to encourage others to buy and push up the price further or do I need to
spend so much of my capital that should I fail to stimulate buy orders, I become
vulnerable to a dump in coin price with effective subsequent loss of fiat money).

The presence of automated trading bots rapidly cycling a buy or sell order of fixed
volume between a series of prices that dynamically adjust with the overall trend in price
movements. Bots can be your best friend (to pumping or dumping price) if you know
how to manipulate them!
...
The price charts:
Discussions about price charts could be endless. I'm not going to go into too much detail,
mostly because I'm an investor who believes the value proposition, good consistent
development, decent marketing and communications will ultimately trump spot prices and
adverse (or positive) short term price trends in the future.

I'm also going to skim this because I'm not as versed in this subject as I'd like to be.

I personally use the candle bar charts on Poloniex to look at 15 minute and daily candles
on the hourly, daily, weekly and monthly charts.

I combine this with charts on Bittrex which can calculate the RSI (to estimate if a coin is
overbought or oversold) and Bollinger Bands (again to help estimate if a coin is
overbought or oversold).

I usually look at the overall direction of trading over a period of several days, compare it
to the direction and trends over the last month. I then try to interpret it in the context
of the daily trading volume and depth charts.

I often get my predictions on short term price movement wrong if I only look at candle
charts without factoring in depth charts, order book and daily trading volume
patterns! I have a lot more learning to do on technical analysis.

The charts do often reveal mid/long term supports and resistances in price!

Investopedia is a good place to start learning about different mathematical techniques
to analyse charts (including any terms used in these articles).

I'm a big fan of u/kustonoy who inhabits the Ethtrader sub. I personally feel his analysis
of the short term markets are generally pretty good. You should never be too lazy to
not do your own regular market analysis especially if trading short term, but if you
want a good reference point, I suggest following him.
...
The news cycle:

I've mentioned this lower down the list because for intra-day and day traders and even
to some extent investors, the news cycle matters very little unless it directly affects the
value proposition in some way.

If a news event does result in real maturation of the proposed value proposition (such
that the technology has confirmed a new sustained user base or revenue stream) then it
might justify a sustained rise in price regardless of the volatility achieved reaching and
following the peak.

Some assets may have nothing but an endless stream of good news which meets the
above criteria yet it's valuation fails to increase. This is likely a sign that a larger player is
deliberately manipulating the market to accumulate more of that asset to sell very high
later (I believe Ethereum has fallen victim to this recently) or that it is occuring during
long period of consolidation is where diversification of asset ownership is happening
which means a new price floor is being set for much larger increases later on. The
lowest most frequently occurring point which the price repeatedly bounces off of (stops
falling below) is the new floor.
...
Other interesting points: The 'coin x' scenario and the ridiculousness of marketcap:
'Coin X' is an imaginary hypothetical coin. There are only 10 in circulation. It has no value
proposition beyond it's speculative value i.e. it will never generate a revenue independent of
it's speculative value.

If 'coin x' had only 10 in circulation, was indivisible and each coin had a value of $3
billion, the market cap of 'coin x' would surpass Bitcoin!

If all 10 coins were not on sale then 'coin x' would have a value of zero.

If 9 people had bought 'coin x' at $1 and the 10th person bought it at $3 billion, it's
marketcap would still be $30 billion. This does not mean there is $30 billion of fiat
stored in coin X.

If an 11th buyer came along and bought 'coin x' at $1.20 the price of coin X would fall to
$1.20 and the marketcap of 'coin x' would be $12.0.

This still does not mean there is $12 of fiat stored in coin x.

This does not mean everyone can sell 'coin x' at $1.20.

A new buyer blind to the purely speculative nature of 'coin x' looking at the trend charts
could try to argue it is now extremely undervalued and a great buy or possibly was a
grand scam and untouchable.

Either way the next price at which 'coin x' is bought/sold is purely arbitrary and
determined by the patience of the seller and the impatience of the buyer.

[Edit]: I could also issue 10 more of 'coin x' and if it's unit price remained $1.20 the
market cap would instantly double from $12 to $24!
I'd like to point out the similarities between ZCash and 'coin x' (especially during it's launch).
...
Lessons:

Marketcap is derived from the price, not the other way around. Until a cryptocurrency
generates significant revenue independent of it's speculative valuation this will remain
the case.

Price is determined by the day traders, not by the holders.

The spot price of any given cryptocurrency is determined by the patience of the seller
and the impatience of the buyer.

Price of most cryptocurrencies is derived from bitcoin unless they have a direct fiat
gateway. Unless a significant amount of trading volume occurs via the fiat gateway, the
price of that cryptocurrency is still heavily dependent on the price of bitcoin.

Bitcoin is (for now) is the gold standard of cryptocurrencies. Because it has the largest
marketcap (by a very massive margin).

Market manipulation means that large holders in more valuable currencies (large
marketcaps) can tamper with and set the value of much smaller currencies (i.e. smaller
marketcaps).

Bitcoin's price itself can be manipulated by investment banks, governments or firms
who trade in multi billions of USD daily. This is because the daily trading volume is
almost 5 trillion trillion USD (which is several thousand times larger

There is nothing wrong with investing or trading in cryptocurrencies with low daily
trading volumes and marketcaps, just be concious not to put more money into them
than their long term buy support can handle and only invest what you can afford to
lose.

The concept of liquidity in a market is important relative to the amount of fiat you are
planning to invest or trade in it.

Whether day trading or investing, pick cryptocurrencies with good fundamentals i.e.
excellent development teams, good marketing and strong value propositions that will
provide the cryptocurrency in question use and value independent of speculative
valuations. You are less likely to get manipulated or scammed in the long run that
way especially if you are a holder.

Be very weary of trading or investing small amounts of money in larger markets that
allow leveraged trading. Those markets will behave irrationally and not follow the
fundamentals in the short term.

