How are we here together after everything that has went wrong since the first time I bought Bitcoin in 2014? How much have my top 10 cryptocurrency mistakes cost me in losses and missed opportunities?
You might be amazed it is possible for me to get anything right after reading all of my miscalculations, bad choices, and epic fails here! I will be accountable for all the things I've messed up on and I think this will be helpful for you to learn from my experience instead of having to repeat all the same mistakes for yourself. In reviewing what I have done in the past, I also hope to avoid many of these same mistakes on Steemit!
Would you read this post or watch the original YouTube video below to find out?
Thank you very much to @gmichelbkk for converting the transcription of the YouTube video from GoTranscript into this beautiful post for Steemit, which is much faster to read than the video and has all of the highlights in screenshots!
At the end of this section about my 10 cryptocurrency mistakes there is a live discussion about cryptocurrencies that you may like reading: See what currencies I am trading and investing in, what exchange I am using, and which ICO I have invested in.
My Top 10 Cryptocurrency Mistakes
Let's start with a song:
"I know I'm not perfect, I know I've got issues, I know that I've got a sordid past, and yes some bad tattoos."
"I'm not a model, I'm not a saint!"
That's the theme of this right now.
I've made some amazing mistakes.
How much do you think they're all worth?
When you add all the mistakes I've made up collectively and you look at the total cost, how much do you think all of them are worth?
Well, I will show you here today which is June 8, 2017 but for the video was May 28, 2017.
I've read the comments on my YouTube channel and some of them encouraged me to be accountable.
I will start with number 10 down to number 9.
Number 10: Trading US Dollars to Bitcoin on Bitstamp
I traded Bitcoin to US dollars back and forth on Bitstamp. I traded over a hundred thousand in one day, not because I was trying to make money, but because I was trying to simply get my Bitcoin into US dollars and get it back into my wallet.
I was just trying to cash out, but I realized the wire transfer process wouldn't work with my bank and Bitstamp. I literally burned a thousand dollars up in one day just in fees, and then the market buying and sell difference, because I didn't just send the money straight over to Coinbase.
This is the fastest mistake I've made in terms of money. A complete waste. I blew a thousand dollars in a period of an hour or two on Bitstamp out of simply ignorance.
The mistakes continue to get more costly from here.
Number 9: Using personal loans to trade Bitcoin
When I first started trading Bitcoin, I didn't have any of my own actual cash, I borrowed money. I was $50,000 in debt in credit cards and I borrowed personal loans so that I could trade Bitcoin, which also relates with the next mistake.
I lost about $3,000 trading Bitcoin in 2015 and 16 because I borrowed money to trade Bitcoin, and not only did I lose money in the price, but I also paid interest on those personal loans on the money I lost.
"Oops, my bad."
It cost me about $3,000.
Now, this pairs with the next one and to me this is the one that really makes me look the worst. This is the one where people say, "You're scummy."
This is what I feel made me a little scummy.
Number 8: Trading Bitcoin with client funds
I had a client who paid me money to do advertising campaigns for him online. He paid the entire budget in advance and it was a huge advertising budget. It was all sitting there in the bank and I was just looking at it, meanwhile I personally was broke.
I was borrowing money and I had credit cards debt. I was looking at this client's money, just thousands and thousands sitting in the bank and I thought, "I will just buy some Bitcoin with this client's money, when the price goes up I'll sell the Bitcoin, and then the client won't know the difference. I'll make a profit and the client won't care because I will spend all the money for the client."
Well, the opposite happened.
I was already dead broke, but I bought tens of thousands of dollars with the client's money in Bitcoin. I managed to lose about 5 plus thousand dollars by using the client's money to buy Bitcoin, and then the price of Bitcoin going down.
Then guess what?
When the client needed it, I couldn't just hold on to the Bitcoin. I needed to sell the Bitcoin to put it out to the client. I actually was so short that I sold one of my websites and took more personal loans to cover these loses.
This remind me of a song: "Yes, that was pretty sleazy, all you learn is so cheesy, sorry mommy, but I'm not that easy."
Another cash online, that's all I know.
Yes, I used client's funds to trade Bitcoin and thankfully the client didn't suffer any negative results from it because I did what it took. I sold my website and borrowed more money.
When the client went to spend all of their ad campaigns, I was able to spend all of it for them. Still, if a client gives you money, I don't think its right to go fooling around with it buying Bitcoin.
Number 7: Making a Dash budget proposal with no connections.
I just blew into the Dash community.
"Came in like a wrecking ball."
I just came rolling into the dash community. I dropped a 500 Dash budget proposal, which yesterday would be worth over $50,000. But at the time, I hadn't pumped and dumped it yet. It was only worth about $20 or so a Dash. I made this proposal to do all kinds of things: to make videos, to share and to promote Dash to hackers.
You'd think hackers would like a currency with anonymity as a primary feature of it, right?
