It's the time of year where we reflect on where we've been and plan for where we want to be. I've made some comments on here lately regarding investment strategies that are being discussed online, and I'll build a post out of some of the things one might think about.
Barbell Investing
Get a set of weights and get your dang self back in shape buster! Nah, not those kind of barbells, although one assumes you have actually seen a barbell. They look something like this:
Source: Modified Image by Денис Марчук from Pixabay
The idea is to put your investments in two categories; safe and risky. You can leave out things that are wishy-washy middle of the road things. Just have half your investments in safe sure things and then go degen crazy with the other half.
Safe - Cash
As an example for investing money right now, mainly for someone in the US since that is where I am, you may want to park a good chunk of change in a FDIC Insured savings account that pays 4.35% insurance and is guaranteed by the US gov for up to $250K per bank per account.
Where can you get this rate? Open an online Performance Savings Account at Capital One. Here's the disclosure info: https://www.capitalone.com/bank/disclosures/savings-accounts/online-performance-savings-account/
So you know you will get back whatever you put in here, and hopefully the interest stays this good for a while, but don't count on it! Rates may come down next year so keep an eye on what you're earning. Worst case scenario? Capital One fails and you have to wait many many months for the FDIC to make you whole again. Another bad scenario: Inflation kicks up again and stays higher than what you're getting on your savings, so you lose purchasing power slowly over time.
Stocks - ETFs
I don't consider this to be in the Safe category but some might, if you have a long enough time horizon. If you don't need the money any time in the next 10 years and you can dollar cost average in, a few Exchange Traded Funds might be good for you.
My friend @chinito was asking for opinions on Vanguard ETFs and I answered here:
I said if he wanted just one all around decent Vanguard ETF then their ticker symbol VOO might work. It gives medium diversification with some of the tech weighting which should give good returns in this age of AI and robotics and electric cars and whatever else is coming. Also the fee is just a third that of SPY, the original S&P 500 tracking ETF.
But why limit oneself to just US companies? Looking to the future, I think the US global dominance is decreasing over time. We had a good run since WWII but our strength has kept the world safe enough for other countries to develop economically and therefore our economic influence as a percentage of the world total has and will decrease. Therefore VT, Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund ETF, is looking good.https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/vt
Also outside the US, if you had to pick one country to invest in, you might try India. It has the same population as China but it's a democracy and it has excellent demographics. Many young working people and not many old retired people. Tons of tech professionals there too. Notice how many CEOs of American tech companies are from India!
According to a report by Gulf Today, 30% of the Fortune 500 Companies have Indians as their CEOs, which is continuing to display an upward trend. One-third of all the engineers present in Silicon Valley today are from India, and 10% of the entire world’s high tech company CEOs are of Indian origin. Some names of inspiring tech CEOs that immediately spring up are Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, who are leading this revolution. Parag Agarwal, CEO of Twitter, is the latest to join this elite club but definitely not the last.
Source: https://globalleaderstoday.online/the-rise-of-indian-tech-ceos-in-the-us/
Here's some India stock ETFs as a starter for research:https://money.usnews.com/funds/etfs/rankings/india-equity
Finally, if I had to pick one stock I think is super reliable and always seems to do well in almost any timeframe you want to look at, I might go with Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway B. May be good to put maybe 5% of your long term investment in, and just let it ride forever!https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BRK-B?p=BRK-B
Crypto - Risky
First, do you agree that #crypto is risky? I would say it is, for a few reasons. First, ambiguous regulation. The country we reside in could decide to shut down crypto (whatever that may mean) or regulate it to the point of making it un-usable or un-attractive to invest in. I know, #hive is decentralized and can't be shut down. But if the gov somehow finds out who you are, and threatens heavy punishment, are you going to use a VPN and continue as normal, and hope for the best? Good luck!
The other thing is conversion to fiat or another crypto. You may want to book some profits at some time from your crypto investments. That means you have to sell it, or use it as collateral for a loan. In either case you need a counterparty to buy what you have or accept it as collateral. Find an old copy of coinmarketcap.com say from 10 years ago and see how many tokens you recognize. Luckily we can do just that! https://web.archive.org/web/20131228020347/http://coinmarketcap.com/ How many of these tokens are you glad you never touched?
Last, you have to consider proper custody. Not your keys, not your coins, right? If you keep your crypto on exchanges then you haven't been watching the News the last 3 years. That is Not Safe! Many companies failed!
So, your keys, your crypto, right? Don't Forget your keys! Don't Lose your keys! Don't let anyone else Know your keys! If any of these things happen, you can't call Customer Service for help! Hive and Bitcoin and Ethereum don't have Customer Service.
So hopefully you understand some of the risks. But you want the mad gains. You want the moon pumps. Wen Lambo? ASAP! Slow down and divide whatever you feel you can lose entirely in your crypto bags into a new barbell of "safe" and risky crypto! And remember, don't invest more than you can afford to lose in crypto because You Can Lose It All.
Safe Crypto
No one really knows. But, if you're going for safety in crypto you may pick #bitcoin $BTC and/or #ethereum $ETH. Maybe put half to 90% of your crypto investable money there.
What about stablecoins? Are USDT really backed 100% by something? What about BUSD from Binance; aren't they facing some regulatory issues right now? DAI is decentralized, is that the one to have? Maybe.
HBD, yayyyy! Get some #hbd! It pays 20% interest and is backed by a dollar's worth of HIVE!
I wrote about HBD recently. I like it. I bought more over the last few months.