It is up to you to study the depth charts, order books, candle bar charts, daily trading
volumes and news cycle to discern the patterns. The price is a composite of this and
the psychology of people who don't understand this. You will learn more about day
trading this way and more importantly learn to trade/invest independent of the price.
...
References:
 Coin market capitalisations and data including rich lists derived from:
1. Coinmarketcap rankings: https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/
2. Coinmarketcap daily trading volumes https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/volume/24hour/
3. Bitinfocharts - Top 100 Richest Bitcoin addresses: https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richestbitcoin-addresses.html
4. Crypto ID - Shadowcash Rich list: https://chainz.cryptoid.info/sdc/#!rich
 Investopedia: http://www.investopedia.com/
 Daily FX volumes rise to $4.84 trillion in Jan - CLS, Feb 10th 2016,
Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/global-forex-volumes-idUSL8N15P2VA
Hi again. This is the fourth part in our ongoing series on how to trade better and determine
intelligent investments in cryptocurrency for the future.

In part 1 I talked about the importance of selling enough to make back your principle
investment i.e. if you buy something at $300 and it rises to $600 in value, sell $300 to
eliminate all future risk of personal loss e.g. if that asset falls to $150 in value after
(which can happen easily since suchvolatility is very common in cryptocurrency). In



cryptocurrency trading/investments a 100% return of investment should always
prompt you to consider selling 1/2 your stack.
In part 2 I talked about the psychology behind fear of missing out; i.e. the dangers of
buying during a sudden rise in an asset's price and how to make the most of such rallies
whilst minimising the risks involved in joining them.
In part 3a I discussed The importance of a value proposition and the absolute need for
any cryptocurrency you invest in to already generate or have the potential to generate
revenue in a manner completely independent of it's speculative value as dictated by
daily market prices.
In part 3b I discussed price metrics specifically, what determines the price, why
assuming marketcap equals value can be a psychological fallacy and the importance of
liquidity:
In part 4 I go back into psychology and discuss the importance of buying into facts not rumours
i.e. "Sell the rumour, buy the news."
...
I've had some amazing luck in the cryptocurrency world. I've not invested into any scam ICO's,
I've not been hacked and by making the right picks for the right reasons, I've managed to land a
portfolio which has seen a decent return within 9 months of starting.
Granted that return could have been made better had I not done some panic swing trading,
selling low what I bought higher on certain assets and generally learning the emotional control
that comes with holding decent assets but also recognising when to sell those assets to buy
even better one's for long term holding.
But I haven't done this enough and as aggressively as I should have, often buying smaller
volumes of very cheap assets with good upsides by selling much smaller volumes of existing
appreciated assets when they are close to, or just post peak. In that sense I've missed out on
lots of serious profit and a 9 month portfolio which is overall 440% up could be much higher
had I followed one basic rule:

Sell the rumour, buy the news
You've all hopefully heard the phrase, "buy the rumour, sell the news". It's what smart traders
do; buy a promising asset when it's young and under priced, establish the possibility that a
significant development is occurring in that asset within a given time frame and start
perpetuating the belief that this development is occurring within the social circle of potential
buyers for that asset.
You suddenly have a rally of people looking to buy that asset; it quickly drives up demand
leading to a surge in price. The managers/developers of that asset may come out and make an
announcement that something is indeed happening; in some instances it may be exactly what
the rumour is, in other cases it may be something entirely different from the rumour yet the
original rumour persists in both cases driving up the price further.
The managers may even issue a denial of the rumour yet belief and thus demand persists.
Finally the day comes, the date of announcement relating to the rumour arrives and the news is
released.

Then the price of the asset tanks.
Buy support on a product is not perpetual. It can only self sustain itself for so long, and unless
the news is something remarkable which can confirm much larger and sustainable
appreciation of the asset in question, that buy support will eventually fizzle and give way to the
sell pressure of the select few who bought that asset early at the lowest possible price prior
to the rally.
The news has been sold. A few people profit. The majority who didn't sell at the top on time are
left bag holders.
It happened to me once. It was costly.
Anyone who has read the previous original parts of this guide knows that when I started writing
this, I was a huge fan of Shadowcash (SDC). Truth is that it had all the elements of a project with
the type of characteristics that appeal to me; It was dark, edgy, innovative, had a nonspeculative value proposition and revenue stream, low supply, staking, low inflation rate.
Indeed anyone who bought Shadowcash from the point I originally wrote this series in
December 2016 up to 3rd March 2017 (bottom SDC price $1, peak $2.20) when I effectively
predicted via accidental discovery that a rocketing up of the SDC price was imminent had an
opportunity presented to them between 8th March 2017 and 17th March 2017 to exit with up
to a 600% return (bottom SDC price $2.20, peak $6.00).
30 minutes after 10pm UTC 17th March 2017 when the expected announcement regarding the
future of SDC was due price went from $4.16 to $3.30. By 3am the price had reached $1.90.
Having had 40% of my holdings in SDC up to this point with an average entry of $1.30 and
having been among those who believed and perpetuated the idea that the much wanted and
potentially very valuable SDC marketplace might be released at this point, I got caught out. I
experienced the euphoria of the high, and the utter despair of both the news which was
devastatingly disappointing to me (announcement of a rebrand, token swap, and a 9 months
delay to my expectations) and the loss of unrealised earnings meant that I had truly bought the
rumour and sold the news: I sold half my SDC stack at $2.30.
In that sense I truly knew I had been over leveraged in SDC by 100% of the position I should
have held; A position I had accumulated by following the rumours perpetuated by the SDC slack
channel by certain members of it's community. If the backlash was real, it was because
expectations had been set so high for the news by those representing the devs without clearly
defining what those expectations were.
There were months of teases from January to March claiming big things were happening in
SDC; never before seen features in cryptocurrency were going to debut, scaling issues were
going to be addressed, a rumour that a mobile client was potentially on the way, belief that the
marketplace would be revealed in CLI form and that it only needed to be linked to the GUI
which itself was already developed.
In short the expectations set by the rumours never matched up to the reality posed by the
news.
It was a disaster waiting to happen.
And the backlash the SDC developers experienced and their response at the time about how
their news was going to be received in the context of rumours that had flourished on their
channels for months and were never outright shot down, showed a total lack of project
awareness that this was worrying on my part.