I came rolling in and made what I thought was an epic proposal. I thought it was just amazing, I thought it was better than everyone else's and guess what?
The Dash community crapped in my face back.
The comments were awful, you can go look.
The proposal is called "Tell the Hackers" or something like that and the comments are really nasty. I didn't try to become a community member before, I just walked in and asked for thousands of dollars.
I said, "Hi, I'm here. I'd like thousands of dollars to do something that I think is awesome."
I didn't explain it to anyone and that cost me in total at least $10,000, mainly for the cost of the proposals. I spent a bunch of Dash doing proposals, but not just that.
If I would have just taken the time to stop in and say, "Hi, I'm Jerry Banfield. I just bought a masternode in the slide chart."
Everyone probably would have said, "Hi, welcome to the community. What are you hoping to do here?"
I just came rolling in and wanted money. I didn't get a good response. I followed that up and I did the same thing again.
I did the exact same thing again.
Instead of listening to what anyone said, I just went ahead and asked for more money.
Then, they didn't give it to me, I got pissed and I said, "Those mother f., how dare they not give me money?"
Then I rolled in and asked for more money again.
They actually did give it to me, but then I kept making the same mistake over and over again.
It cost me at least $10,000, plus my relationship with the Dash community, which I eventually just decided, "You know what? This is too messed up. This is not anymore salvaging at this point."
Number 6: Buying PIVX and Steem too fast
Recently, after my mistakes with the Dash community, it got me to the point where I was, "F. Them! I'll just go somewhere else and maybe they'll appreciate me."
I've looked at PIVX and thought, "Hey, I could basically do the same thing I did with Dash."
I could come rolling in and make these budget proposals and try to be a big deal.
So I bought 10 or 11 Bitcoin of PIVX all at once, and the price went down like 30%.
"Whoops!"
I sold it and managed to lose a couple of Bitcoin, fooling around, buying PIVX, and then I bought a whole bunch of Steem.
I was ecstatic, "Oh my God, Steem, Steem," and I just rolled in. I put like $30,000 into Steem, and then the price yesterday went down like 30%.
Now, I bought more, I had "buy orders" all the way down. But still, I missed out, if I would have had more patience, I could have had at least $15,000 more in Steem than I have today.
I wouldn't have just dumped all the money in PIVX before realizing that I'd probably make the same mistakes with PIVX, that I did with Dash. Either that, or PIVX, given the community size, is not worth that much for a masternode today.
I just rolled.
I rushed in and yes, it cost about $15,000 just for rushing in like that.
This is continuing and escalating in more expensive mistakes.
Number 5: Selling altcoins on Poloniex!
I sold my altcoins on Poloniex.
I did all these Poloniex tutorials in July or August, and September 2016 where I showed buying all these altcoins.
Now, in order to buy my Dash masternode, I dumped all my altcoins on Poloniex into Dash. I had enough cash and I could have just bought the masternode with my cash and held those altcoins on Poloniex. I didn't need to dump those altcoins on Poloniex, I just dumped them. I had all kinds of altcoins, things at that time that were nearly worthless.
I had a bunch of Steem. I'd bought Steem several times over for like point one Bitcoin. I bought a bunch of it up when it was really cheap. I bought a bunch of Stellar Lumens that just went to the sky. I had Ripple. I had like five Bitcoin of altcoins on Poloniex in December 2016 before they all blew up.
I was holding tons of a bunch of them, and that cost selling my altcoins instead of taking another $5,000 out of the bank and buying Dash, is at least $25,000.
Even accounting for what I earned on the Dash, I would have earned at least $25,000 more if I would have just held on to my altcoins instead of getting impatient and selling all of them, and converting them into Dash. If I would have followed my own advice on the balanced portfolio and kept my Poloniex portfolio, then that would have been worth at least $25,000 more at a minimum.
These mistakes keep getting better.
"Oh my God, Jerry, how do you live with yourself?"
I pray and meditate a lot, and go to an AA meeting every day, that's how I live with myself. I have a wife and family who love me, and all of you online who love me, that's how I live with myself.
Now see, this is getting better.
Number 4: Selling 60 Bitcoin for $1,750 each
After I sold my Dash masternode, I had 60 Bitcoin at $1,750 each. It is the most Bitcoin I'd ever had at once before.
Remember, I just said in a previous mistake that I sold up all my altcoins on Poloniex, I took that five Bitcoin, bought five more Bitcoin, and put it all on Dash. When I sold my Dash masternode, I had 60 Bitcoin out of it. I sold them all and took the cash, $50,000 plus of it, and stuck it in my bank accounts. I was afraid of taking any risk.
Now, guess what?
The Bitcoin price right after that proceeded to go up $750 at its peak, and it may still go up higher.
Because I was unwilling to lose perhaps a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, I missed out on making $50,000 just by literally letting my Bitcoin sit in Coinbase for a few weeks. I could have literally made $50,000 just letting it sit there.
