Guess who’s been crypto shopping again! No question mark there, that was clearly rhetorical.

I started blogging in mid-March last year, not too long after the beginning of crypto’s biggest ever bear market. For this reason, I’ve done very little cryptocurrency buying since I’ve become a blogger. It’s a pity that you didn’t know of my exploits before then – I was a voracious trader (who probably ended up spending way more than what could be considered wise on transaction fees). With a change now happening in the markets, I’m now using myself as a metric. That sounds weird but bear with me: this is now already my fourth Crypto Shopping Cart post of 2019. In less than two months I’ve done as many Shopping Cart posts as in half of 2018! That’s significant. I’m not trading rabidly like I did during the bull market, but I’m executing an average of more than one trade per week, which is a far cry from the stagnant market of 2018!

Even with the recent BTC price climb from the low $3000s to the high $3000s, I firmly believe this to be a buyers’ market. If you buy now and lose say, 25% of your investment in a dip back to the low $3000s, you’re still going to be sitting extremely pretty a year down the line. I can’t tell you exactly when the best time to buy is, but I am sure that we should be buying during this period.

My best guess is that we should do our crypto buying between now and the end of June 2019. In the interests of transparency: I’m busy buying in with fiat at the moment and have completed around 30% of my intended buy-in. I aim to finish well before the end of June, in case the market bull runs earlier than what I expect it to. I plan to buy again in March, April and possibly May – funds permitting (using a process which I still aim to explain to you some other time). This is all subject to change if I deem it necessary.

Crypto Shopping Cart – 20 February

Funding the buys:

This is the part were I usually explain how I funded my most recent shopping excursion. In this particular case I have already done some of that explaining in the paragraphs above. But that’s only part of the funding. The rest of it is explained in this post. Long story short: I sold off a bunch of my Tron into BTC just over a week ago (a darn good move if I do say so myself).

That article also introduced the concept of virtual coins: coins that I was waiting to buy, but that weren’t at the right price yet. I held the funds for them in BTC and waited for BNB, NEO and KNC to drop in price. Let’s see if I bought them this time…

What’s in the Cart?

BTC – (sort of)

It’s always a good idea to hold BTC. “Digital Gold” – the ultimate store of value – is a very applicable moniker for this coin. My personal feeling is that about 10% BTC is a suitable figure for a crypto portfolio. That will vary from person to person – depending on risk level, desired return and number of coins in your portfolio. I’d also rather hold more than 10% BTC in bear markets as it drops in price slower than altcoins do (generally speaking).

I buy BTC with fiat and then use BTC to purchase my altcoins. In this round of buying I calculated that I wanted to keep about 20% as BTC and turn the rest into various alts. There was an issue with this, I’ll elaborate on that later.

Kyber Network token (KNC)

Kyber is amazingly versatile: part Ethereum token, part exchange, part token swap service for third-parties. By avoiding going head to head with e.g. other exchanges, Kyber has carved a little niche market out for itself. I expect it to grow as the services which depend on it grow.

I’ve held way too little Kyber for far too long. By spending all my ex-Tron funds on Kyber I managed to get my Kyber holdings to within around 96% of my target amount.

You DO still remember how to set target amounts for each of your cryptocurrencies, don’t you? If not, then here you are: HOW MUCH to INVEST in a CRYPTO
Just read it okay? Trust me, I’m really smart.

NEO (NEO)

…but, it would appear, not smart enough. Remember that issue I mentioned when discussing BTC? Here is what happened:

I had decided to spend 10% of my freshly bought BTC on NEO. I typed in the number of NEO coins that this worked out to – and then somehow hit the wrong button on the exchange. Instead of entering the desired amount I entered a 100% buy for that trading pair. *POOF!* All my brand new BTC miraculously vanished and became NEO. Oops.

When things go wrong in crypto (and they do!) then Step 1 is “don’t panic”. Instinctively reversing the transaction at a time like this is a bad idea. For instance: I’d just paid rather a lot of transaction fees (because I converted all my BTC in a single transaction). Turning 90% of that back into BTC would have cost me even more. I’d also just affected the price of NEO by buying it: driving up demand and price. It wasn’t a huge buy because I’m no whale, but it was enough to nudge the chart just a little – that would have worked against me too if I had then tried to sell NEO right away. Instead, I decided to modify my buying plan.