Lesson: If you or your community sets expectations or spread rumours, quickly
confirm or deny them. Transparency is the best way to develop goodwill.
What sucked was that the announcement outlined the details of the new project which was
actually very good. It effectively would deliver everything I asked for in the original SDC project
and more. It solved all the problems relating to releasing SDC marketplace on it's current chain
and added some additional features I couldn't help but find useful and valuable.
That I had built up months of expectations only to be told that I would need to wait longer to
get exactly what I asked for was heartbreaking, and made me felt I'd invested a lot of emotional
and intellectual time on SDC when I could have been scanning the broader market and making
smart deals and trades elsewhere to build up my wealth.

Lesson: Never be emotionally attached to an asset. **Always be ready to sell it.** If
your reasons for holding an asset are based on expectations of fundamental features or
functions that are being developed for it in the future rather than fundamental
functions that are actively occurring now, you are emotionally attached to your project.

Lesson: Sell the rumour at peak price in the hours before the news is delivered. If it
lives up to expectations and the price continues to rise (almost always the rarity event in
cryptocurrency) you can buy back in with a minor loss of profit. Otherwise you can buy
back in at the bottom for a massive discount. My regret with SDC was not 50-100%
selling the rumour when the price was >$4 and hype was at a peak
It took me 2 days to evaluate the Particl project with the 50% of SDC I hadn't sold and convert it
to Particl via their crowd swap mechanism + donate the BTC required for the bonus (they
needed a development fund and effectively admitted they were broke).
In reality had I been told the SDC devs needed significant funds to advance the project, that a
crowd fund via token swap was imminent, that I could do a 1:1 swap of SDC:PART but since the
base PARTICL token supply would be 15% greater than SDC supply, I'd need to donate 15% of
my SDC value in BTC to make up the difference and had the roadmap for particl been
sequentially disclosed and presented to me during January to March prior to the March 17th
announcement I'd have had more time to process the events and I'd probably have swapped
within 5 minutes of the particl crowdfund launch.
Also more importantly the price of SDC wouldn't have risen so high prior to March 17th as most
SDC holders and the cryptocurrency community would have then known about the PARTICL
crowdfund and token swap and there would have been more time for the news to be priced in,
meaning a more even distribution of buy demand and a longer period of on-ramp for it and
hype and speculation actually relevant to the proposed news (instead of the rumour) to
develop.
I suspect the SDC/PARTICL devs wouldn't have occurred nearly as much bad blood had they
done it this way. Indeed every bag holder created from 8th to 17th March 2017 when some of
their members said the news would be incredible is someone who may never trust the Particl
devs again and indeed may bad mouth them in the future.
Even if you are transparent and give full disclosures with your rumours, news and numbers
after such an event, buyers may not trust you and the markets may act accordingly; meaning
the price of your asset may not rise even if the news around it is incredible.
This happened to the ICONOMI team in Feb 2017 when the rumour mill spread that a
conference which the ICONOMI (ICN/ICNX) team was presenting at would be used to announce
the launch of the ICN open fund management platform. Price went from 20 cents to 60 cents;
the ICONOMI team didn't make it outright clear enough that this was definitely not happening
and didn't definitively squash the rumour mongers who perpetuated the idea it was (driving up
the buy demand and ICN price at the time). The rumours flourished; bag holders were created,
not enough was done to suppress an FUD campaign about ICN concurrently running on the
ETHtrader reddit (a very large cryptocurrency trading forum). ICN became tainted.
Even today although ICN has assets worth $21 million (that are actively appreciating in value)
with a marketcap of $41 million, active revenue streams and a fixed token supply i.e. a P/B
(Price to book) ratio of "2" (that is actively decreasing), the price of ICN is not sky rocketing up
as it should. This is because the inertia is there from previous bag holders and there is a lack of
awareness in the cryptocurrency community about how to value stocks.
But that's the rumour. Here's the thing; I bought the news. I swapped that remaining SDC for
PART and paid the BTC premium.
The devs have to deal with the fallout from the rumour. I have to deal with the fallout from the
rumour. I did my analysis of the PARTICL project and cautiously bought in and moved past my
resentments over what had happened. Soon really I didn't care.
It was a good 2 weeks later where I regained most of those psychologically unrealised profits as
I'd bought some PIVx low and sold very high; There is always opportunity in swing trading for
those of you smart enough and looking.
And I remind myself; At least I hadn't bought the rumour. In the sense that I didn't buy during
the rumour period when the price was increasing. I'd have lost a lot of money that way. Learn
to ignore assets based on rumours when their price is increasing; there is always opportunity
elsewhere. Only deal in facts.
Repeat that mantra with me.

