FAQ

What are PUBLIC and PRIVATE KEYS?

I am confused about the difference between a private and public passcode. I’m pretty sure the passphrase for my Ledger is the private one but not sure what a public one is, how I get that and use it to buy, sell, etc. Any chance you can fill me in?
And thanks again for Saturday’s Crypto beginner class at 11 am Eastern Time. I would like to be on next Saturday’s as well. Very helpful !

When you want to withdraw crypto from an exchange, Coinbase, for example, you first have to get the Ledger “receiving” address for that particular coin, XRP, for example. You then take that “receiving” address and give it to Coinbase as where to send the XRP. That “receiving” address is your PUBLIC key. It’s public because you use it to tell anyone anywhere where to send that particular coin so you get it.

You have to do something special to tell Ledger to show your PRIVATE key because anyone who has the private key can control, send, transfer, or sell that particular coin in Ledger. It is private so no one can steal your coins.

The 12 word passphrase is not a private key for your coins. You could think of it as the private phrase to back up and restore your Ledger wallet. Anyone with that private phrase will also be able to use your private keys. So keep that secret from others as well.
Not all wallets have secret passphrases. Some use facial recognition or security apps like Google Authenticator instead, but all wallets have private keys.

For anyone reading this, you can join us for Saturday’s Crypto beginner class at 11 am Eastern Time, too. The invitation is on the Home page.

Rich or Poor? It’s Your Choice

This is my recent YouTube video on Bitcoin with humor and stories. Please have a look and comment with your suggestions.

If you like it please send it along to friends and family. It’s designed to educate and entertain people who don’t know much about crypto.

TLOS Token

  • What does it do? Is it really valuable?
    The largest problem in crypto right now is the cost of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain and the long wait times for transactions to be confirmed. Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT) are also addressing this, but do not have their solutions finished. Both of those have 30 B market caps. This is a big problem and very needed.
  • Is the technical development groundbreaking?
    They have been live since 2018 and have more than 100 distributed applications (dApps) running on their blockchain, which has the fastest transaction speed of any chain, 10,000 transactions per second. According to blocktivity.info Telos is the second most active blockchain on the planet.
    Just look at this comparison.
  • What exchanges are they listed on? Are they on major exchanges?
    They are currently on three small exchanges: ProBit, Coin Tiger and NewDex. Typically once coins are listed on major exchanges the price rises. That they are raising money to pay for major exchange listings is significant, starting with Uniswap, the eighth largest exchange in the world as of 26 Feb 21.
  • Is the Market Cap reasonable compared to other projects in their space?
    No! The other 4 coins in the chart above all have market caps of more than 2.5 Billion dollars, 37 times the size of TLOS’ market cap at 67 Million!
  • Price projection
    If TLOS takes only half the market share of the smallest of the four above (ADA, DOT, TRON, Tezos), it will be worth 18x its current price ($0.275), which would be $4.95. I believe it has a 60-65% chance of doing that or better within a year.
  • Is there positive social buzz on the project?
    They have 6,357 Twitter followers and 3,597 community members on Telegram.
  • Who is on their development team? What have they done before?
    Its core development team of 30+ members is led by Douglas Horn. Horn came from game development and has been in the blockchain arena for 5.5 years and specifically with Telos for 2.5. He wrote its whitepaper and is the chief architect leading the development team. You can watch a 49-minute video interview here. I was impressed by his vision and integrity.
  • What is their roadmap?
    They are now testing their ability to run code from Ethereum apps, starting with Uniswap and token contracts. In the future, they have projects to create an easy-to-use user interface and more. Read about those here.
  • Tokenomics (supply and demand for the token)
    a. The TLOS token is the utility token for the Telos blockchain, just like ETH for Ethereum or DOT for Polkadot. (TLOS is the trading symbol. Telos is the name of the blockchain.) That means it is used for every transaction, staking (depositing for rewards) and to run the various programs and games that run on that blockchain. These programs are called distributed applications (dApps). Just like an application that runs on your phone or computer, they run on the blockchain on the Internet. The importance of the token being a utility token is that the SEC recognizes utility tokens are NOT securities and therefore can be sold without getting SEC approval.

b. The maximum number of tokens is 355 million, less than EOS (unlimited), ADA (45 billion), or TRON (100 billion). The number of tokens in circulation is 169 million. The remainder will be sold to cover the developmental costs

c. Token distribution is important. If investors and/or developers are granted an inordinate amount of tokens and they are free to trade, those people could dump their tokens during the initial enthusiasm and crash the price. However, TLOS tokens are conservatively distributed to investors and developers.

