Over the last couple of weeks, I've been in touch with multiple persons who asked the question:
Bitcoin, really, where does it end? When should I get in, and how do I manage it?
The answer, to me, is pretty clear:
Just trade it on one of the multiple platforms.
But as it turns out, it's not as easy as I thought. Using an exchange like Bittrex, Kraken, GDAX, or anything of that nature, brings a hurdle to entry. Also, and this is the bigger overarching problem, people who are not trading daily or weekly, do not want to deal with Fibonacci retracements, MACD readings, and support and resistance. People who are overwhelmed by the market, its choices, and the technical implications. If you feel you fall into this category, here's my advice.
- Find someone who trades for you
- Setup regular Bitcoin payments
- Manual Bitcoin payments
- Mining
1. Find Someone Who Trades for You
Admitting that you don't want to deal with the practical stuff that's, for other people at least, part of an investment, is absolutely fine. Actually many people prefer this method because it gives them more time do work on their own business, removes the burden of having to find good entries and exits, and also a lot of the nerve-wrecking moments being exposed to the charts on a constant basis.
Getting someone professional, or even semi-professional, to help with this task is the most comfortable solution, that is also yielding the highest return on your investment. The downside is that with a semi-professional, you're still exposed to a higher risk because these folks probably won't help you get your money back, in case it's lost. With a professional investment plan, your loss is somewhat secure, while it gives a much lower return, because of the added insurance.
You find these people all around the place. You can drop me a line for example. Somewhere you like, and I'll see what I can do. We're working on a private investors fund aimed at persons just like you. I'm on Twitter, and we have a Facebook group for blockchains and its applications for the industry. Everybody else is scattered around the place. Steemit is a good starting place because it's public. There are many folks hanging around in Telegram and Discord as well.
2. Setup Regular Bitcoin Payments
This is probably the second most attractive option for the non-trader. The question, or fear, with trading is that people never know when to get in. When did it reach bottom? Was this the real bottom? If not how much money more am I going to lose?
What I'd call the Poor Man's Bitcoin Investment Plan™ is easy to follow. It is a combination of very traditional recurring payments and an automated exchange of your currency into Bitcoin.
Here's the plan in a nutshell:
- Setup a recurring payment to an exchange (not a trading platform), e.g. Coinbase, BitPanda, etc.
- Some of these platforms, but not all, allow you to instantly exchange your money into Bitcoin.
Using this method you leave out all the ups and downs of the market, and buy at several points. This gives you a better average buying price. As the price moves up, more payments occur on the bottom, and less on the top. This means you're basically "anchoring" your average entry price to the bottom, which means that the more the price moves up, the more money you make.
Right now I'd try some of the platforms mentioned above but also would recommend you check out Bittrex. They have an "Auto-Sell", and "Any 2 Any" feature in their Lab section. Essentially the Auto-Sell feature does what it says on the tin can. As soon as the money for a specific coin or for foreign currency, e.g. US Dollar, exceeded a threshold amount, it is auto-sold to a specific cryptocurrency, e.g. Bitcoin.
The advantages here are that it removes typical day-to-day market movements from the equation, gives a somewhat good return on investment, and leaves all control to you. That said, if you see Bitcoin drop by 50%, don't get a heart attack, simply try to sell early, if you catch. If not, remember that you invested because you expect it to rise again, even after a drop. If you can't believe that, maybe try some other coin or investment strategy.
In either case, if you need help setting this up, please let me know, and I see what I can do for you.
3. Manual Bitcoin Payments
This is the same method as above but this time you'd not setup an automatic recurring payment but try to remember to invest $100 every month. The main advantage of this method is that you get even more control because now you can pick your entries yourself. There are many many apps out there that make reading the charts easy. Using these apps, even those supplied by the platform, allows you to read the charts, and pick an entry manually.
The obvious downside is that you may miss a payment, and not invest regularly enough to get the desired return.
4. Mining
Getting into mining yourself is another great option. This method allows you to invest a certain amount of money upfront, which is then paid off through the mined coins. The obvious downside is that this means you'd have to have a big (very) noisy metallic box at home that needs maintenance. The electric costs for this thing are not deniable. On the upside however is that it allows you to pick any of the other crypocurrencies for you to "invest" in. Investment here is an investment in the network. Miners keep the various cryptocurrency networks alive. It is even possible to join a network that "switches" to the most profitable coin at any given moment. It can take a couple of months (maybe even a year) for the miner to break even.
As an alternative, you might want to check out cloud mining. This is a convenient option for anyone who doesn't want to have their own miner at home. It also removes the need to find a specific miner, with a specific hash rate. You can just purchase more, if you ever need to. I'm with Genesis Mining, and haven't had issues with them so far. Use the code gLz1hQ to get a 3% discount for new and registered users. Yyou can re-use this code later, even if you already registered. It's valid for anything you purchase.