But nope, I was impatient, again, and I sold everything for cash and put it straight in my bank account.
It's a $50,000 mistake right there.
I didn't just let it sit, but I'm okay with that.
I have enough money today and I'm grateful for that.
Having enough money means that I don't have to agonize over mistakes like this. I do believe it's important that I'd be accountable to you though and admit, "Yes, I did this."
I followed my own advice on this one, I paid the price and missed an opportunity.
It gets even better though.
Number 3: Selling 30 Bitcoin for $205 each
When I was first buying and trading Bitcoin and this relates to that first two out of three mistakes, I bought 30 Bitcoin.
I bought many of them for under $200 each. I had 30 Bitcoin in 2015. I think when it dropped to $170, I bought 10 or 20 Bitcoin. I also bought a bunch at $180, and I had at least 30 Bitcoin. I may have had even more, like 40 or 50, but I had at least 30 Bitcoin for sure.
I just realized also that I didn't report this as capital losses on any of my taxes either, which you could add that to. I paid thousands of extra dollars in tax.
I bought all this Bitcoin when it was down. I thought it was never going to be this low again ever and I was right. I was also impatient. Few things suck in life as much as being rightly impatient. I bought these 30 Bitcoin, and then I panicked and sold them at $205.
My friend, Robert, who bought the Bitcoin from me, gave me cash. He gave me $7,000 plus in cash because he wanted the Bitcoin for himself, for his own website.
I sold 30 plus Bitcoin at $205 each. I easily could have held my money. I easily could have held on to that Bitcoin, that cost me about a $130,000.
Even though I was sure Bitcoin would never go down to $170 again, even though I was right to buy it, I was so impatient that as soon as I made a small profit just a few weeks later, I sold all of it for $205.
It then proceeded to go up as high as $2,500. I easily could have held that 30 Bitcoin and it would have made a big difference.
A $130,000 mistake.
"Oh, well!"
Number 2: Promoting Dash, saying I would hold it, and selling instead
Now here, we'll get into some of the mistakes I've made that have pissed the most people off.
This was my second biggest mistake with Dash.
If you combine this with the other mistake, it really makes sense.
My friend Albert, through my friend Robert, got me all pumped up on Dash.
I was ecstatic, "Dash, Dash, Dash, Dash. Dash is going to be the next Bitcoin. Dash, Dash, Dash, Dash, Dash."
I sold all my altcoins, another mistake, and put them all into Dash. I put more cash into Dash, and I started doing this on Christmas Day.
If you want to add up my personal mistakes in this, I spent a significant part of the Christmas morning buying Dash on Poloniex and moving money around instead of hanging out with my family at which point I got a resentment, and was all pissed off. It took like a month to deal with that. I was all aggravated on Christmas Day, so you just not even go there because that just makes it too complicated.
So I bought all this Dash on Christmas, starting on Christmas Day and over the next week. Then I told everyone, "I'm going to hold this Dash for at least a year because if you pay capital gains which the IRS is bending me…"
Oh Jerry, go easy, family friendly.
If you buy something in the US, and then sell it within a year, you have to pay full income tax. Whereas, if you hold it for at least a year, you get to pay capital gains, which is only 15%.
Meanwhile, the Dash masternode, at the time paid out like 1.8 Dash, which is actually almost $200 right now.
I told everyone, "This is an opportunity of a lifetime. I will hold my Dash masternode forever. This is a retirement gift for my daughter."
I said all of these things.
Then, I wandered into the community, posted a couple of budget proposals, and went off on them like a nuclear bomb:
How dare you mother f., not giving me everything I've asked for?
How dare you not paying me all this money when I'm making all these videos?
How dare you?
You're going to burn the money instead of give it to me.
You are jerks.
I ranted and raved like a child at the community, and then finally after taking suggestions, I made a pre-proposal post, which had other people make equally childish comments to me, things like:
I'm threatening them because I might use another cryptocurrency.
Is that a threat?
When you invest somewhere else, is that a threat?
Maybe it is a threat.
Maybe it's just what I'm going to do. It's all your fault.
So, after getting equal and finally getting fed up with the community, not what everyone else had done, but what I'd done to the community, I thought, "Screw you guys, I'm leaving!"
I sold all my Dash.
I sold it all at $87, which is a really good deal on a thousand Dash considering I bought at $11. In addition, I got all the masternode payments for thousands more so.
My mistake was to sell at $87 when the price went up to $150, and I could have sold at $150.
Not just that, but I broke my word then.
Some people called that dishonest, one person on YouTube called it "Scummy."
"You're scummy. You promoted Dash, you pumped it, you promoted it, you told everyone to buy it, and then you sold it. You're scummy, Jerry, you're scummy."
Well, I know what it feels like to feel scummy.
Don't you think all these thoughts have gone through my mind?
"Well, that's nice you told all your followers, you told millions…"
"You didn't tell millions, you're such a liar."