Peter Glickman
peter55glick@gmail.com

I want to stop losing money in the bank. Should I buy Bitcoin?

I’m not an investment advisor. So, please do your own research.

That’s a simple question, but it has a complicated answer. 

If you can leave it in for 2 or 3 years, Bitcoin would probably be good. If you have a specific date within the next two years when you need to take the money out, it might coincide with a Bitcoin correction. So not advisable. 

That is exactly what Tesla, Mass Mutual, Harvard and MicroStrategy, just to name a few corporations, are doing. They’re buying Bitcoin to offset the depreciation of the dollar. See my post on inflation, the depreciation of the dollar.

Yes, I can make money with Bitcoin, but what value does it add to the real world?

Each token represents a different benefit. I’ve given 3 different examples below, but investing in any crypto token strengthens that token’s network. Networks increase in value with each additional person on the network. If you are the only person with a phone and you have no one to call, the phone is worthless except as a toy. When your best friend also has a phone it gains value. When everyone you know has a phone, its value has increased immeasurably. If only you have a Facebook account it’s not much value, but when a billion people have accounts you can do great things with it: visit with friends, promote your business, watch videos, listen to music, etc.

THETA TOKEN

Theta is the next step in online video streaming similar to how YouTube changed traditional video in 2005.

Continue reading “Yes, I can make money with Bitcoin, but what value does it add to the real world?”

What They Didn’t Teach You in School Will Make You Rich or Poor!

You would think the subject of money and how to handle it would be taught to everyone. Sadly, no. So, here’s a quick rundown in case you’ve missed it.

INFLATION

Purchasing power means how much your dollar can buy. If you can buy a month of groceries now for $600 and two years later the same groceries cost $1200, your dollars have lost half of their purchasing power! Not good.

According to the US Government Bureau of Labor Statistics[1], what $1 would have purchased in 1913 (when the Federal Reserve Bank was created) would have cost you $26.57 in October 2020. Put another way, your dollars have lost 96% of their value—purchasing power! (No wonder you feel like the harder you work, the “broker” you get.)

“Economic stimulus” is a fancy way of saying that governments are printing trillions more dollars with no value behind them. This has been done by many governments through history and today, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Iran, and Haiti are using printing presses rather than real production to try to handle their economic problems. This pushes prices up and purchasing power down.

Printing US dollar bills.

Let me explain with this example. Sally and Jessica make the same amount of money at their work. They both have 4 dollars to spend on a loaf of bread, but there is only one loaf available. Bidding against one another for that one loaf, the most they can pay is $4. Now their economic stimulus checks arrive and they each have $16. Unfortunately, there aren’t any more loaves of bread produced, so they have bid against one another. So that one loaf of bread will cost $16. That is inflation: more money chasing the same number of things to buy.

Few people recognize the cause of the dollar’s decline. This is because most people work for a living. Wage and salary increases help to adjust to the inflation that is created. (Make no mistake. It is created by central bankers. It doesn’t just happen.) So inflation affects savings more than current income.

Savings gutted by inflation

What would a financial system look like that didn’t include inflation? Better yet, what if it actually made the money saved more valuable instead of less valuable?

BITCOIN

Instead of the increasing number of dollars, the number of Bitcoins Is fixed at 21 million. There will never be more. So far, 18.5 million have been created, but the speed of creating the rest of the Bitcoins is cut in half every 4 years. That means it will take 120 more years to create all 21 million. This reduction in Bitcoin production is based on rules set in the original program and can’t be changed. No inflation means the value of your savings will be preserved or grow and not be worth less and less. You can preserve and accumulate wealth.

THE 2017 BITCOIN BUBBLE

The date when Bitcoin production is reduced by half is called the Halving. So far, there have been three: 2012, 2016 and 2020. Each one of these makes Bitcoin more scarce and has historically sent the price of Bitcoin higher … much higher. 2017 saw the price hit almost $20,000.

WHY 2021 WON’T BE A BUBBLE

In 2017 people were seeing the dramatic rise in Bitcoin’s price and wanted to make a profit and then take that profit—convert it to dollars.

