Crowdholding is by far the most undervalued project in crypto right now.
It's a platform that combines think tanks, crowdsourcing, bounties, and product testing all into one rewards system.
Despite being a really small company, they've managed to create a very good working platform and increase their user base even with crypto crashing in 2018.

Now they have partnered with Aeternity, the most unique smart contract platform out there.
Aeternity has an investment section that is basically like an incubator.
They offer support, funding, marketing, etc. for new projects and now crowdholding is a part of that.
It's pretty big news considering Aeternity is one of the best smart contract platforms.

https://medium.com/@crowdholding/crowdholding-partners-with-aeternity-ventures-to-support-starfleet-acceleration-program-660f324fb9c0

There are a lot of scam accusations thrown around (mostly by people who are upset because they didn't get a lot of profit from something).
To me, those are mostly just incompetent and failed businesses.

Straight up scams however, are a whole nother thing.
We have had bitconnect and centra that have actually had legal consequences put out against them.
In the case of centra, there is even jail time in the future for them.

And then, the latest is Titanium Infrastructure Services, an ICO held last dec/jan that raised more than 30 million.
They have been accused of fraud by the sec and have been shut down.
They are now having all of their assets and data handed over to a receiver who will use it as evidence in the future trial.
The fraud allegation is based off of how the CEO Michael Stollaire (whose real name is Michael Stollery) claimed to personally know and do business with huge companies like Disney, Mcdonalds, etc. and claimed that he could onboard those clients to his new company.

So justice is being done?

Meh, how many investors in these scam projects are getting funds back or some kind of recompense or reimbursement even with legal intervention?

yeah, none.

Please choose one that you feel is the best solution when you have lost substantial value on your investments (or add another strategy to help out the community):

#1 Realize that you don't actually lose anything until you actually sell at a loss.  So you go outside, ride a bike, read a book, resist the urge to check coinmarketcap and just hodl.

#2 Come onto bitcointalk and whine and cry and find out what to do with your life.  When no one gives you clarity or direction, panic sell and lose your life savings.

#3 Start hedging your bets.  Put more money into similar projects or move things around to balance your portfolio out.

#4 Buy more into the coin you are losing money on while the price is low to reduce your overall cost per coin/token.  Thus making it easier to make back what you lost.

#5 Join a pump and dump group because those work 100% of the time with no losses whatsoever *rolls eyes*

Personally, when I first started out, I honestly did #2.  After I learned my lesson I just decided to hodl.  Now, I am making a more proactive stance on my investments and am doing #4 to much benefit.  Nothing melts stress away quite like actual results and making smart investment moves is always better than just passively sitting back and waiting for things to change.

Titanium Infrastructure Services was a fairly hyped ICO last Dec. 17 to Jan. 18 that managed to hit their hardcap fairly quickly and was 2x to 4x ICO price for awhile after it hit exchanges.

Then, there was a hack where millions worth of BAR (titanium's token) were stolen from devs addresses (which were merely kept in mew lol).
They decided to hardfork it, and swap BAR for TBAR.

Now, the SEC has charged Titanium, CEO Michael Stollery (He was using a fake name Stollaire...), and Stollery's other business EHI with fraud.
He has claimed business relationships with major companies, people in the FBI and SEC, and has potential used company funds to pay off debt and also a home in Hawaii.
All assets have been frozen and authorities have already seized company computers and have a retainer managing all the assets.

Here's the official statement from the SEC:

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-94


Wow...what a crazy scam story.  Crypto really is still the wild wild west. Stollery will have a great time in jail with the Centra and Bitconnect founders.

I have a strange hobby:
I collect joke and shitcoins for fun.
I actually have learned a lot from looking up these types of coins.  A lot of them are a couple of years old actually.
It seems that there was a creative (or people just goofing around) spree three to four years ago where a lot of people made their own blockchains.
Surprisingly, some of these have survived this whole time with people still operating nodes and mining them.
Some of them (like unobtanium) where actually a little expensive.
I think it goes to show the resiliency of blockchain and the brilliance behind its p2p core.
As long as theirs a community, a coin will never die.