All right, I told seven or eight hundred thousand people online using YouTube and Facebook, especially Facebook Ads, that "Dash is the investment of a lifetime, and here's how you invest," and all that crap stuff.
I said, "I love Dash, Dash's so great!," and then all of a sudden, I switched to, "Dash sucks, I sold it all. Get rid of your Dash before it plummets."
That's likely to have pissed off a lot of people who said, "Well, Jerry just sucks. He tells you to do one thing and he just takes advantage of you. He buys something, get you all pumped up on it, then he just dumps it after you've bought it and made him money. He's scummy, scummy bastard".
That's not how I'm aiming to be.
I'm aiming to be helpful and I'm aiming to be of service.
So to me this makes it worth it to be accountable and be like, "Yes, I've been a scummy bastard. I bought something cheap, I promoted the hell out of it, and then I unloaded after I made seven or eight times the money I put into it. Yes, scummy bastard."
There we go, there it is, right out there open.
Yes, that's exactly what I did.
Now, I didn't mean to do it like that. You could say there was divine misdirection if you want to. I didn't intend for that to happen, but all these mistakes I've made have snow-balled together to the point, "Well, why don't you just sell?"
Number 1: Not following my own advice and thinking I was smarter than everyone else
What's the number one thing I've screwed up with cryptocurrencies?
After all these mistakes, the top mistake I made is not following my own advice.
"Damn, boy, you can't follow your own advice."
That's right, if I'd followed all of my own advice, I'd have at least $400,000 more today.
If I'd had just followed all my own advice, if I'd have simply held my Poloniex portfolio and taken different money, instead of giving vanguard $2,500, if I'd put that into Dash and left my Altcoin portfolio loan, not fooled around with it, I'd have a fortune more.
If I'd have just left the Dash masternode alone without fooling with it, I just could not mention Dash anymore and be like, "Well, I'm taking my payments. Just leave it, leave it."
Just like I tell my daughter, "Leave it. Don't fool around on the stuff in the trash. Leave it." But sometimes, you really need to convince her.
If I'd have followed my own advice, just financially it'd be worth at least $400,000 more.
To begin with, this is a two-part mistake: not following my own advice and thinking I'm smarter than other people.
The mistakes I made initially happened because I thought I was smarter than other people.
Now tell me if this is reasonable?
I started buying Bitcoin online and within the first few months, I figured I was a little smarter than the average investor.
I thought, "Now, this is going to go up. It's going to be worth more."
Yes, I was right, when it was $600 for a Bitcoin in 2014, I was absolutely right. The price was going to go up and all I needed to do was just buy and buy. That was when I thought I was smarter than every people and I was telling everyone else to buy.
But what I didn't realize is that I needed three years to be right. I would need three years before I really was right. I wasn't patient enough to just buy a little bit, like 10 bucks, just buy like 10 bucks of Bitcoin every day, or whatever I could afford.
I just had to buy a little bit every day and hold on to it. Nope, I'm going to buy 300. I'll buy 1,000, what the hell, I'll buy 2,000 today. I thought I was smarter than everyone else, and I got quite a lot of evidence that I'm not.
Then I set up these investment strategies based on realizing that I'm not smarter than everyone else, but then I set out to prove that I really am smarter. I'm smarter not only than everyone else, but I'm smarter than my own reasonable advice.
That's right!
I'm so smart that I don't even need my own advice, because the rules don't apply to me, do they?
This is a mistake I made frequently in my life, which is why I show up to be accountable here for it today. I've done all these things and if you put together all my mistakes, they're collectively worth at least $400,000.
Now, I'm grateful that everyone who's commented said, "You're so stupid, you could have made $50,000 more."
I'm grateful that you think it's worthwhile for me to have made fifty more thousand, that's nice. I haven't seen anyone who said, "You don't deserve to make the $50,000 anyway. You did the right thing. You don't deserve any more money, you did the right thing. You sold it just at the right time, don't you feel good?"
Actually, I think someone did comment that.
These are my mistakes.
Collectively, financially, I've made so many mistakes that if I sold everything today based on my mistakes, I easily could have all my debt paid off today and have some savings.
So, instead, I've got a lot of valuable life lessons I've learned.
I've shared this with the hope you can be smarter than me, that you don't have to make three years worth of cryptocurrency mistakes to do a little bit of investing, to make a little bit of money, and maybe this is useful for you today.
I love you, you're awesome, I appreciate you reading.
Live discussion
In this section you will find answers to questions I was asked during the live streaming video and a discussion about cryptocurrencies.
Question: Do you think new cryptocurrencies are worth the investment?
Answer: Absolutely! I invested a thousand dollars in a pre-sale on one cryptocurrency. I think that some of the best values you can get in investing with cryptocurrencies, are to buy the brand-new ones because that's when your money makes the biggest difference. If you put a thousand dollars or a hundred dollars in Bitcoin, it makes almost no difference. It's a gigantic ocean of money and a hundred dollars is a tiny drop in the bucket.