This year we’ve seen billionaires and the first public corporations (among them Square and Paul Tudor Jones) buy tens of millions of dollars of Bitcoin as a protection of their savings . They are not going to sell their Bitcoin for a quick profit because they want a store of value for their accumulated savings. They want their wealth protected from inflation and not worth less and less while they hold it. They won’t be dumping Bitcoin like the speculators did after the 2017 bubble. This will keep the price of Bitcoin stable at these higher levels.


References

  • HODL* FOMO* vs. Speculative FOMO*, Nathaniel Whittemore, https://nlwcrypto.libsyn.com/hodl-fomo-vs-speculative-fomo-why-this-bull-market-will-be-different expanding on Brady Swenson’s Tweet “HODL FOMO = Escape Velocity*” https://twitter.com/CitizenBitcoin/status/1327276810363670529
    • *HODL – Hold on for Dear Life = Buying an investment for the long term, not to make a quick profit and get out
    • *FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out = Everyone else is getting rich and I don’t want to miss the boat on this opprotunity
    • *HODL FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out on a life-changing long-term investment
    • *Speculative FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out on a quick chance to get rich
    • *Escape Velocity – The speed necessary to allow a rocket to escape Earth’s gravity and get into space, used here to mean Bitcoin’s going way, way beyond any previous highs and not come back to this price range

It’s been a rough year so far, but it’s about to get better & free crypto

I haven’t posted much with cryptos dropping 70% this year, but Bitcoin appears to have hit bottom. It’s not gone below about $6,000 for a bit over three months. Further support for this is that the last run up of 1000%+ from August to November 2013 started from $100, hit $1,100 and then crashed back to about $200, twice what it started from.

In 2017, it started its run from about $3,000 in August and ran up 700% to about $20,000 in December.  So, dropping back to $6,000 matches the past.

With limited downside and news of Yale University investing in crypto; Starbucks, Microsoft and the parent company of the NYSE announcing a subsidiary to permit merchants like Starbucks to accept crypto, and the 30-billion dollar trading company, TD Ameritrade, announcing ways for small retail investors to invest in crypto; this is a good time to get in.

Continue reading “It’s been a rough year so far, but it’s about to get better & free crypto”

9 Crypto Picks for 2018 and Beyond

Most crypto investors are on the search for new ideas. However, I haven’t posted much lately, so I thought I’d take a look at what other people are talking about.

Clif High is either revered as a guru or cursed as a sham, but these coins look very interesting. Some need no introduction. Some may be brand new. Do your own research. This is his data except where I’ve made comments that are clearly my own.

His top 3 safest coins are… Continue reading “9 Crypto Picks for 2018 and Beyond”

Can it still go up from here? (with an update on Kraken.com)

The question I’ve been hearing from new people to whom I mention Bitcoin is “Can it still go up from here?” The answer is yes, definitely YES!!

Let’s start with some facts

Kraken as of Dec 15): Each of the past few days has produced 50,000 new account registrations and 10,000 new support tickets! Ten times more than last quarter! Number of simultaneous users, daily trades and volume are also making new all-time highs. They are struggling to keep up.

Coinbase added 300,000 new users over the Thanksgiving holiday week. The new additions brought Coinbase’s account total to 13.3 million exceeding the 10.6 million brokerage accounts at Charles Schwab! Over the course of the year they have added more than 5 times the number on their support staff and have seen the number of transactions increase during peak hours by over 40 times!!

Fidelity Investments is the fifth-largest asset management firm in the US with $2.3 TRILLION under management. It has just made an agreement with Coinbase to allow their 26 million individual investors access to Bitcoin. Not only that, but Fidelity allows its 40,000 employees to buy coffee or lunch in the company’s cafeteria with bitcoin and Fidelity has ongoing profitable Bitcoin and Ethereum mining! In fact, the CEO was quoted as saying that operation “is actually making a lot of money.”

To recap, HUGE numbers of new buyers are coming into the market at such a rate that the exchanges are having a hard time keeping up. Add to that the fact that very, very few people actually know how to buy bitcoin and you may agree with me that this market has a long way to run…a long, long way to run.

What most people don’t understand is …
Continue reading “Can it still go up from here? (with an update on Kraken.com)”