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bitcoin cryptocurrency exchanges hodl trading

Buy Bitcoin from an Exchange

cd bannerIf you’re not buying Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies on Altcoin Trader, Luno, Ice3x, Valr, Artis Turba or OVEX, you are being scammed. Period. That’s if you’re South African trying to extract more value out of your Rands.

Cryptocurrency requires adulting. Serious adulting! Your bank regards you as a child. Cryptocurrency doesn’t have an opinion, it requires you to be educated. Not schooled. Schooling will get you buying Bitcoin from a Facebook ad.

Educate yourself!

You’ve heard Bitcoin was the best performing asset this year even though it has dropped dramatically from the all-time-high at the end of 2017. You know you should be investing in Bitcoin, but why do you trust a stranger to do it for you.

The traditional financial industry would have discouraged you to invest in Bitcoin until recently. It is possible that is shifting as investors start to realize they would’ve achieved a higher percentage had they opted into cryptocurrency, and are pestering their brokers now.

Cryptocurrency allows you to be the broker and bank. So, educate yourself, it’s a great opportunity to manage your wealth, and soon there will be bots that will do all your investing for you based on parameters you set on a investment platform.

Watch this space! It is ever-evolving!

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bitcoin cryptocurrency trading

Make Friends with FOMO

meditate FOMO away

Sitting at your computer, ready to trade, can be a highly charged, emotional event for a noob. Especially in the beginning. You have high expectations from yourself to make money. Everybody else is creaming the profits, why can’t you?!

Well, have you fine-tuned your strategy by paper trading (pretend trading)? Chances are when you gawk at a pump sky-rocketing, your eyes’ popping out your skull, you won’t be able to resist. But the market will.

The pump will turn into dump in seconds. By the time the market has accepted your trade, price has plummeted off your monitor, settling in the dust under your flip-flops. You will more likely enter another trade just as hasty to recoup your losses. And it will end the same way.

The beauty in trading is the presence of your psyche needed.

Study your technical analysis. Absorb your mind in understanding the market mechanisms and trends. Learn to filter out the noise of hype, narrative control by mainstream media. The markets have absorbed it before you read it.

Don’t be reactionary!

Know yourself!

You know what your bad habits are. The little voice in your head has been telling you for ages. Do something about it. Start a process to take responsibility for the things you know you need to change.

Meditate.

The beauty in meditation is being a witness to all the krap in your mind without being absorbed in it. Observe the beliefs holding you back; the destructive thoughts that disrupt your happy flow. What you learn about yourself will be monumental!

You will notice that certain thoughts keep recurring. These thoughts are going to be your truth. Your personal story that dictates your life through their vibration in the world around you. You will attract the story you are telling yourself. Meditation is the key to identifying those thoughts.

Yes, so the yogi goal of meditation is the Stillness that lies beyond your thinking. Understand the true reality of your Being is this Presence, not the thinking. The thinking is like the noise from mainstream media, it’s counter-productive to your living.

Hack those thoughts!

Observe what you learnt about money from your parents. You’ve probably inherited your attitude to money from them. “Money doesn’t grow on Trees”, “You have to work hard for a living.”, “You get what you deserve!” What is your inherited subconscious mantra leaked from your parents?!

Are you desperate? Do you throw money at the market even when you don’t have clear signals, or not all the conditions of your strategy are met? Do you feel money always moving away from you? Out of your wallet, out to your stop losses and liquidation points? Do you consider yourself part of the Unlucky?

Disassociate your self from the thoughts. Create a little distance. The thoughts are not you. You are the creator. So, use them to your benefit. They become your tools to write your own life story.

Bring your awareness back to your breath. Feel the air as it moves past your nostrils. Relax your face, neck and shoulders. Feel the tension draining down out your body. Breathe into your lower abdomen, allow the air to fill up into your chest, and as you exhale feel all the tension draining out your arms and down through your legs into the earth (that supports you unconditionally).

Your abdominal breath is the gateway to the autonomic nervous system (the processes you can’t control like blood pressure, sweat glands, viscera, digestion and elimination). Only breathing into your chest is going to activate a flight/fight response and exacerbate your stress levels. Spend 5 – 10 minutes every day observing your breath, introduce it into your getting ready to trade ritual.

Sit comfortably. Feet flat. Palms open. Shoulders relaxed. Breathe into your abdomen. Slow and consciously. Have you planned your trade (jotted it down in a journal)? Do you have a plan if the market doesn’t move to your advantage? Are all the conditions for your strategy met?

Be abundant. Focused. Masterful Human Being.

If the only thing you gain from trading is self-knowledge, it will be worth it.

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bitcoin cryptocurrency hodl trading

Sleep is For Hodlers (No, Not At All)

sleep in hammockIt’s 4am. Should I go to sleep or wake up?!

Well, it depends if I’m in bed or staring at my laptop screen, whether I’ve stayed up all night using my positive thinking to control the markets to recover my short position; or I’ve been lying awake since 1am, peaking at the dull-red digital display of an alarm clock, curious-worrying about an open trade.

I was sleep-deprived for a month, probably longer, between 3 and 5 hours a night. Blame it on my learning curve into trading; the velocity was energizing; desperation, motivating. Who wants to sleep when there is money to be made, skill to be developed?!

I learnt a huge amount. Copied strategies, discarded strategies. Subscribed to youtube channels, unsubscribed. Watched webinars, deleted hundreds of emails promising massive returns.

The woozy, sick feeling of my brain swimming in Pixelland became debilitating, slightly alarming. I could feel cognitive function drifting out to sea on a cruise liner of geriatrics blissfully unaware of flat earth theory.

I had a pain in my chest recently, on the left side, in the hollow under my peck. I like to think it was a side effect of the ozone therapy I had the day before. I’m going to believe that (because the other conclusion is scary). But it was a wake-up call!

Go to bed!

My yoga training reappeared in my mind. Or it was my partner’s mood. It could be argued both ways. I breathed into my belly, and dropped my mind into my heart. Valuable lessons are priceless. The skill is in the silence, the quiet confidence. Yoga releases that skill.

I went to bed early. Woke up and resumed my yoga practice.

The top two changes you can make in your life to improve your health, immediately available to you. And free.

Sleep! & Exercise!

Oh! My Word! I’ve learnt a lot. And remembered.

I’ve stopped using stop losses.

My mindset has been reset from La La Fantasy Moon Land to This is the Way Markets Work. It’s not rocket science, it’s nuance and chance, resistance and support. Therein lies the beauty. Harmony between channelled cautiousness and recklessness. A quiet, sober confidence aware of the risks; a calm ocean watching the waves rekt on the rocks.

I’ve dug myself out of my first hole, and yet I’m not thinking of the next one. I’m going to enjoy the climb. Fuck you, institutional traders! And thank you!

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bitcoin cryptocurrency exchanges hodl trading

Confessions of a (Former) Crypto Hodler

Confessions of a (Former) Crypto Hodler

killer whale teeth All crypto hodlers must be a little seasick (my knees are weak, stomach queasy), or maybe they’re still puking over the railings, many possibly don’t have anything left in their stomachs. The bear market can be brutal to the eternal optimist hodler in the crypto revolution, especially those without any financial market savvy.

The captain is smiling to himself since he has access to the weather charts. He knows the storm will pass, but he can’t give anyone a time-frame. He offers words of encouragement, but only a few can hear him over the gnashing of the killer whale’s teeth. The bitcoin price had to come down (and everything-else-crypto with it). It’s called a market correction, a pullback. This too shall pass.

In our hearts we know Bitcoin is going to triumph. Argentina and Paraguay settled a debt with Bitcoin. That’s huge. But still the price goes down (so institutions can increase their bags & naysayers can feel good about themselves).

No, Bitcoin is not dying, it’s skimming the bottom.

And that might take a while. So, what’s a hodler got to do?

Trade.

Imagine not and your life’s dreams devaluing through your fingers (many probably don’t have to imagine). It’s not worth it to hold onto an ideology that is going to cost you. Fundamental analysis indicates that Bitcoin and many other altcoins are going to the moon, but first it needs to mine down a few layers to the hot lava for rocket fuel. It is my opinion this is what is happening now, but in this process of finding the bottom, mining rocket fuel, you might lose all your wealth, especially if you bought the hype and fantasy of infinite growth.

Educate yourself!

Every new product/market goes through an adoption cycle/price discovery. Go and check out the price charts for Apple & Amazon. This is good news. Once you understand the cycles it becomes easier to change your mindset to trading.

This is where real education begins.

Learning technical analysis can be confusing. There are many ‘experts’ on youtube, a good majority of them could be used as contra-indicators (do the opposite to them) and you make money. You could have used me, but I’ve stopped losing much (unless you consider my computer crashing me out of a trade), mainly due to Cracking Crypto.

My advice (taken with a pinch of salt, not financial advice): don’t fomo trade!!! Seeing a trend or pump/dump happening, then scrambling your keyboard to jump in is going to cost you dearly.

Plan your trades, understand price movement first, follow underlying trends, anticipate what is going to happen.

Learn your chart patterns, candle forms, understand the sentiment they express. Learn about support and resistance levels. Become friends with price momentum, abnormal volume and liquidity grabs. Fake trade first. Back test your strategy (many valid strategies out there, find the one that suits your personality the best).

A big wake-up call for me was realizing that I’m starting off as a ‘retail trader’; professional and institutional traders are trading against me, taking out my stop losses. Exchanges are there to make money, not necessarily to provide a service. Manage your risk!

Your best trades are going to be the ones you’ve planned & understand. Be confident in your strategy. Be present, sleep well. Love yourself. Don’t think you’re worthy of wealth, study, know it!

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bitcoin cryptocurrency exchanges

The Crypto Market Slump Continues

I’m hoping by writing this, the crypto market bull leaps into abundance. And yet, the cryptospace developers out there in the crypto world are quite relieved that they don’t have to keep interacting with speculators crying, “When lambo?”, “When moon?”. They can get busy with developing the platforms, increase security and work on scalability issues. We can give them a well-deserved break. A slump is okay.

Why is the crypto market down?

I’ve been trying to guess this all along. Here are some of my pet reasons:

  • Hedge and pension funds are waiting for regulation to be put into place before they bring over their billions into crypto. We have been hearing this rumour for a few months now… so, is it close?! Some think that the next parabolic rise will be from institutional money.
  • Market manipulation. This has been talked about quite a lot recently. The US government is organizing a probe into this issue. Besides the normal pump and dump schemes, the Mt Gox liquidators dumped thousands onto the market on days you can quite clearly see significant drops with huge volume. I do believe there is class action being organized against their ‘reckless trading’.
  • Tether has been linked to some manipulation… or is this FUD?!
  • Bitcoin futures can be blamed, maybe…

What to do?!

Read, carry on with your self-education! Get your head into the distributed ledger technology (DLT), understand it, why we are in this space in the first place. Explore new projects that you haven’t heard of. Diversify your portfolio and your exposure to different industries. How about learning a computer language and help with the development?!

Open an account on another exchange. We all know how long verification can take sometimes.

Tell someone about Bitcoin. But don’t focus on the price. Focus on its service to humanity. Explore how this tech can create abundance for everyone, not just the speculators.

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bitcoin cryptocurrency exchanges

Luno ‘Sign Up’

tree road picEdited 17 May 2019: Luno’s sign up procedure has changed slightly. You now have to do complete the KYC process before you can deposit ZAR to buy Bitcoin.

Even if you haven’t made up your mind about Bitcoin yet, sign up to Luno in the meantime. The verification process is quite long due to the cryptocurrency exchanges being flooded with new users. Everyone is hearing about Bitcoin in the mainstream media and rushing to get in on the moon action.

So, if you’re still uncertain, sign up anyway. You don’t want to be doubtless, but unable to trade as you still need to get an account on an exchange such as Luno. Here is a basic guide:

Luno ‘Sign Up’ Procedure:

  1. Go to luno.com and click ‘Sign Up’
  2. Enter your email address and create password (& possibly prove you’re not a robot)
  3. Confirm email address (open email program and click link Luno sends you)
  4. Login to Luno and click ‘Let’s Go’ to verify your identity
    1. Confirm mobile number (they send a code via sms)
    2. Enter your personal details in the ‘Settings’ section. The link is at the bottom of the left margin menu.
  5. Before you can deposit ZAR you first have to follow the KYC (Know Your Customer) process.
    1. Upload a copy of your ID (pdf, jpeg or png format)
    2. Upload a selfie
    3. You will have to wait for admin staff to verify your document. It should only take two business days.
  6. The final verification asks for a bank statement and utility bill.

Now, go back to your own research. Do your own due diligence. There are many scams out there. Google can’t tell the difference any more and might be creating a lot of misconceptions on the internet.

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bitcoin

Myths About Bitcoin

T junction picMyth 1. Cryptocurrencies are used by criminals and terrorist organizations because transactions are anonymous.

Firstly, the US dollar has been used for decades for criminal and terrorist activities, yet it is still, barely, the reserve currency of the world. Bitcoin might be anonymous to a certain extent, but not completely. It is more traceable than cash. Transactions/bitcoins can be tracked as all transactions are recorded on the blockchain. Blockchain explorers can follow the money. It is only a matter of time before a transaction address can be linked to a corporation or individual. Some corporations are interested in a cryptocurrency called Monero as it is practically completely anonymous as they don’t want to have their trade secrets (supplier transactions) published in public.

Myth 2. Bitcoin is a bubble and it will burst into thin air.

Scan whatever media you choose and you will find more financial institutions are embracing bitcoin technology. The South African Reserve Bank is experimenting with the tech.  Many countries are thinking about bringing out their own sovereign cryptocurrency to be controlled by the government, probably for taxation purposes. Bitcoin has faced many death threats, but the technology has shown that it is resilient and even anti-fragile, every time it is attacked it becomes stronger and the price rises higher.

Myth 3. I can’t use Bitcoin.

Yes, you can with any website in South Africa that uses Payfast as their ‘shopping cart’, notably Takealot. You will also find that there are many businesses that will place their QR code for their bitcoin address on their websites or inside their shops as a payment option. A couple of years ago you could’ve paid for yoga classes with bitcoin if you had come to one of my classes (if only you had, I would’ve made a couple hundred percent profit by now).

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bitcoin cryptocurrency exchanges

If You’re Still Thinking About Buying Bitcoin, Register Now!

Yes, even if you’re not sure what Bitcoin is and you still need to do your own research, register now! In the good ol’ days, a couple of months back, it took about two days to be fully verified. These days it’s about five working days, and counting. Last month Coinbase received 100 000 new users every week. You can imagine the stress the admin staff must be under! Luno is stating it’ll take five working days…

So, even if you need to get your financial advisor’s voice out of your head (10% is fantastic growth, “Bitcoin is a fraud”), start your registration process now. This morning Bitcoin hit R57 000… from a low of R41 000 yesterday (probably never to be seen again). You don’t want to finally convince yourself, then wait for verification while you watch the price go up.

If you need help, I’m happy to. There is an incredible amount of FUD (fear, uncertainty & doubt) around, it is a minefield out there. Remember, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a threat to traditional financial institutions, and even governments. So, always check the source of your research; what do they have to lose or gain with their take on this revolutionary new medium of exchange, store of value. There might even be deliberate ploy by traditional finance to lower the Bitcoin price to be able to buy in at a lower price.

Governments could lose power, and control of money. Imagine paying tax in bitcoin (you can in Switzerland), tracking where that value ends up; hopefully not in a corrupt politician’s wallet, but then it would be easier to trace. Imagine voting on a blockchain, often, on community issues and policy, basically putting parliament on the blockchain. Raising funds for community projects on a peer-to-peer (p2p) basis. (Before I get carried away, this thinking is for a separate post).

So, register, and carry on with your own research.

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bitcoin blockchain cryptocurrency

A Little Intro to Cryptocurrencies

down the road

I became interested in cryptocurrencies somewhere around 2012, it might have been earlier, but without spare cash and a healthy dose of doubt I just kept on reading and researching. It was only in late 2013 and 2014 that I made my initial investments. Like countless millions, I wish I had done so earlier. It wasn’t too late, and still isn’t.

The cryptocurrency space has grown exponentially. There are hundreds of altcoins, and now hundreds of tokens too. Crypto space is quite a minefield as there are some brilliant ideas, and loads of scammers and fraudsters that have been attracted to the wealth in this sector. It is a good sign at the moment as scammers always follow the wealth to extract what they can. Don’t be afraid, be smart. There are many best practices you can follow to keep your cryptocoins safe.

The world is changing rapidly. I see a future in which all our transactions will be recorded on a blockchain, from buying airtime, appliances, to paying for services. My hope is it will be a public decentralized one. Imagine paying tax or a contribution to the government of your community and being able to track where that value is extracted; like a community clinic, a road improvement or education initiative. You would no longer need to trust the government, as many blockchain technologies are trustless, meaning the need for trust is eliminated.

I am certain the crypto space will free wealth as the need for many intermediatory or third party entities will be unnecessary. Crypto offers the opportunity to create a smart contract from person to person, or service provider to user without the need for extra fees.

Currently, many investors are using cryptocurrencies to preserve wealth, holding onto their bitcoins, confident that the price is growing over time as more governments see the efficacy of the blockchain. Some are using cryptocurrencies to generate wealth, buying the dips, selling on the highs. Exciting times indeed.

Even if you’re not ready to invest, that’s okay, but educate yourself. There are many resources on the internet, youtube and I’ll certainly do my best to write little posts, as I keep educating myself.

“You aren’t a bitcoin holder until you’ve lived through a bitcoin crash!”