So far I have:

Jesus Coin
Insane Coin
Trump Coin
Mao Zedong
Nyancoin
Fucktoken
Tittiecoin
Unobtanium
Noah Coin
anarchists Prime
Evil Coin
and
Satoshi Madness

I plan on getting more too.

Here are some misconceptions and myths I see running around all the time:

- The SEC can regulate and control crypto.  They can label platforms like ETH a security making all tokens on the network illegal.

FALSE!
The Securities and Exchange Commission is a US federal government agency so it's laws and regulations only apply to US companies, it has no jurisdiction over anywhere else. In the case of Ethereum, since ETH is a swiss non profit organization SEC has no authority over them.  However, there are some US based companies on the ETH network in which SEC regulations would apply to them.

- KYC is a legal requirement and shows an ICO is legitimate.

FALSE!
There is no legal precedent for KYC with crypto currency anywhere.  Many countries have mutually agreed to enforce KYC with banking as a means to curb international money laundering.  However, there is no such thing in place for crypto.  Generally, companies were trying to "Cover their backs" in case regulations or international agreements come in the future and somehow it caught on and has become normal.

- Countries are coming down hard on crypto or will in the near future.

FALSE!
The overwhelming majority of countries are at a neutral stance towards crypto with quite a few actively making policies so it is easier to adopt it.  The very few cases where actual real regulations have come in were legitimate attempts to purge rampant scamming.  In the case of China, the regulations are just a means for the government to consolidate their hold on the crypto market there, make sure the CCP has their hands in it, and then relaunch it for maximum profit.

- Chocopapaya is a legal expert and you should believe what he says.

FALSE!
But, in my defence, it did not take me that much research to find the truth about these things.  If you take the time to research about important news and regulations, you will be able to make much more informed and smart trading choices.

Last year, the market saw a bull run in mid may where the market grew 25% in a short time.

What happened?
Of course, people are generally in better moods during Spring and as school years are coming to a close.

But what specifically happened, was Consensus 2017, one of the most important crypto conferences in the world with thousands of participants.
Although there are conferences now with higher amounts of people, Consensus has always been important in that the top crypto industry leaders gather along with high ups from banks, government agencies, and big name companies.
It is sponsored by Coindesk and this year is unique in that New York is making a concerted effort to make it so that there are a lot of incentives for Crypto startups to be successful (New York is aiming to be the crypto capital of the world).
It is where a LOT of major networking and deals are done.

Consensus 2018 is from next monday to wednesday.

Are we going to see similar bull run?
This past week the market slumped a bit which is actually a good sign.
Sentiments are high and hopeful and if next week manages to pump, I believe it will be a full on signal for everyone to jump in and initiate the bull run.

Thoughts?

I'm hoping to get some input on anyone that has experience using Iconomi and investing in DAAs.

I am a pretty normal guy with a full time job and I am about to get even more busy as I start my Master's program.
So I am looking for a solution that doesn't take up as much time as now (I actively day trade and flip ICOs).

I am thinking DAAs are a good solution.
Basically, someone or a group of people manage a portfolio and you can invest in it through buying their token.
The value of the token goes up and down dependent on the value of the overall portfolio itself.
It looks like each DAA takes a 2.5 to 3% cut which seems reasonable.
I have gone through and can see that there are quite a number of portfolios that are run by professionals.
I am particularly leaning towards Crush Crypto Core.

Are there other similar options out there?
Are these viable in turns of profit?

For me, right now I am very excited about localcoinswap.

It is a truly p2p decentralized exchange.
Now, before you roll your eyes and say, "Ugh, another exchange?"
Just hear me out.