Whereas previously there were 15 coins in my buying plan, I decided to keep the NEO and then just leave it out of all my planned future buys (in March, April and May). This also meant that I couldn’t buy any other coins.

But:

I had a problem: I was breaking one of my own crypto rules:
“Never keep more than a third of your portfolio in any one coin, wallet, exchange etc”. My combined NEO holdings were sitting at almost 39% of the value of my portfolio. That’s too much – even for a coin I love as much as NEO.

At that stage I considered turning some NEO into BNB. But BNB has performed exceptionally well lately. While I still expect even better things from it, it is not the action of an intelligent crypto investor to buy coins which are near to their all time highs. BNB was at its BTC ATH when I was looking to buy. See the chart below:

How many times have I already to you to buy BNB? 100 or more perhaps? If you failed to do so then my conscience is clear!

The point is: I decided not to buy BNB, but I still needed to get rid of some NEO. I did this by sending 20% of my newly bought NEO to KuCoin as it emerged from it’s KuCoin 2.0 upgrade. That’s a referral link; do us both a favour and use it. With KuCoin having been down for the upgrade for well over half a day, liquidity was unusually low and I didn’t want to compound that effect by trading directly with the less popular NEO trading pairs. Luckily KuCoin was offering 0% trading fees (they still are up until 23:59:59 (UTC +8) on 21 Feb) so I did a quick bit of TA and set a good price to turn my NEO back to BTC. About an hour later I was holding some BTC again. Having regained BTC I was slightly tempted to keep it, but I chose to stick to my plan and execute my next trades.

THEKEY (TKY)

THEKEY is one of my favourite crypto projects and one which I consider to have an unusually low risk future, while still maintaining high potential ROI. How can any crypto investor read news like this and not get excited for the project? https://medium.com/@thekeyvip/further-news-regarding-the-international-competitive-bidding-program-86789ff19d24

Fortunately for you I wrote a little article about THEKEY on 30 December. It’s not long and it will tell you the important points. Read it here: https://mentormarket.io/bitbrain/thekey-to-crypto/

I spent half of my just-turned-back-into-BTC BTC on TKY, greatly increasing the TKY amount in my portfolio (by more than 200%). Strictly speaking this is well beyond the limits of what I should buy according to my
HOW MUCH to INVEST in a CRYPTO post, but that post remains a guideline which I can deviate from when I detect exceptionally rewarding ROI-to-risk ratios.

KuCoin Shares (KCS)

News of the exchange upgrade sent these tokens upwards in price, so I had to time my buy carefully. Realising that exchanges could start to pick up any day now, I knew that investing in this token was a priority, especially as I didn’t buy BNB in this round. KuCoin Shares remain an excellent and simple passive income earner – one with great potential. They are also the coins which I have made the most profit trading in the past. They are also the official tokens of one of the two best crypto exchanges. I spent all of my remaining new BTC on KCS, thereby ending this round of buying (not as planned, but still in a satisfactory manner).

Conclusion

That’s concludes my February fiat buy. I may still do a few minor trades, but nothing else on this scale until next month (probably). As usual I show you what I buy so that you’ll know that I don’t just talk the talk, I invest my own money in my recommendations. What you choose to do remains your decision and your risk. Remember: I’m not financial advisor, I’m just a random guy on the internet – you still need to do your own research. I am however a ridiculously intelligent and rather knowledgeable random guy, so factor that into your research. ?

Remember: crypto isn’t out of the woods yet. The backs of the bears have been broken, but that doesn’t mean that the bulls are awake yet. Don’t go dumping all your fiat into crypto just yet. Remember the proverb:

“One swallow does not make a summer”

Yours in crypto

Bit Brain

“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first” 

~ Mark Twain

“By this means (fractional reserve banking) government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.”

~ John Maynard Keynes

Bit Brain recommends:

Crypto Exchanges: