Ep26: Weekly Cryptocurrency News 12/19/18
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
Release Date: 12/19/2018
EP36: Buy, Borrow and Die: Bitcoin Style
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
I am in a financial position that may seem somewhat unusual to you. You see, the IRS rewards me for my real estate investments by taxing me less. If, on the other hand, I keep my income in the bank, or invest it in traditional equities or bonds, the IRS shows me no mercy! Admittedly this is by design. I am a real estate professional. One of the great benefits to that designation is that all of my passive losses flow through my personal tax returns. In other words, all that depreciation and mortgage interest I get by investing in real estate not only builds my net worth, but SAVES me money in...
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EP35: Cryptocurrency and Asymmetric Risk with Teeka Tiwari
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
Up to 10 percent of my liquid assets are in very risky stuff—specifically digital assets and startups. A lot of people people think I am being irresponsible—particularly because I have a captive audience with whom I have influence. Now if I was shooting at the hip and telling you to put all your money in this stuff, I would understand. But even highly volatile investments (ie. gambling) may have their role in your portfolio. To be clear, every year, I allocate no less than 80 percent of the money I invest into real estate through . There are many “wealth advisors” out there who...
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EP34: Bull Markets in the Least Ugly Economy in the World!
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
I am a lousy trader. I’ve said it before and I fully recognize this fact. That’s why, I try very hard to stay focussed on investing rather than trading. Nevertheless, I still get trapped in behaviors that I invariably regret. For example, you may know that I am a believer in bitcoin. I truly believe this will be one of the best investments of my lifetime over the course of the next few years. That’s why when it dropped to $3100, I should’ve bought some more. But, I didn’t because I got greedy. I figured it might drop even more so I waited. The end result was that by the time I bought...
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EP33: Crypto thaw and Crypto Law
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
This past week or two got a lot of people excited. Bitcoin broke through $5K and seemed to be headed to $6K. The usual bulls were out stomping on the grave of the crypto bears. But then the New York Attorney General filed a complaint against Bitfinex, one of the largest crypto trading platforms. It had to do with a stable coin called Tether and how Bitfinex dipped into its funds to cover other shortfalls. This is an old story that the AG has finally moved on so it should not have been a surprise. That said, any news in the digital currency world seems to create a PTSD like response and because...
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EP32: The Separation of Money from State
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
It’s funny how long lasting paradigms perpetuate without question for centuries without being questioned. It used to be in most places, specific religions were mandated by the government to its people and heretics were persecuted. Of course that still exists in many parts of the world but the point is that a large part of the world does not see that as simply status quo anymore. If you live in the United States, for example, you would likely feel very uncomfortable with the idea that the government chose your place of worship, what you ate or drank, and what you wore. Why is that?...
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EP31: Blockchain, Crowd Wisdom, and AI with Cindicator
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
As the story goes, in 1906, the great statistician Francis Galton observed a competition to guess the weight of an ox at a country fair. Over 800 people entered that contest. Galton, being a numbers guy was curious about how the crowd faired with its guesses. What he discovered was that the average guess, 1,197lb, was extremely close to the actual weight of the ox at 1,198lb. No one person had made a guess as good as that of the combined wisdom of the crowd. Since then, there have been lots of examples of this kind of crowd intelligence and it has become a science unto itself. Meanwhile,...
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EP30: Dentacoin? What?
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
Let’s talk about some things happening in the crypto space right now. Nasdaq launched real-time information on two new indices linked to the crypto asset market —Bitcoin liquid index (BLX) and Ethereum Liquid Index (ELX) were both incorporated into the Nasdaq platform on February 25th. This is sort of like the Nasdaq composite with the end goal to bolster mainstream adoption by fusing crypto assets into traditional entities like the stock market. Bitcoin surpassed PayPal in yearly transaction volumes in 2018 with $1.3 trillion dollars more then doubling PayPal with just over...