Only deal in facts.
...
Fact: The Ethereum enterprise alliance is real. Fact: There are now actively deployed dApps
running on the Ethereum mainnet using gas i.e. ETH tokens have an actual non-speculative
demand. Fact: Many of the proposed use cases for Ethereum are real but the majority are still
in proof of concept or early development phase. Fact: ICN has a P/B of 2 which is a) Calculable
P/B ratio in a field where 99.9% of tokens are valued purely on speculation (i.e. P/B & P/E of
infinity) and b) A P/B of 2! Fact: The Bitcoin scaling debate hasn't been solved for 3 years and
currently no solution appears definitively present.
Fact: Particl will be a crypto-agnostic (supporting multiple crypto-currencies for
trading/conversion into PART via integrated shapeshift functionality) privacy centric
communications and trading platform for settlement of non-speculative goods that will
incorporate an updated Bitcoin core code-base, ready activated with Segwit and is
incorporating Ring-CT into it's anonymity tx structure as well as built in governance and
reputation systems, marketplace transaction reward fees for stakers in addition to stakes and a
community centric decentralised cryptocurrency project that aims to bring much needed nonspeculative use to multiple cryptocurrencies. The Particl devs (formerly SDC devs) have
promised to be and so far are much more transparent about progress, developments and news.
Fact: Of the last 6 facts, 5 point out fundamental realities happening right now that likely affect
the price. 1 of these facts is actually a cleverly worded speculative statement.
Fact: Fundamentals always play out over time. That's true even if the price doesn't always
reflect them in the moment.
Part 5:
Growth, Tribalism, Utility and Cryptocurrency:
..........................................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................
Growth:
You know the biggest benefit of decentralization is the introduction of automated, verifiable
trustlessness into processes where a trusted 3rd party was previously required.
The whole point is that in removing the administrative need for a third party, you save time (via
automated verification) and expense (to compensate the third party for their time).
Perhaps a bigger idea, an expansion of this is that governance can be decentralized and the
layers that exist between decision makers from decisions being made is narrowed.
Yet it is funny that we are so tribalistic when it comes to the promotion of our and strategies
and platforms that can achieve these aims.
One great irony of the cryptocurrency universe is that because the value of our speculative
investments (our cryptocurrency tokens) is in so many ways dependent on adoption, we often
think and conclude that this must come at the expense of success or growth in other projects
including seemingly direct competitors in our space.
We often intrinsically feel or act or behave in a manner to suggest that cryptocurrency is a
closed loop system; a narrow universe, a small box where there is no growth only shuffling of
money from one asset to another.
And yet a quick glance at the marketcap for all cryptocurrencies combined shows that this is
not the case. That cryptocurrency market cap has grown considerably; I'd argue at an
exponential rate.
For example, the price of Bitcoin and it's associated market cap has grown massively through
2016 and 2017 even though it's total share of crypto-market cap has fallen considerably.
The market cap of Bitcoin in January 2016 was $6.5 billion. As of July 2017 the market cap is
$45 billion!
Meanwhile in this time the total market cap of all cryptocurrency has grown from $7 billion to
$90 billion
And to make this important the share of market cap of Bitcoin has fallen from 90% to 47%!
...
So what's the point of this?

It means there is money flowing into cryptocurrencies driving their speculative growth.

It means that crypto is not a closed box with a set number of participants changing
hands.

It means that this is not a zero-sum game over a longer view stretching over months
and years, so our strategies both trading and investing wise don't have to pretend to
be in these time frames either.
It means that just because one cryptocurrency has grown massively in value over a
short space of time, that the growth in surrounding cryptocurrencies does not have to
eat into it's market cap or long term growth either.
It means that given Gold with a market cap of $7.6 trillion is worth 84 times more than
the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies we know that cryptocurrency is both
economically and technologically still a very young market!
It means that even if the dominance of one product or technology in a given field may
come to an end, it does not mean that product cannot continue to enjoy considerable
growth moving forward. Bitcoin rose 750% in 1.5 years even though it's overall market
cap dominance almost halved!



Given that accessibility to cryptocurrencies is constantly improving and is the major bottleneck
to new waves of investors and traders coming on board I would argue that we have a lot of
growth still to come.
..........................................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................
Part 5
Tribalism:
And yet when I browse the dailies on r/ethtrader, r/bitcoinmarkets, r/btc, why do I see so
many posters slagging off other crypto projects, even one's that may contribute or benefit the
ecosystem of technologies they have holdings in?
Granted a lot of the times I see genuine criticism of projects or technologies that are
highlighted, often genuine scams are brought to my attention and legitimate causes for concern
in some tokens are raised with eloquently delivered and balanced arguments to defend the
posters point of view.
Often though I simply see down vote brigades or nasty comments for posters who mention
their tokens (likewise I often see people post their predictions of which tokens will pump
without explaining why).
The worst instance though is when I see the board and development teams of other projects
actively spread misinformation and promote and actively perpetuate a climate of mistrust or
harbor an openly derogatory attitude towards other projects.
...
For example very recently I received an unsolicited direct message into my reddit account from
a user I've had no previous communications with asking me to donate my Ether to a particular
ICO whose project I won't name. Suffice to say I found it very insulting that this message and
the articles it had linked to were saying derogatory and deliberately mis-informative things
about projects that represent potential competitors in their field of product services.
Similarly I've read accusations that the teams actively devote resources to paying people to troll
and discredit promoters of potential rival projects (that's just sad people) and top level
representatives of large established cryptocurrencies openly speak lies or attempt to spread
fear, uncertainty and doubt about projects they may see as rivals.
Unfortunately all these actions are in bad faith and speak to the poor integrity of these
individuals and depending on their level of involvement may reflect poorly on their preferred
project as well.
When I consider the amount of growth that has occurred in and been the dominant theme of
cryptocurrency these last 4 years, I realize that this level of tribalism speaks to the small
mindedness of others, to the intellectual laziness of others and to the total ignorance of the
macro-economic factors and historic contexts that have taught us that with any paradigm
shifting idea (in this case distributed ledger technology and it's role in furthering the
decentralization of services) that there will be many winners and that it is the projects that
bring utility and adoption to these ideas that will be the biggest winners.
Adopting a holistic, synergistic, utilitarian approach to cryptocurrencies in the end is what will
lead to mass adoption, mass growth and genuine non-speculative use of distributed ledger
technology which will benefit the majority of early adopters maximally.
...
Taking a maximalist approach or the idea that there can be only one distributed ledger
technology or blockchain to rule them all is a fallacy. Believing that a given niche of
applications (currency, smart contracts, marketplaces, DSN's etc) can only be occupied
appropriately and adequately by only one product is the fallacy of maximalism. As we have
seen historically for any given field of governance or technology, where money is to be made
there is always at least 2 or 3 distinct competitors each occupying their own sub-niche and
serving their own dedicated audience.
Tribalism is fine if it doesn't stop you thinking about the bigger picture or assessing it
broadly. Tribalism can give you a sense of worth, a sense of belonging, community,
accomplishment and standing the more respected and representative you are of the tribe you
associate to. It should not however get in the way of an objective assessment or commentary of
other tribes and the technologies, cultures and ideas they represent.
In the worst instance tribalism represents the self interested and preservative behavior of an
individual to protect their own assets and tribe to the detriment of the ecosystem as a whole. I
see that all too often in cryptocurrency and even though it is an understandable part of human
nature, in investments I see it as a red flag when such attitudes and behaviors are directed by
top level executives or marketing managers for specific products, industries or technologies.
...
To me such behavior reeks of insecurity when the criticisms relayed are done emotionally not
rationally, when the critique lacks substance and is delivered in a manner designed to
intentionally divide and denigrate. For such a young ecosystem as cryptocurrency, such
behavior is short sighted. It demonstrates a complete lack of macroeconomic insight from these
sorts of preachers.
In reality cryptocurrencies can grow synergistically (i.e. together in a manner that is helpful
towards each other) and they can grow both independently and interdependently of each
other.
A look back at growth in detail confirms this. Now lets look at how encouraging utility can be
both harmonious with tribalism and diversity whilst encouraging growth.
..........................................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................
Part 6
Utility:
We want the technologies we are invested in to be successful because we know if they are,
their value will grow as will the value of our proportionate stake in this. To this end I encourage
you to talk about your holdings. There is nothing wrong with being tribalistic about your own
holdings as long as you are respectful, inquisitive, objective and appropriately critical of
alternatives. I discuss various things to look for in my ongoing intelligent investors guide to
cryptocurrency series but among them I value non-speculative utility highly.
I believe if your holdings bring non-speculative utility to this field and ideally encourages nonspeculative fiat spending (i.e. people spending their dollars, pounds etc for services provided by
blockchain technologies) then they will have the road map to long term success potentially laid
out for them.
Furthermore sometimes having several iterations of a technology type is actually beneficial to
the technology itself and the ecosystem as a whole.
...
For example open fund asset management platforms such Melonport, Iconomi and TaaS
should not be thought of as competing with each other. They should be thought of as three
different projects with three different resource pools, three separate marketing budgets with
three separate ways of promoting their product to the same global audience. If anything even
though they provide the same end-point of service (index funds and managed portfolios for
cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets) they are effectively acting as fail safes for each
other; should one not succeed the competitors will have an opportunity to study why and adapt
accordingly and hopefully for future success.
Conversely the success of one fund management platform will bring more fiat into the
cryptocurrency ecosystem which will should then cause an average rise of the price of
individual cryptocurrency tokens which means the value of other fund management platforms
should also rise in value. Thus several iterations of the service can be beneficial to the
ecosystem both in failure and success.
...
Another example is decentralized marketplaces. There are 3 major projects can come to mind;
Particl (PART), Syscoin (Sys) and OpenBazaar. They all aim to bring utility to cryptocurrency by
providing a means through which real world physical goods and services can be purchased and
distributed solely through the use of cryptocurrency tokens. OpenBazaar currently accepts
Bitcoin, Syscoin conducts it's transactions via it's native SYS token but also accepts Bitcoin (BTC)
and Zcash (ZEC), whilst Particl will use integrated shapeshift to automatically convert all
shapeshift compatible tokens (currently 67 as of writing) into the native PART token for
transacting on the network.

