It has been a couple weeks and during that time, a lot has happened. In volatile times, one has to pay attention. Preparation for the next long drawn out HODL time needs to be made.
I have been concentrated on a couple of things since my last post.
- Monitoring three very volatile positions (Pirate Chain, Doge, and Shiba)
- Testing and trading using a USDT cold wallet
- Pulling enough for two years expenses through the paper gate.
- Staking more Leo
Price Swings
Well over two hundred thousand has been made on ARRR and Doge over the last couple of months. Not once have I been in the red with either of these because the positions are low risk / high reward. As the price swings die down, I plan to be on the right side of every spike and disaster. So far, that has been the case.
Whatever your opinion of the above assets, I put almost nothing into them. If you had ten thousand saved in a very secure place, which excludes banks but that is a different topic, and you took fifty cents to invest in one asset and another fifty cents in the other asset. If they both flop, it will not change your lifestyle or retirement plans. That kind of 'low' risk! If those same fifty-cent assets went to to twenty grand each, does it really matter where you sell them?
Mine have both moved so far into the green, I am only concerned with maximizing the sale of my remaining tokens. All of my initial investment went back into my pocket as a tiny part of my first bunch I sold. It is now impossible to lose money, but I could see smaller gains if I fail to trade them well.
USDT
I think I mentioned that I found a USDT wallet, one where I can store my own keys and secure them. In one of my recent articles I had just made a deposit into that wallet and was testing its functionality. The wallet works well, but I have to stake a considerable amount of Tron or Ethereum in order to send USDT out of it. I chose Tron. The other one is like paying $400 for a cup of coffee and waiting sixteen hours to get it.
I have about twenty transactions under my belt with the imToken wallet, which is far from the extensive trustworthiness test that I need in order to trade quantities. But, there is a demand for USDT, it does decrease the hard feelings at a face to face, and when I get to a year of trustworthy functionality, I may be able to use it to weather the kind of storm that we may be entering soon.
The Paper Gate
Sometimes this is called the Fiat gateway. Coinbase is a Fiat gateway. You do not want that kind of exposure unless are willing to track and save proof of every one-hundredth of a penny that you invest or sell today, because if it any of your investments ever go lunar, you will be held responsible for the billions you made, even if you sold it a week after buying it. You have to prove you sold it. You have to prove what you paid for it.
It is much simpler to deal with reputable people who want to sell their worth+-less-and-less paper reserve notes. I allow them to safely trade, meeting face to face, in a safe place, where both parties receive the "money" before they part ways. Some people call this buying crypto. I call it selling dollars for real assets.
I usually refuse dollars. Many times, the meeting place is the local neighborhood foundry. I do not like analyzing the ink appears on paper. Again, it is worthless paper. People who sell gold know how to pick out the printing imperfections, and for some reason, they want that paper. The gold dealer counts the paper and hands over the metal, then I transfer the crypto to my counterpart. The metals dealer does not mind the triangular deal. They want to move gold. If I am never in dollars, always in real assets, then I am not a person of interest to the people in Kansas.
A capital gains tax is a type of tax applied to the profits earned on the sale of an asset.
I have a problem with the word "gain" in the above definition. Buying an average car for 30% of the cost of an average home in 1960 or in 2021 is still just a car and still just a house. The fact that the amount of dollars is higher or lower is irrelevant. the higher "prices" only prove that the dollars are more abundant in the world.
If I bought a million dollar house yesterday and sell it for two million today, I have "gained" a quantity of dollars within a two day period. I suppose that is taxable. The dollars of yesterday and those of today have almost the same value. But over a period of months or years, that is certainly not the case. When the price of the house goes up, it means that the quantity of dollars needed to buy the same house has gone up. The house has not changed, the dollar has.
HODLing
Preparing to HODL is key. The printing of currency has not slowed down and nobody is ever going to pay it back with their taxes. Show me a country in the world that has ever done that.
Always expect the unexpected in the crypto world. I am always prepared for another bleak run of $3,000 Bitcoin, not that I think it will go there again but if it does drop that far, I have enough non-crypto money to last those two to three years. I live a simple life and I do not buy much.
I have shut down my phone and messaging apps. The requests for USDT have been non-stop, and I do not like saying "No" to crypto crazed dip buyers. I did trade out what little BCH and ETH I had while the Western Union of coins was at $58k. Those trades went into USDT. I could sell out that quantity couple of hours but I will not be doing that. I didn't put much into the new Tether wallet, but what I did put in there is for the really big dip.
There is nothing I can do to increase the trustworthiness of the imToken wallet. Only time will do that. Someday, that token will be a good place to pull out of the crypto world at the top with an easy digital gateway back in at the bottom. For me, that day is not yet. Exchanges are not capable of making everyone whole when they get hacked or are mismanaged - I do not keep any money there. I watched a friend lose 500 Bitcoins in MtGox. And I had warned him that I saw anomalies in the trading feed, come on, it was a one coin exchange. A wallet is the way to go, but my trusted wallets have no reliable USDT option. I will build trust with new wallets I find.
I am all in on crypto but the word "all" means "all of the crypto portion of my diversified portfolio."
Staking
Hive was on my list too. I got some of that sent over when the market was up with the sole intention of converting it to Leo and other LeoDEX listings. It was very slow going putting that money on the LeoDEX. They had a problem with deposits. Hive does convert easily to the DEX though. I had to learn to use the hive-engine.
Since then, I have been stocking up on dip-Leo and dip-POB. Already POB has more than doubled in value. I am trying to do some voting over there and I am seeing what else is out there on this blockchain. Interesting!
I thank all who have followed me. I did not expect so many.
Tips, questions or comments welcome.