Now if you put a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars into some of these currencies listed way at the bottom here, now that's a significant contribution. If you go all the way to the bottom on coincap.io and if you put a hundred dollars in, you could have a significant portion of all that's available.
For $1,000 you could have half of the whole market essentially. Now, if you believe in the community of some of these new cryptocurrencies, you might make a really good investment.
For some of these newer ones, every dollar that gets put into them makes a huge difference because they don't have that much money. Many of them can't pay developers to work full time, and they really could use the money. So if you find a community that you love of some new cryptocurrency, then yes, you might be able to make a huge amount of money on it. However, if money is your main goal though, you're going to run into lots of the same mistakes I've run into, because most of the mistakes I've made have been in trying to make money.
Now a couple of them have been like with Dash, not being a good community member, but I've just realized the value after three years of trading cryptocurrencies online about actually participating in the community.
So I recommend if you want to invest in one of the newer coins, that you be an active community member in there.
As I'm investing in Steem, I'm also being an active community member in Steem. I'm making new posts, I'm writing another new post today for Steem, and I'm grateful to be on Steem Whales today. I'm 327 on this Steem Whales list out of a hundred and seventy-one thousand accounts. I'm investing big into Steem because I believe in the community.
Comment: Nothing is good to buy, switch to Fiat!
Answer: Yes, if you've got Bitcoin. You can never tell with these things though, the truth is no one knows exactly what the future holds.
I mean, who would have thought that Ethereum Classic would blow up to $14. I certainly thought when Ethereum was $90 that it was a bad buy, and it went over $200 at one point.
Ripple is down to 20 cents after being over 34 cents. I would guess Ripple is going to go down to maybe 10 cents at least. It just got a bit over inflated. Ripple is really exciting, but there are also 38 billion Ripple available. That's a lot of Ripple and it's still relatively new.
I don't know if I've ever made a transaction other than a trade on Ripple. I've made actual transactions with Bitcoin, Ethereum, New Economy Movement, Litecoin, Dash and I think that's it. They are the only currencies I've made actual transactions with where I sent a meaningful payment to someone.
Question: Am I the only one who hasn't had problems with Poloniex?
Answer: Poloniex worked really good for me the first year. Lately it's been getting so much traffic that it's been slowing down.
Question: Would you have liked to sell your Dash later?
Answer: Well, of course, I'd be happy to have an extra $50,000 for my Dash. One of the things I noticed is the impatience penalty or that fear of missing out. I've got afraid that the Dash price would go further down. The Dash price went down to $60 or so while I was holding it and I was afraid that it goes down to like $40, $30 or $20, and never come back up. So I figured that selling for $87,000 seemed to be a good deal.
Usually it is best to be more patient. That's the same thing when I got so excited about Steem. I dumped everything I could into Steem, and I have 29,000 Steem right now. Most of which I bought when Steem was at $1.20 something. So if I have had a little bit more patience, I could be even higher in Steem Whales. It's not like a huge loss.
Comment: On Coinbase I'm not verified yet.
Answer: Yes, Bittrex is the fastest I've ever seen for verifications. I got instantly verified on Bittrex. Poloniex is still screwing around with my verification application weeks later.
Question: What upcoming ICOs we should look for?
Answer: I personally think if you're going to be in on an ICO, you would want to know the founder, know whoever is going to launch the coin. I would say that it's more looking at founders that are working on ICOs and buy their coin.
The one I've bought into is called the Superior Coin. Let me see if I can find that.
This is the one coin I've bought into. I have 1.3 million Superior Coin today. I think that according to the data, I've got about 0.5% of all the coins starting out. The current price is what's listed on the website, which is about less than one cent per coin today.
I like this coin also because it's based on a community. I'm really getting to like community-based coins because a lot of these coins' features don't matter.
Features don't matter that much for a coin because all of these coins are competing on features. You really got to have a community to stand out if you really want to do well.
Let's see if I can log in over here to show you the community based on this one. This is one I'm also excited about. If you want an Initial Coin Offering, this one might, or it might not either, be a good one.
You can see that I've got a 1.3 million Superior Coin balance. I'm one of the first investors in the world in Superior Coin. It's a pre-sale now.
To my knowledge it's not on any exchanges. If I search for Superior Coin, you can see that it's not on coincap.io at all. Superior Coin is the currency that they're going to use on Crowdifyclub.com.
I have a friend, Michel, whose friend is the founder of Crowdify and I directly communicated with the founder in order to invest a few months back. The pre-sale is now on thesuperiorcoin.com website. You can put in your Twitter ID, the amount of your coin and pay with Bitcoin.
This is the one thing I've invested in before it is even going on any exchange. I think if it does go on an exchange, it's got great potential. At the same time, this thing is so early that I can't even transfer out of my wallet yet. I can't actually send or do anything with these coins right now because the website is still using the old currency called Crowdify points.
My friend Michel (crowdifyclub.com/gmichelbkk) really likes this website, there's good activity. This is basically a social network where you get paid for what you do anyway, like following someone or sharing.
I like currencies that have a good community backing on them and that have some kind of natural marketplace or website like this. This is the one website I've invested in even before an Initial Coin Offering.
This is the one thing I have to give you in that regard, it is at thesuperiorcoin.com and the founder is Michael Q Todd.
I'm sure he'd be very grateful if you bought some Superior Coin. Now, you really need a Crowdify account. This is at Crowdifyclub.com. However, they're currently making a wallet.
"Jerry, what's this coin like?"
Well, the basics of it, if you read the coin page here, it's basically a Monero. I think that's how you say it, a Monero clone. It's got a lot in common, it uses the crypto note protocol.
I guess it is kind of a Monero clone there.
That's all I know about that.
Question: How do you find ICOs to invest?
Answer: You find the ICOs to invest by finding the founders, I would imagine, who are working on them. If you want the very best investment, I would imagine the Superior Coin has the chance to be a great investment for me because right now, it's difficult to even buy it. It's not even on any of the exchanges yet.
When it gets on an exchange, if the price goes up to one cent, with 1.3 million, I'll have $13,000. If it goes to 10 cents, I'll have a $130,000.
Now, at the same time, I can't cash this out. I can't do anything practical with it right now because it's so early on, they're just building it. I would say if you want to get in on Initial Coin Offerings, brand new coins, start searching for the founders.
You can search for them on Twitter or Google, you can just see what people are talking about and see who is making their own coin. You can also watch YouTube videos. I think that's a good way to just find the founders basically.
Another way is to just ask your friends or to just comment here. I'm sure there are some other good ones, but this is all I know that I'm interested in.
Question: Is Superior Coin available?
Answer: Yes, if you want to buy the Superior Coin, it is available. It's less than one cent per coin, it's 0.81 cents right now. If you want to buy some you can just go straight to the website and read about it, you can look at the wallet here.
You can see it's on the CrowdifyClub platform, it explains just what it is.
It tells you how many coins are going to be released, and then you can buy them here. You can put in your Twitter ID and how much you want.
If you put in $800 you will get about 100,000 Superior Coin, and then you can pay with Bitcoin.
If you want to invest like one Bitcoin, you can have 250,000 Superior Coin.
You can buy that now.
I recommend that you look at Crowdifyclub.com first though. I only was willing to invest in this because of the website and because of my friend already being an investor in it as well. I wouldn't have invested in without that. Look around and see whether you like the site first and check on that.
Question: What is a good Poloniex alternative?
Answer: If you want a Poloniex alternative it's Bittrex.
Here's bittrex.com, and this is what I use to trade, this is what works really well.
If you want to see how to use Bittrex, I've got a tutorial showing exactly how to use it on my channel.
Question: Are you buying Bitcoin?
Answer: I am not currently buying any Bitcoin right now. I'd like to see where the price goes. I've already got one Bitcoin, so if I go to my wallet, I already have 1.1 Bitcoin and I had a bunch more. I had 10 Bitcoin that I put into Steem. Now I've still got a Bitcoin.
Then I've got a bunch of "buy" orders in on Steem. Actually, in the short term, if Steem goes down that's good because I've got all these open orders in. If the price of Steem goes down, I'll get a whole bunch of Steem cheap.
So I've got 21 orders in for Steem. That's about 5,000 Steem that I've put in for my one Bitcoin. If the price of Steem plummets I can grab up 5,000 more Steem, and then I'll consider if I want to buy more. I'd like to absolutely load up on Steem because I'm going to start advertising Steem the way I did with Dash.
I'm going to start pumping Steem all over the place. I think that even if it doesn't go up in the short term, in the long term Steem's going to go up a ton. One of the reasons I think this is because Steem already's been a lot higher in the past. If you look at the coin market cap, Steem is one of the only ones that has not exceeded its previous market cap. Steem at one point, a year ago, reached a market cap of almost 400 million. It didn't even go over that in the new cap. I think Steem personally is way undervalued.
I've used Bittrex to buy most of my Steem. I've bought so much Steem that I'm being patient in continuing to buy more each month. I'm also getting more Steem, so if you look at my blog on Steemit, I'm grateful they're giving me Steem just for making posts.
I'm getting more Steem that way and it looks like I should be able to make a good bit of money every month just by making posts on Steemit, if the trend that has started continues. Then, I also would like to continue investing more in Steem.
Question: What is Bittrex?
Answer: Bittrex is an exchange like Poloniex or Bit t-rex. I like that. It's got a wallet and it's an exchange. It's based in the US, whether that's a good or a bad thing in your opinion. It's based in the US and I just love it.
I bought a bunch of Steem with Bittrex. If Steem goes down, I'm going to keep buying more because the one time I don't want to buy more is if it goes up. If it goes up to like $2 to $5 a Steem, I think it's going to go to $10 a Steem. It's currently 85 cents.
I'm making a prediction on May 28, 2017, that in 10 months Steem will be $10. I want to grab as much of it as possible while it is down, and then whenever it does hit that next power curve, like it already hit in the past, then I want to have as much of it as possible because then I won't be able to buy hardly any more of that.
Comment: You might be able to make a lot of money on Ripple.
Answer: You might be right. The price of Ripple might go up to a dollar for a Ripple in a year or two because of the adoption by banks. At the same time, it might go down to like 10 cents before it goes up to a dollar.
Question: I am new in crypto, can you advise me on what to invest in next?
Answer: There are two different basic ways you can do it. I think it can be nice to combine both of these strategies or it's easier to just do this first one. The basic strategy I share is to bet the market. You can really bet the market well on Bittrex because there are tons of markets. If I just go over to all the markets on Bittrex, there are so many markets. There's something like 175 altcoins that you can trade on Bittrex.
If you wanted to put in $100 or $1,000 to start, you could make really small orders. You could put like .0. I don't know what the smallest is, each of them are different, but you could basically just buy a little bit of a bunch of different currencies.
This strategy can work really well because you're essentially betting the entire market. If you'd bet the top 500 or 1,000 of the stock market, from whenever it started till now, you'd have a ridiculous amount of money.
This lowers your risk then because you're betting the whole market. If one currency crashes, it doesn't matter. I've made a lot of money this way. I put a half Bitcoin on Poloniex. I made at least a Bitcoin within a month doing that. I made an initial investment of $600, I bought 50 different altcoins. I made at least a Bitcoin worth over $2,000 within a month of doing that, which I then invested and lost essentially.
I bet the whole market. I just bought in at the top 50 and I put .01 Bitcoin into 50 different currencies and the price of that just blew up. One day, it went up to almost a Bitcoin, and then I sold some. It went up to almost a Bitcoin again, and I sold some.
One strategy, if you're new and don't know anything at all about which cryptocurrency to buy, you could just buy a little bit of a bunch of different currencies, and then just hold on to them. Forget about them or buy a little bit every month and look at it as a long term investment. That's one basic way to do it.
The other basic way to do it is to research these currencies or to follow someone's recommendation. I've done both. The best investment I've made so far, I've followed a recommendation combined with my own research. My friend, Albert, through Robert got me all excited about Dash when it was $10. I researched Dash, I googled it, and then I bought into Dash. I invested everything at that point into Dash, and then I promoted Dash a bunch, the price went up, and then I sold my Dash.
Another way to do it is to bet everything on one currency you believe in. I think both of these strategies combined are ideal. Now, for me personally, it makes the most sense at this point to bet everything on Steem.
Why?
Because Steem gives me a lot for my investment. I'm very grateful that I have 29,000 Steem today. I'm one of the top holders of Steem power in the whole world, which means I have vested Steem that's earning interest.
It also gives me the ability to essentially vote my own post way up, which gives them a much higher opportunity of getting a good amount of money earned on each post. That's a huge investment reward and it makes the most sense today to go all in on one currency because I can't really promote the whole market that well.
If I run an ad on Facebook talking about how amazing cryptocurrencies are, it doesn't really benefit me much to promote the entire market. Because you are collaborating with me to give what appears to be my power to broadcast my opinion online, which I hope reflects your opinion and is useful for you, it makes the most sense for me currently to just pick one or a small amount of currencies, and then promote them because I can actually influence the price a little bit, at least in my own big ego head.
I can influence the price of that currency a little bit and we, together, can have a huge impact on one currency. So, it depends on how you want to go about it. It depends on what's best for you.
If you want a passive investment strategy, just betting the market is best. If you don't want to talk to anyone, you just want to make some money and you believe in these cryptocurrencies as a whole, but you don't want to research them and do all this work, you could just put a little bit of money every month.
I've done this. I used Coinbase to turn US dollars into Bitcoin, and then to Ethereum recently. Then, I used Ethereum to deposit on Bittrex.
You can easily just buy a little bit on Bittrex of all these different currencies and think of it like investing in the whole stock market and like a retirement account. Now, if you're excited and you want to talk with everybody about it and you want to make it a group thing, then I personally think Steem is the best investment today.
That's just what I think. I've been wrong a lot.
This whole blog post is about how I've made 10 costly mistakes online with trading these currencies, and my mistakes are worth much more that the profit I've made.
I personally think this one's the best.
That doesn't mean I'm right though, but I'm personally going everything into Steem, and then I'm putting everything into being a Steem user, not just an investor or a speculator, but a user.
I'm actually using the Steemit.com website and investing in Steem, and building my presence on Steemit. So, I think you could pick something I've done or you could just pick one yourself like you could say, "Well, Ethereum is really good, I think it's going to overtake Bitcoin." The best way to invest seems to be putting a little bit of money in every month.