As a speculator I have a preference towards Particl because I believe their use of
integrated shapeshift to convert all cryptocurrencies via the shapeshift coin exchange
network into PART prior to use will create organic buy pressure, absolute necessity and
and intrinsic value for the Particl token whose value can logically be expected to
increase provided organic demand for the use of it's proposed marketplace grows.
I also believe the inbuilt anonymity features of the PART token (CT, Ring CT enabling optional
anonymisation of public transactions) and it's marketplace (availability of private listings which
can only be accessed through knowledge of the private key, a trustless 3rd party free escrow
system referred to as "MAD escrow") will provide additional incentives to transact specifically
through the Particl network. I also believe that since PARTICL is verified through proof of stake
with a percentage of transaction fee's going towards those verifying the Particl via staking will
provide community driven incentives to promote the network which do not exist in OpenBazaar
or exist as strongly in Syscoin (whose token appreciation correlation to increasing use effect I
feel is diluted through the option to avoid transacting via the SYS token altogether).
That said OpenBazaar is already established and has a working decentralized marketplace
where you can actively trade. Similarly Syscoin has already released it's public beta in 2016 and
includes anonymity via zcash payments. In contrast Particl has yet to release their proposed
platform in Beta and this is where the main point of criticism lays; that it won't be done.
Acknowledging that Syscoin has a polished presentation, a history of development and is
forming corporate partnerships (e.g. Microsoft Azure for deployment of the Syscoin API) and
representation are strengths that bring legitimacy to the cryptocurrency ecosystem which will
ease the minds of potential consumers both corporate and private.
I believe that marketplaces that accept multiple cryptocurrencies will bring utility and
important, non-speculative intrinsic value to the cryptocurrencies they utilize. This nonspeculative instrinsic value is essential and vital to the long term growth and acceptance of
those supported cryptocurrencies.
Decentralized marketplaces (particularly those with anonymity) can further democratize trade
and make the exchange of goods more accessible to people regardless of regional restrictions
due to local governance. This is an additional benefit of such projects in the (still largely
unexplored) cryptocurrency ecosystem which will help drive growth of the entire
cryptocurrency market cap as a whole.
Systems like those in Particl and Syscoin can provide significant value to BTC, ZEC and a host of
other cryptocurrencies indirectly and as such if you have any interest in seeing cryptocurrency
as a whole succeed in replacing or sitting aside traditional fiat mechanisms you should be
supportive of them.
Each decentralised marketplace will cater to different demographics of the global community,
have different promotional strategies, different partnerships and ultimately different areas of
reach and adoption. Their very existence and development is good for the cryptocurrency
ecosystem and helps us to remain tribalistic (which is really a way of preserving mental focus)
and supportive of the cryptocurrencies and token technologies we are interested in whilst
giving them grounds to indirectly grow.
...
The third example I want to look at today is smart switch/contract platforms: The rapid
success of Ethereum (ETH) has inspired the development of multiple other distributed ledgers
aiming improve or solve problems identified in current solutions (namely speed, scalability and
governance). Some of these technologies provide a unique approach to smart switch/contract
execution or network verification e.g. IOTA, LISK, ANS and EoS whilst some aim to fix existing
problems from the ground up e.g. NEM and TEZOS. Although the cynic in me is inclined to say
that some of these projects represent cash grabs rather than genuinely intentioned attempts to
improve on an existing product or idea, they ultimately bring greater attention to this space.
I suspect that although there will be one large player the the smart contract field and that
although presently it appears to be Ethereum, this does not mean that several other systems
will not find their audience, niche or adoption. To this end their is room for organic growth and
adoption in these technologies; even though rabid fans and corporate/technical
representatives of their platform will be inclined to say their platform is the best or the only
one that matters, on a global outlook that will simply not be true; solutions will continue to
evolve and the demographic, adoption and consumption patterns will continue to change
leading to periodic shifts in dominance.
Perhaps more importantly each product will have different teams composed of different
individuals; each individual will have their own composite psyche and thus their own unique
approach to the same underlying common problems concerning product growth, development,
promotion and adoption. These individuals will also have their own limitations and depending
on the overall team skill set and the interpersonal factors that favor success will hopefully
override the limitations on an individual level that can err towards failure. What is important
though is that each team attracts people and provided the organization is there to utilize their
skills and experience properly, then the product they work on will gain traction, advocacy and
adoption with resultant growth and success. Ultimately it is these interpersonal factors and
ability to understand and attract an audience that determine the success of a project in the
long term.
..........................................................................................................................................................
............................................................................................................
Conclusions:
Different products providing the same type of service can reach different demographics in
different parts of the world and even if only one succeeds, it still means that access to the
entire cryptocurrency market has been improved which means more money flowing in which
means the price of assets you hold is likely to go up. Why? Because the increased number of
new entrants means someone is more likely to buy something you hold.
And remember if one fails, the others can still succeed. Selective, intelligent diversification
within a product type is a useful strategy to hedge for maximal gains whilst minimizing risks.
This in summary is the quickest way to make safe money in crypto:
The trader way:
 Identify decent token.

Buy decent token cheaply (close to ICO or presale price if possible).

Wait for token to double in value then sell half of stack.

Use this profit to buy another decent token.

Rinse, repeat, diversify.
...
Advantages of this approach:
 No risk of losing it all through a flash crash/bump.
 You can always be patient because odds favour you getting your payoff
eventually (everything pumps at some point).

You can stare at blockfolio incessantly during the day but sleep confortably at night.

You'll probably make your principle back far quicker and develop a flexible mentality
to alts/holds + be active enough to stay interested in the space.

You might halve your returns on mooning coins like ETH, NEO, Stratis, OMG, etc but
you'll still have long term positions in them whilst having capital to diversify elsewhere.

If you're really disciplined and good you won't need to put fresh fiat into crypto this way
beyond principle.

It requires almost no knowledge about the tokens themselves.
...
Disadvantages of this approach:

You might get unlucky and pick a token that takes forever to double in spot price.

You might get really unlucky and pick a token that keeps going down in fiat value. Note
this is pretty hard to do; most likely you'll have bought the recent top or all time price
high of an token just after it's pumped massively in price; with a few exceptions
(fundamentally solid tokens like Ethereum, Particl and Monero), don't do this.


You might wind up selling half your stack on an token after it 2x's that then goes up 4x,
8x or 10x in spot price over the next week or few. That's an opportunity cost but in
practice you'll see more opportunities more frequently to 2x than to 4x, 8x, 10x or
more; these opportunities are exponentially rarer.
The approach works really well in bull markets and its a superb strategy for small
amounts of fiat in low-mid cap coins with relatively low daily trading volumes. It does
not work well for post pump high cap coins (top 20) whose movements and recovery
periods (consolidation phases) are typically much slower.
.
Part 6
The following is not the quickest way to make money in crypto (in fact it's the hardest way) but
if you're doing it properly, it's eventually the least stressful:
The investor way:

Have a small portfolio of token that you passionately believe in holding long term. For
me these are Ethereum (ETH) and Particl (PART).

When you pick these, make sure you really understand the business case, the team, the
challenges, the accounts, the development strategy, the marketing strategy, the
adoption strategy. I find the following questions useful:

Who is in charge of what?
What are the key partnerships?
Who has experience on the team and how is this relevant to the project?






How does the token derive it's value?
Can this value exist independently of speculation? (i.e. it does not rely solely on faith &
network effects increase it's value)
Is the usage for this token highly niche? (yes can be a bad thing)
Does this token solve a real problem whilst minimizing the conflict of interests to it's
own adoption?

Does the industry have potential conflicts of interest that might resist the adoption of
this token?

What are the liquidity aspects of this token? (those large supply tokens are mostly bad
long term investments in my opinion)
Is the development team fully funded and do they have a self sustaining funding model
in place?
Has the team demonstrated resilience (a rapid ability to adapt to and solve challenges
presented to them)?
Are the developers very active? Are the number of developers increasing?
Is there a dedicated marketing team? Is there a community marketing team?
Is the project well communicating (weekly updates minimum)?






Do you feel motivated enough to tell other people about the project and can you
explain it in a clear enough way to persuade them to look into it and also understand
and believe in the potential value?

Are the partnerships in alignment with the goals of the project; do they enhance the
financial incentives to acquire tokens; do they objectively increase the value of the
token or have the potential to?
Do the partnerships established enhance the network effect in some ways (e.g. Particl
recently adding Charlie Shrem, Miguel Cuneta, John Bailon as project advisors has a
massive impact in terms of opening up new network effects and enabling increased
awareness, interest and involvement in the project.


If you can find an asset, tool or utility that is essential, rare and increases the
convenience and ease of doing something that is commonly done whilst reducing the
cost or increasing the profitability of that process (in terms of time saved and
money) and it shows objective evidence of non-speculative adoption then you are
potentially on to a winner.
 Make these a large part of your portfolio and never sell most of them no matter
what.
 Ideally get lucky enough to learn about them early preferably when they are
undervalued relative to the market (this means a low spot price relative to it's
total supply; not just a low spot price).

If it shows signs of adoption then it's time to accumulate further regardless of short
term price swings.

Buy the dips. Watch the news. Buy the dips if the news is consistently positive.