The interest rate is great at around 22% a year with the monthly interest compounding. But most outsiders don't seem too excited about HBD. It only trades on Upbit and here in the level 1 market for HIVE and in the level 2 markets of hive-engine and tribaldex for SWAP.HIVE.
Also, HBD’s 20% yield comes from the Hive blockchain’s inflation, and some don't like that. But the numbers look pretty good to me right now, so I do like it, for a small part of a crypto portfolio.
Risky Crypto
Does #hive $HIVE go in here? Maybe. We've been around almost 8 years if you count the pre-full-state-fork chain. We have a lot of dev going on, with VSC and SPK coming "soon". We have BlockTrades making dev work on here easier with HAF.
It is actually pretty easy to do a lot of things right now. I am thinking of doing a series showing anyone how to build a bot for token giveaways like I use on @tokenfaucet. I already made an HTML file with CSS and javascript that gives away tokens and it is in testing by a good friend on here. The HTML file can run right on your computer or even a raspberry pi, as long as you can leave it on all the time. So no cost to you; no need for a server.
Do hive-engine tokens go here? Probably. We all LOVE #leo $LEO but look at that chart. Will it come back? Probably? The ads might help, and the Threads are super cool!
We all love #splinterlands! Our huge Success in the Web3 PlayToEarn category. We saw our card values skyrocket! We saw gov token #sps $SPS soar! Then both crashed. Players left as bots took over. Corporate layoffs. You know the story. But I am optimistic! LAND is exciting. The community is Strong!
I LOVE #pepe! And #rpepe and #pepecash! The PEPE on Hive family of 3 tokens are fun and the people that buy/sell/trade/meme/write about them are cool. But look at that MAX supply of PEPE. A Trillion tokens! PEPECASH has Only a Billion. :) Ah but look at RPEPE! Max supply of 2005, wow! That's what I'm talkin' 'bout! Whatever the supply, I'm just here for the FUN! Go PEPE! :)
And now we have $ZING #zing for upcoming awesome HoloZing game by veteran Hiver acidyo and team. This. Looks. Amazing! Splinterlands kind of trajectory? We all hope so!
Buy or Stack ZING?
There are 4 kinds of rewards at https://holozing.com/rewards but remember that they are paid in ZING. Recently on hive-engine: Last Price 0.01430000 Hive per Zing. Source: https://hive-engine.com/trade/ZING Now back when the Zing token issuance started, acidyo wrote this post: about the price of Zing which I think he was saying that a fair price would be 0.001333 hive / zing. He wrote another post where he was surprised the price of ZING was staying so high. The point is, ZING May go down 90% to more like 0.0013 instead of 0.014 where it is now.
I think it's good to read the posts @acidyo has made on ZING price, and there have been 2 or 3, one of which I linked above. He is the creator of the game and tokenomics!
acidyo blog
ZING Token Supply
Another thing to think about is the supply of ZING:
Supply (Circulating / Total / Max)
30007249.523 / 30010000.000 / 9007199254740991.000
Source: the info pop up at https://hive-engine.com/trade/ZING
There could be up to 9,007,199,254,740,991 ZING in existence sometime!
That is 9 quadrillion tokens! That is 9000X MORE than PEPE!
Let's do some math. Imagine the price of ZING stays the same as it is now and the price of HIVE also stays the same. So this second, one ZING is worth $0.0051902
Market cap is price times number of tokens.
$0.0051902 x 9,007,199,254,740,991 = $46,749,165,571,956
That is 46 TRILLION DOLLARS market cap for ZING!
My opinion is that I don't even see how it could go any where near 46 Billion dollars let alone 46 Trillion. But if it did reach (only) 46 Billion, then its price would be a thousand X lower than it is now, if all the tokens are issued.
I believe the plan for HoloZing is to keep releasing more and more tokens over time, with that Max supply cap as shown above. It may never reach that Max but even if it reaches 1/1000 of its Max, and the price never moves up or down, then ZING will still achieve a 46 Billion dollar market cap.
The point is, the price we see today is with a very very very small amount of the total possible number of ZING out on the market today. We have to hope that the HoloZing team manages the supply of ZING to keep the price up, but it seems they are more interested in having plenty of ZING in circulation for the many uses it will have in the game. Just something to think about so we can assess our risk and how much we want to put into ZING.
Other Risky Crypto
Bitcoin Ordinals? Not for me. Seems like a degen craze that could die out at any time. @edicted talks about it here, see what he says:
#hex? It is down 99% from all time highs but still up hundreds from all time lows. RISKY! Watch the new documentary The Highest Of Stakes to see how risky. One guy put $100K in at the top. REKT! But it is paying about 38% interest, in HEX, if you lock it for a while. It's supposed to be like a CD. Lock longer, get paid better. The community is diehard, some say like a cult.https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_highest_of_stakes
98% Audience Score!
What else is out there NOW in Crypto Land?
Watch this to see what #eliotrades says about the barbell investing strategy and what he is stacking.
Video source
Watch this to see what #ivanontech @ivanli is saying right now! He is wary of #solana $SOL but likes #sei and mentions upcoming EigenLayer. BTW, All RISKY!
Video Source
@scaredycatguide just wrote about #sei minutes ago, so go read that.
Conclusion
There is NO Conclusion! There is no crypto advice here. I am not a financial advisor. You better not act on anything you see one person write about or make a video about. Whatever you do is Your Choice, and the results are yours to deal with.
But 2024 is about here, and I wish you all a Happy New Year! Let's be friends on here. Let's support each other as we can. Let's work together to make Hive a great place to be for another year! Best wishes to all!
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
