Investing in Cryptocurrencies

February 14, 2018 Ty 1 Comments

A short introduction post, if you have time for my two pennies worth of investing tips

Sharing my opinions on 4 large options to buy into cryptocurrencies (if your country has enabled access):

1. Coin exchanges
2. Coin wallets and smaller markets
3. Cloud mining
4. Solo/Pool Mining

Of course, since my blog is about Crypto Mining, let me present my case why it is a good investment for cryptocurrencies.

1. Coin exchanges

You can buy cryptocurrencies straight of trading markets/exchange. I have visited platforms such as HitBTC and Bitfinex. You sign up an account with them and load in your cash. I know absolutely nothing about this and the complexity of it has managed to turn me off. Judging from my sniffing around, you have to 'order' buy/sell the coins you want. Very much like trading stocks. Time-consuming? Yes. You probably have to sit around all day waiting for spot prices to go up or down. And take action quickly. I am a full-time employed worker so I have no time for this kind of a game :/

2. Coin wallets/smaller markets

For starters of cryptocurrencies, you will need a digital wallet. It can be a physical wallet in the form of a USB drive or private key information that you can also store on a PC. Another way is to have an online wallet. We are already used to the concept of digital online wallets. Google, Facebook, Apple. They have wallets where you can store some cash online for purchases.

Similarly, CoinBase allows you to buy coins and store them online. Even if you are not buying coins directly for storing, setting up an online takes no costs and you can easily do that on Cryptonator or Freewallet. Note that each coin has its own wallet address, and every coin can have multiple 'disposable' addresses. The address allows you to send or receive coins (with a small transaction fee). Use a coin exchange such as Changelly to change from one coin to another. Buying coins with your credit card would probably incur a 2-5% transaction fee which is quite high but considering the rewards when the coin value goes up...

3. Cloud mining

I was particularly intrigued by the idea of cloud mining and people selling their hash power to buyers. Coin mining is the computationally intensive work Proof-of-Work (PoW) that needs to be done for every coin transaction. It is a mini-audit process to verify that the transaction is real before it gets added to the ledger aka blockchain. Transaction verification is done by miners who run these algorithms using high computation resources (ASICs or GPU) and when gets paid for each successful check.

Genesis Mining sells their hash power to investors so that you can mine coins and later sell them off. However, these 1-2 year contracts are costly and come with maintenance fees. If you compared cloud mining to mining with your own hardware, there are advantages such as no additional electricity cost, noise, heat, etc. but you will still need that starting capital $$$. It is a business model for companies to earn cash from you, while you play with the coin market and earn profits by mining. So why allow companies and pay companies to do this? Might as well buy coins directly from the coin market as an investment...

4. Solo/Pool mining

Pool mining means you will become a coin miner. Buy your GPU and hardware. Run the programs. Get the coins. Join other miners in a 'pool' and share the benefits of constantly getting coins paid by doing your share of mining. In solo mining, you have to fight with supercomputers to find the solution in the PoW algorithm. When you find it, you gain all the coin for finding the block of solution. Chance of finding a block of solution? Very low. So rather than waiting to win the lottery every 5 years, I prefer to join a pool mining where I get paid like a regular worker for the amount of work I have done. Sounds fair and democratic.

In addition to a regular payout, why I find pool mining advantages is also because you have to purchase your own hardware. While the hardware might be expensive, you bought something with value physically. In any situation where you want to quit mining, you can sell your equipment to recover a portion of your cost (or maybe earn more due to high demand of these hardware :) ) If you factor in electricity costs, mining coin is still profitable if you learn how to choose the most profitable coins to mine. I would be quite disappointed if you have chosen to buy a custom-made mining rig, because those machines are sold to for 2-3 times the cost price and you will earn nothing in the end. Plus, building a mining rig is so much fun. :)

This blog allows me to share with you ALL the tips to build a profitable mining rig. Are you ready to learn something new? We have to do cost-profit spreadsheets, sourcing for affordable hardware, assembly of mining rig/ computer components, run benchmarks, etc. It is highly technical, but these skills you cannot unlearn and will be useful in the future. The other above options are not my best choice but I have given you choices, and decisions are waiting to be made.