Good examples of tokens I'm not yet long on but like include MakerDAO (MKR) and
XMR. By far the best current example of a heavily undervalued token for it's potential,
use case and liquidity dynamics is Particl (PART).
The disadvantage of the investor way is that it requires an incredible amount of patience to see
the returns; a decent amount of luck to find; grit to hold through any dips & corrections; calm
to avoid impulsively selling to by other tokens that are skyrocketing in value and some
intelligence to identify the right token and spot & understand the potential of it in advance.
My experience is that most people can't do this investor way. Most people don't understand
what value is, how to spot it; how it interrelates to need, altruism (the best projects in this
space are led by inherently altruistic but financially pragmatic people) and basic maths (to help
quantify the mechanics of limited supply & sustained demand). That's reflected in the mania
phase of market behavior where speculative frenzy drives absurd pricing on tokens which have
near zero intrinsic value (a phase we're seeing in 2018 cryptocurrency).
Most tokens which people buy believing to be solid long term investments will simply not turn
out to be the case; ask yourself why should you keep buying this token and is there any price
you'd sell it at? If your reason for buying this token is because you think it will go up in price in
the future but can't understand why and/or if there is a price you'd sell it at out of greed rather
than absolute necessity (i.e. you couldn't get your essential money elsewhere despite
trying very hard), it's probably not a great long term investment (because you're assuming it has
a value it's no longer worth holding at).
Good investments by their nature are long term because their yields are multiplicative and
sustainable.
If you're looking to get rich quick by investing there's a good chance you're going to
be impulsive; if you're being impulsive there's a good chance you won't research your
investments properly and be ignorant; if you're ignorant about your investments and the
markets they exist in chances are you won't understand them and won't a meaningful way to
gauge if they are actually performing well relative to the market or developing in an
appropriate and sustainable manner; thus as the market moves on you might
become impatient especially as you watch other assets pump 400+% around you.
Through a combination of impulsiveness, ignorance and impatience you can become prone to
irrational behavior; panic trading can ensue. Panic trading is a quick route to incurring
significant real world losses and much larger opportunity losses. A really good personal
examples include me selling all my Neo at $0.30, ARK at $0.25, PIVx at $1.50, DASH at $40; each
time at profit and all to buy into FCT (which had just gone up 500%) at a massive opportunity
cost literally 2 months later (go look up the current prices); If I'd held onto 50% of each stack I'd
have more unrealised profits that I do now.
You'll either wind up poor (through bad investment choices or ongoing expenses) or lose out
when the 'investments' you've sold continue to go up massively in value (assuming they really
were good investments).
Note that having a price you'd sell it at is not the same thing as having a price you'll believe it
will reach in the near future. To this end it's more important to work out what you need from
life, how much it will cost and when you will need it for. Financial and life planning allows you
to make the most out of your investments by ensuring you cash out as little of them as possible
(I'd say 50% max) because every person who bought several thousand Bitcoin at $10 and sold
everything at $250-1000 and every person who bought ETH at $1 and sold everything at $100
(when they could be selling at $15,000 and $1000 today) could likely have retired but is still
probably kicking themselves for not holding on to at least some of their stack.
...
Conclusions:
With investing, you will always take on risk which is why I advocate learning to spot the best
assets and getting in early at the lowest possible spot prices. Right now tokens like Particl fit the
bill massively here and I urge you to read my Intelligent Investors Guide to Particl to
understand the business case for this token as well as it's need and where it's intrinsic value
and sustainability of demand are coming from then decide for yourself if it's worthwhile buying.
Even if you don't look at the underlying arguments I make and inferred rules then try to apply
these to any other assets or tokens you may look at. That's the most useful thing you can do
other than taking the opportunity when it presents itself (because opportunity whilst in
abundance, is always fleeting when observed in finance).
For most of you, the trader way will suffice and give you an advantage over the vast majority
of people pretending to be investors but are really self-deluded traders. It's these people who
let greed and dreams for 10x returns on their picked assets get the better of them; I've been in
that boat and find that patience with an exit strategy (sell half when it doubles) is the best way
out of a token you come to doubt.
:
Part 7:
Not that long ago I came across a fellow redditor who asserted that, "there are no
fundamentals in crypto".
I read this statement and like the many times I've read this assertion before found it ridiculous,
more so because the space has rapidly advanced both in technology and adoption thus every
passing day it becomes less and less true.
So we got into a pretty heated discussion. In general when I find a statement to be patently
incorrect, I generally argue the case; often if things get intense I find it's because one or all of
the parties harbors a pretty significant misconception or misunderstanding about the others
view.
The entire thread is actually worth a view:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/7ksx9u/my_current_eth_chart_conc
lusion_both_by_chart_and/
The specific part of the discussion which this article deals with is here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/7ksx9u/my_current_eth_chart_conc
lusion_both_by_chart_and/drt8iyp/
The key assertion I find people make in error when they state crypto has no fundamentals is
that they are looking at it in purely quantitative fundamental terms using traditional metrics
in finance (market cap, price/earnings and price/book ratio etc) rather than
the qualitative fundamentals that these are built on.
Quantitative fundamentals are objective measures that are numerically derived e.g. balance
sheets, income statements, interest rates, inflation rates, circulating supply, locked supply, total
supply, operating costs, development costs, profits, turnover, spot price and measures that are
derived from them e.g. price/book ratio, price/earnings ratio etc.
Qualitative fundamentals are objective measures that can be described but not intrinsically
numerical e.g. resilience, adaptability, reliability, flexibility, emotional intelligence, pragmatism
(over fundamentalism), ability to work in teams, leadership skills, vision, need, essentialness,
function. At their core they are factors which are intrinsic to people and their ability to identify
and respond to needs whilst devising solutions to problems. With regards to businesses they
relate to sustainability, potential for price growth independent of speculation, scalability and
viability of the business model or proposed solution including the ability to adapt and respond
to competition or changes in the local environment or market that it operates in.
It is important to remember that Qualitative fundamentals are the foundation for
Quantitative fundamentals: Poor vision, a lack of leadership, poor management, personality
clashes, ego without restraint, lack of honesty, lack of transparency, lack of empathy, insight or
perceptiveness to the needs or your team, audience and market, flawed business models which
do not incentivise their own sustainability or perpetuation or require continuous injections of
fresh capital through loans and ongoing investment rather than the recycling and redeployment
of capital accrued via the business model to grow constitute poor qualitative fundamentals of a
business which often lead to poor quantitative fundamentals; lack of sales, lack of interest, lack
of growth, increasing debts, increasing maintenance costs and usually outright failure.
Cryptocurrency projects at their core are made of teams of people, operating a model for
profit; they are analogous to businesses: Some people are going to hate me for saying this but
really a cryptocurrency project is only as good as it's team and the ability to expand it's team,
communicate it's vision and grow in a sustainable fashion that is not ultimately dependent on
speculative activity alone. Because cryptocurrency projects are analogous to businesses (and in
reality many now openly are); the qualitative fundamentals that constitute a good business
apply to a good cryptocurrency project as well and from this, provided a non-speculative
revenue model is at play or being implemented it can be expected that good quantitative
fundamentals (healthy balance sheets, profits, expansion of team, market reach and market
adoption sustainable using profits) will emerge from them.
It is true that cryptocurrency markets are currently driven largely by sentiment. But notice I've
put emphasis on currently because that is actively in the process of changing. Many of these
projects have solid qualitative fundamentals with non-speculative revenue models to attract
and drive fiat into their ecosystem. Ethereum for example derives it's intrinsic value from the
cost of gas (microunits of ethereum) used to drive transactions and applications running on the
Ethereum network.
The formation of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA) in February 2017 was the catalyst for
mass scale global adoption by multinationals corporations and governments internationally to
enable rapid development of of the Ethereum network leading to an exponential increase in
the adoption, real-world applications, usage and developer recruitment which in turn has
created organic demand on Ethereum gas to account for increased demand and activity on the
network. Speculative traders and investors realized the potential and rapidly bought up
available circulating Ethereum on exchanges, driving it's price up quickly (in
the months following the EEA annoucement the price of Ether went from $10 to $420 and as of
posting sits around the $1000 mark).
This is akin to savvy oil traders rushing to buy up all the available oil fields as soon the
internal combustion engine was developed (because they could see the sheer scale of future
demand on oil as the number of internal combustion engines in use grew). Likewise speculators
understand that when Ethereum switches to proof of stake protocol it's annual inflation rate
will potentially fall to 1% leading to a supply that is potentially in all purposes fixed (if we
continue to hold the trend that 1% of a cryptocurrencies supply gets permanently lost or locked
from use due to human error e.g. losing wallet keys, passwords etc) thus creating a scarcity of
Ether which should resulting in increasing spot price of Ethererum if the demand for dApp's and
usage on the Ethereum Platform continues to materialize thus justifying their expectations that
the price of Ether can continue to justifiably rise in the future.
The Ethereum Enterprise Alliance was the example of perfect teamwork and coordination
bubbling into and from qualitative fundamentals in that it represents the ability of the original
Ethereum developers to attract new partnerships to increase awareness, organic usage and
development of the Ethereum Platform. This combined with the quantitative supply scarcity
and means of measuring demand and usage means that Ethereum already has solid qualitative
fundamentals and over increasing periods of time we will see the emergence of quantitative
markers and fundamentals to measure the intrinsic value of the Ethereum Network.
The current valuations of Ethereum although currently speculative reflect the fact that those
buying now believe the intrinsic value will be much higher in the future (otherwise there
would be no profit in selling later and thus no point buying at current prices). It is up to you to
study the Ethereum financial model, development progress and adoption curve and decide if
you believe that to be the case.
There are other examples of projects in cryptocurrency with excellent qualitative
fundamentals besides Ethereum. The first one that pops to me is Particl (PART) which is a
fundamentally sound project with a clear use case and an economic model designed to draw
non-speculative fiat and value into it's ecosystem in a potentially sustainable manner. I've
written an extensive guide on it here called, "The intelligent investors guide to Particl" but in
short I really like the business model, the team, the way they have expanded and brought new
people on board and the way they have developed and organically grown their community and
technology to build a much better, more functional product using comparatively fewer
resources (the equivalent of $750k at time of crowdfund) than many other projects which set
multi-million USD minimum targets just to start. I encourage you to look at projects with
qualitatively sound fundamentals and for me such examples include (but are not limited to)
Ethereum (ETH), Particl (PART), EOS, Bloom (BLT) and Monero (XMR).
If you want to understand good qualitative fundamentals learn about and spend time in
successful businesses; study what they are doing, who their people are, how they behave,
interact, present themselves, conduct their work, share it, debate it, distribute it and
communicate it.
Likewise it is sensible to study and learn the habits of unsuccessful and failing businesses to
recognize the concepts behind bad qualitative fundamentals.
That way you can learn to recognize and differentiate projects and teams with good qualitative
fundamentals from bad one's. This helps when analyzing businesses and tokens to assess for
long term viability especially in their early stages when the quantitative fundamentals may be
lacking and valuations may be volatile. Observing changes in qualitative fundamentals is often
the first step to predicting a collapse in quantitative fundamentals further down the line.**
Conclusions:

Fundamentals can be both qualitative and quantitative (numerically derived).

The first principle in trading and investing is to recognize value (both qualitative and
potentially quantitative).

Qualitative fundamentals definitely exist in cryptocurrency as they do in all areas of
commerce and business.

Good qualitative fundamentals are the foundation for quantitative fundamentals and
the means through which projects become sustainable.

A qualitatively well designed, sustainable, non-speculative system of appreciating in
value with a solid, adaptable team has a good chance of obtaining quantitative
value. There is something inherently fundamental to every step of that whether you
can slap a book value on it or not.

Quantitative fundamentals for comparing and measuring the performance of different
cryptocurrencies are emerging. In fact they are already here.
This last point has not really been discussed in detail yet but actually is the leading point onto
the next part of this series which explains why there are already fundamental measures of
cryptocurrency performance that are quantitative. Whilst these are different to traditional
quantitative metrics in finance they are still valuable, valid and objective measures of
performance that I feel many traders and investors overlook when evaluating cryptocurrencies.
I hope this article and this series so far has helped prove insightful into cryptocurrencies
markets and provided some useful tools and insights for investing in general.
Further articles in this series:
"The intelligent investors guide to cryptocurrency"