My impatience has cost me a lot of money in making a good deal, but if I'd have been more patient with Dash, I wouldn't have grabbed a masternode in a period of a week when it was $10 and $11, I might have taken several months at which point I would have missed out on the majority of the profit I made as is.
These are the two basic ways: you can bet the whole market or you can research, get a recommendation, bet a specific currency. Each of these ways have ups and downs.
Question: Why do you think Steem is going to go 10 times up?
Answer: I've got a post if you want to know why I think Steem is going to go up: "10 Reasons for $10 Steem Price in 10 Months."
The summary of it is all these things together. When you put all these 10 things together, it's incredible. I don't know of any other currency that has all 10 of these things going for it.
Google organic search traffic to Steemit.com is huge and a powerful force. Most of these currencies online don't have good Google organic search traffic outside of perhaps, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and maybe a little bit on the top, but Steemit is doing great building organic Google search traffic.
Steemit is already up to one of the top websites in the entire world and I think it's got potential to get into the top 100.
Also, Steemit screwed up a lot before, you might say. Steemit inflated its price by a 100% a year, which basically meant if you bought it and held it on an exchange, it was guaranteed to go down in value. So, Steem pretty much pissed off a bunch of traders and investors with essentially forcing you to power your Steem up.
I think that's left a lot of traders and speculators down on Steem, who may not even be aware of the change. Steem now is only inflating 9.5% a year, which is on par or less than the US dollar by comparison.
So, now Steem actually is getting to be worth a really good buy to just buy and hold it on in an exchange. I wasn't aware of this big change until after I checked the interest in my Steem account and I said, "Wait a minute, this isn't earning 100% interest."
Steem also prevents a quick exit with power downs and it's got a higher previous market value. So, as I showed before, its market value actually has been higher. If you want to look at something like Ripple for comparison, its market value is just now getting a bit more reasonable, but it has never been close to as high as it's been in the last month.
It went up just fantastically in the last month, but if you look over the last year, it's never had a market valuable anywhere compared to where it is now. Steem meanwhile has. I'll give you a couple more real quick.
It's an attractive investment if you're a blogger or a content creator like me. I get a ton of influence. I get to have one of the most influential votes on the website because of my investment Steem. Now, when you buy most coins, they don't give you anything. Steem gives you a lot.
Also, I'm going to promote this.
I'm all in with Steem, "Well, you were all in on Dash, weren't you?"
I'm all in on Steem and I'm going to promote it. I've actually even thought of a way I can raise money to do ads with my posts.
The coolest thing with Steem is that you get paid to write content.
They're actually going to pay me around $890 worth of Steem just for making a blog post.
Now, think about that.
I got that money just because I made a blog post and that's going to allow me to continue investing more and more in Steem.
Now, I am making that money because people voted it up.
How do you get people to vote it up?
You want your friends to get in.
I think that this friend effect makes this possible, and then the higher the price goes, the higher the earnings will go. It will be a great snowball effect. I believe this eventually will attract celebrities to bring their following so they can make more money.
I think that the Steem community is the nicest community of people I've ever seen online. When I walked in on my Dash budget proposal, I got a lot of people hating. Then with Steem, for better or worse, I've never seen before such a nice, loving, compassionate and friendly community. The posts and the comments are just incredibly positive.
These are the 10 reasons I think Steem will go $10 in 10 months.
I might be wrong, it might take longer, but it might go higher.
Comment: If you follow Jerry's advice, say goodbye to your coins.
Answer: That might be true.
If you followed my advice you might have said goodbye to all your coins.
What I hope to do is that you take the advice I give that you need and you leave the rest. If you listen to me and you're motivated to do something, then I think that's a good thing. I listen to really long books, I read, I study, I research, I take out what I need and I leave the rest. I hope that's what is useful for you.
If I say something useful, I hope that's helpful. If I say something stupid, or wrong, or irrelevant, I hope that you just learn from that and you'll say, "Well, he's investing in Steem, so I definitely am not investing in Steem. But based on how he's investing in Steem, maybe I'll invest in New Economy movement because it has similar properties."
I hope you can adapt what I say into it being really useful for you.
Question: Is there a way to short cryptocurrencies like regular stocks to make money when they go down in price?
Answer: I believe there is if you do margin trading. I believe Poloniex and Bitfinex have margin trading, and I believe there are ways to short cryptocurrencies.
With all these 10 mistakes I've made, I realize that it's probably not a good idea for me to fool around shorting stuff.
I've been just trading in complete coins because I have enough honesty to see that I'm not up for shorting things. I'm not up for margin trading. I'd either make a whole bunch and get a huge ego, but realistically I'd probably fool around and lose whatever I put into it.
I personally don't fool around with that.
You can make huge amounts of money that way if you do margin trading and shorting, but you can just easily get wiped out that way too with how much these go up and down.
I'm grateful that you've read this post all the way to the end.
I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day today.
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed? If you would like me to follow you, would you please read this post next?
Love,
Jerry Banfield