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Ep29: Power Ledger: Peer to Peer Energy
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
We’ve had a lot of high profile folks on the show lately that represent the “bitcoin maximalist” crowd. In other words, they believe that bitcoin is the only worthwhile blockchain and that every other project/token out there is a “shitcoin”. There is all sorts of terminology for this—the bitcoiner, the multicoiner, the nocoiner, and then there is the full spectrum in between. What am I? Well, it’s funny because a couple of years ago I would have been one of those people who said, “blockchain not bitcoin”. Why?…Because I didn’t understand bitcoin as well as I do now....
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Ep28: Does Crypto Need Rules?
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
I’ve been off the air for a while with Consensus Network through the holidays. The good or the bad news is that there isn’t a lot of movement in bitcoin prices. Infrastructure continues to grow and projects continue to develop throughout crypto winter. Even though prices aren’t moving dramatically, the technology and laws around it are. My guest today is at ground zero for all of those developments. Her name is Amy Wan. The last time I interviewed her, it was for Wealth Formula about real estate crowdfunding. She’s consistently been at the forefront of technology and...
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27: Crypto 202 with Chris Coney
Consensus Network: Cryptocurrency News & Education
We are in a bear market with cryptocurrency. There is no doubt about that. How long will it last? I have no idea.However, one day a bull market shall return just as the dotcom’s did after the bubble burst in the late 90s. Then we will see the blockchain versions of Amazon and Apple skyrocket in value. In the meantime, it is winter.Now is the time where you learn about projects and buy them at a steep discount. The truth is that the vast majority of these cryptocurrencies will never recover. But the ones that do will come back with a storm.So how do you spend your time if you want to be part...
info_outlineConsensus Network Weekly Cryptocurrency News 12/19/18
Cryptocurrency Market Capitalization: $125 Billion
Bitcoin Price (Coinbase): $3791
Crypto Come Back or Dead Cat Bounce?
Bitcoin was up just under 7 percent this week. According to theblockcrypto.com, senior market analysts believe that this might be the result of traders closing out short positions.
According to Math Greenspan of eToro, “Closing short sell positions creates an upward pressure on prices. Evidence: BCH is up the most.” BCH or Bitcoin Cash has proven itself to be BTrash over the past month.
Frankly, there is NO other reason for this rally right now. In fact, the global markets themselves are shaky. I do not subscribe to the idea that bitcoin is yet an uncorrelated asset.
In times of uncertainty, people sell off speculative assets. Most of the world views bitcoin and especially other cryptocurrencies that way.
My vote: dead cat bounce. There is no reason for a recovery right now.
Is the Bear Market Scaring Off Institutional Money?
According to Bloomberg, JP Morgan analysts believe that the protracted cryptocurrency bear market is driving away institutional interest.
The report sites decreasing interest in the open contracts on bitcoin futures at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. Last month was apparently the lowest level of interest since the futures trading began in December of 2017.
A similar sentiment was recently reported by Coinshares CSO Meltem Demirors.
In my view, that is what makes this crash “different”. Many crypto enthusiasts boast about seeing these kinds of corrections several times and not being phased by them.
However, we were on the precipice of seeing bitcoin go mainstream. The crash, mainly triggered by a ridiculous battle between bitcoin cash rivals has hurt the ecosystem at large and I suspect will delay an ETF and other advancements of bitcoin within the Wall Street Ecosystem.
Startup to Focus on Accepting Lightening Network Merchant Payments
OpenNode, a startup backed by Tim Draper, raised $1.25 million to help build a new bitcoin payment platform that focuses on ease of use.
The software essentially makes it very easy for merchants to accept bitcoin. What makes it different from Bitpay and Coinbase Commerce is that it allows for merchants to accept bitcoin through the lightning network— a second layer that allows for cheap instantaneous transactions of bitcoin off-chain. You can learn more about lightening network on our recent interview with Samson Mow of Blockstream.
I love the technology and it will be interesting how it plays out. I’m also interested in understanding how bitcoin taxes will be paid if it is actually used for transactions. In other words, when you pay someone with bitcoin that has gone up in value, will that be a taxable event.
If you pay someone in gold, it is a taxable event. This could be a problem for mass adoption of bitcoin as a payment system in the US.