It is more like an ebay for crypto than an exchange and is truly peer to peer.
Think localbitcoins.com type thing but with support for 18 (that's right EIGHTEEN) coins when they release in august.
Basically, you can put up an ad for a coin you want to sell and how you want people to pay for it (paypal, bank deposit, western union, even face to face meetup, etc.)
Someone initiates a trade by expressing how much they want to buy and the coins go to escrow.
Once the person pays, and the seller confirms the payment, the coins are released from escrow to the buyer.
Escrow ensures that people don't get scammed.

The token itself is used to get a share of the profit.
and this is where it is amazing: 100% of the proceeds from the exchange goes to token holders!
Not only that, you will get the proceeds in the same coins that were in the profit pool.
For example, if the quarterly profits were 10 btc, 5 xmr, 7 eth (and on and on) then you would get a portion of those coins according to how much lcs you own.
You just hold lcs and you will gain profits in all different kinds of coins.

They are in ICO now, check them out:

www.localcoinswap.com

We are all hoping for the next bull run, and many thought that the last week showed promising signs.

And then, today we have another price correction.
You can theorize all you want: maybe it's because of the mew hack, maybe it's just whales manipulating the market.

But the most simple answer, is that open markets routinely price correct as demand and supply constantly shifts.
In the case of a speculative, unregulated, and young market like crypto, the swings are more pronounced.

I think that what we will see here (and what I hope for more than anything), is that the market and investors grow up and stop throwing money at shitcoins.

The next bull run will come, I'm thinking mid may to late may.
And the coins that will perform the best, and throughout the year will be the ones that have an actual product and real world use case.

I see a lot of cries for HODL! and I think a lot of people are missing a huge aspect of hodling:

selling and buying

It's been said a thousand times, but basically: sell high buy low.

If you take the time to study market trends, learn about market economics, and keep in touch with developments in the crypto world, you actually can predict when a bull market or a bearish market will happen.

For example now, the market has been extremely stable for the past month and a half and has been gradually increasing for about a week.
We are finally going to see a bull run soon.
Since April and May are typically big months for crypto conferences, then I would say early to mid may is when it will take off, I might be off by a couple weeks.

So all you have to do is crunch the numbers.
Sell when it hits an acceptable profit range, then go right back and buy the exact same coins when the prices go down to your target point.

For example, last december you could have sold btc for around 17 to 19k, then you could have recently bought more for around 7 to 8k.
Now, the btc will surely hit 20k in the next bull run.

Am I over simplifying things? NO!
Well, you have to crunch numbers but it really is a simple trading principal.

Blockchain - An open source and decentralized technology that allows assets to be traded p2p (peer to peer/person to person).  It has a public ledger that is divided into blocks that records transactions and is maintained by nodes scattered across the world.

Coin - Has it's own blockchain (bitcoin, litecoin, monero, etc.)

Token - Built on a smart contract or infrastructure platform like ETH or NEO (omisego, Icon, Red Pulse, etc.)

Altcoin - Anything other than bitcoin

Mining - Discovering a block (increases the size of the blockchain) and being rewarded with that coin.  This is usually done through solving increasingly difficult algorhythms or quantum math problems.  To solve these, a high end computer is often needed.

Gas - A token that represents the amount of real world energy it takes to operate a system.  You pay that to the miners by sending/using gas.

ICO - Initial Coin Offering.  New companies (and sometimes old companies) use this as a way to raise money for their business.  You can buy a token or coin from a company before it goes public and to exchanges for a discounted price.

TGE - Token Generation Event. Basically the same thing as an ICO but specifically for tokens instead of coins.

Smart Contract - A "contract" that can be set up on a platform (like eth) that has certain parameters preset.  When those parameters are met, then the result is automatically generated.  For example: Send eth to a contract address, automatically a percentage of that is calculated and a token is sent back to the senders address.

HODL - Don't buy or sell your coin/token.  Hold it until you get huge profits.  Awhile ago, a poster here on bitcointalk accidentally spelled hold, HODL, and it caught on.

Moon - The value/price of your altcoin shoots up astronomically.

Lambo - Basically becoming a millionare.  Cash out your coins and buy a lamborghini.

FUD - Fear, uncertanity, doubt.  When someone spreads news that can cause fear, uncertainty, or doubt in a project that causes the price to drop.  Sometimes done intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.

FOMO - Fear of missing out.  When someone is afraid that they will miss their chance to earn a lot of money and jumps into investing in a coin based off of hype.


Feel free to add any other ones and send me some merit if you found this post useful.

Let me guess, you bought a bunch of btc or alts three months ago when prices were peaking and your portfolio is in the deep red.
You are anxious and are wondering if you made a mistake...should you sell or hodl?
Is crypto done for?
Will I never be a millionare?

Listen to the wise chocopapaya as he enlightens you as to what is going on in the market now.

The crypto market was in an unsustainable bull rush last december.
It price corrected for two months.

Now, the reason the market is stagnant is not because of further price corrections, but because there is very little trading volume.
This shows that those already in crypto are hesitant to do anything because they are essentially scared of the market.
New money and investors are hesitant to come in either.

So what will help change the market?
Do you think whining or asking on bitcointalk is going to magically change anything?

NO! Be SMART! You should seriously be buying stuff up like crazy now!
Don't be an idiot and repeat the same mistake where you buy up when things are pumping.
Not only is it a great time to buy cheap coins, it will actually help the overall market place go up too.

Just let me vent please, I've got a serious case of the bounty hunter blues.
Please observe:

Sample #1 Livedu - Bounty manager changed 3 times over the course of the bounty program, ICO ended over a month ago.  March 30th was given for bounty distribution (through telegram). now, every time you ask when the new distribution date is, the reply is, "please wait for an announcement." They finally came out with, "There are a lot of cheaters so we are working on it."  When will I see my maybe 15 LEDU tokens that are worth less than a cent each?

Sample #2 Belguapay - An INSANELY long ico and bounty program (all the way from last november until now).  After ICO ends, they suddenly say that bounty rewards come from developer's funds which 50% are locked for 6 months and the other 50% are locked for an additional 6 months after that! It was never mentioned at any point in the program, not on their website, not on the thread, not on anything.  They say, "It's in the whitepaper" but even then there is a very vague clause that maybe can be interpreted that way.  On top of that, there a numerous places indicating that a percentage of the ico funds go to marketing that gets released with contributor's tokens.  Have you ever heard of that, EVER? Bounty rewards being locked up for 6 months and a year?

Sample #3 BH Hate - Wow, a lot of people hate bounty hunters.  When I bring up a question or concern, people often lash back with, "I hate bounty hunters, they ruin the market" or something like that.  Well, to be fair, when I look back I can see why it is annoying, especially if you think that bounty hunters are getting "free money".  But the thing is, it does take time to promote these projects, so what ever happened to "time is money"?

So, maybe I should just drop the whole bh thing and use my spare time to do crowdholding.  At least on that one I got myself some deep onion and bunch of yups.

Here is a little crypto and trading bit of knowledge for you (also a disclaimer):

bitcointalk is a terrible place to get advice.

If this is where you get most of your information, it would seem that the market is down because people are panic selling or that an announcement caused the market to crash.
This is just not true and it is much more complicated than that.
If you want to be serious about investing in crypto, it will help you a lot to learn about market economics and crunch numbers because the numbers don't lie.

What we have now, is incredibly low volume.
Very little action going on and worse, very little new money being pumped into the market.
I can see this happening because:

#1) The hype and fomo of last december caused a new wave of investors that are now, "HODL! HODL! HODL!" when before they were throwing a lot of money around.

#2) Crypto, despite what you think, is still in it's infancy and institutional money has yet to have a significant interest in it.

If you just sit back and hold, and think the market will magically go up, you are delusional.
Why aren't you buying now? Why aren't you trading now?
Are you waiting for others to buy up cheap and hope the market will flourish again and then you will make profit?

If you want the market to get out of it's rut, look at your current finances, take out even just 5 to 10% and buy some bitcoin.

So what kind of an investor are you?

The Noob: Just started out.  Heard about crypto from a family member, colleague or friend.  Had to get help getting an account on an exchange (probably started out with coinbase) and how to set up a wallet.  Was really scared so put in a couple hundred dollars.  Desperately reading articles and watching youtube videos to wrap you head around it all.

The Satoshi: Been in crypto for years. You are probably mining and running a masternode.  Have a hero or legendary account in bitcointalk (real, not bought).   You think Ripple is the evil Dark Lord of the Sith. And I'm guessing...you have a btc shirt that you are wearing right now?

The FOMO: Jumped in after you saw a news report talking about the crazy rise of crypto.  Started investing based off of youtube pumpers or shillers.  Joined a pump and dump group.  Loves ICOs.  Constantly looking for coins that are under a dollar.  Has severe panic attacks when coinmarketcap is in the red.

The HODLER: You have 50% of your portfolio in either btc or eth.  Your other assets include a privacy coin, a "3rd generation blockchain coin" (iota, nano, etc.), a new smart contract coin, an exchange coin (bnb, kucoin, coss, etc.) and...am I missing any other ones? You hop on the roflcopter when people come to bitcointalk and scream, "OH NOEESSSS! The market is down!)

The Day Trader: Every free moment you are checking exchanges and cmc. You barely research the coin you are trading, you only care about the short term trading history.  Binance is your go to exchange.  You make several trades throughout the day.  You are a constant ball of raging stress.

The Freebie: You have 5 bitcointalk accounts running signature campaigns.  You have a twitter bot.  You constantly input the word "airdrop" into search engines.  You joined crowdholding.  You have so many random coins you lost track of them all.

I randomly ran into this guy, Teeka Tiwari, from browsing crypto articles.
I don't want to link anything because I dislike posts that are actually just shilling or advertising.
A quick google will bring up tons of stuff on him.


He is predicting a huge bullrun on May 14th, most likely coinciding with a huge blockchain conference in New York: Consensus 2018.
The claim is 5 TRILLION will be invested into the crypto market via institutional investors.

So, I then decided to research the guy, and he does seem to have a legitimate, real presence in the blockchain world.

But, then I look into where he offers his services, palm beach group, and find nothing but scam like advertising and whopping $3000 fee to sign up for two years of newsletters and investment advice.  THREE THOUSAND dollars!


Well, we are all hoping for a bull run, but any thoughts on this and Teeka Tiwari?

A student from another class came to me last week asking for help on doing a research paper about bitcoin.
She was pretty fascinated by it all and was intuitive enough to realize that blockchain technology can revolutionize small scale businesses, particularly in the developing world, and disrupt mega conglomerates.

So, fast forward a week, she comes back to tell me that she has bought some eth and is looking to invest in an ICO!

I had a student before who had gotten into crypto pretty seriously, but he was 18 and was doing it alongside his father.

It really made me wonder, what do you think of teenagers getting into crypto?
My first reaction was, "No no no no no no! It is way too risky and you have no idea what you are getting into!"
But then, an informed, educated 16 year old who does her due dilligence and research is a much better investor than a 30 something millenial who is just trying to make it rich and investing in whatever mcafee or supoman shills.
Am I mistaken?

Anybody a part of Crowdholding?

https://www.crowdholding.com/

I heard about it awhile ago and thought nothing about it until recently I saw that deep onion joined them so I looked into it.
It's basically like a hybrid crowdsource/think tank platform.
Startups put up tasks that anyone can contribute to.
It looked like most of the tasks were asking about a certain feature of their product or what can be changed and stuff.
I saw that crowdholding themselves had tasks where you can give ideas on their platform.
One that caught my eye was they asked what the max token supply of their token should be, then they actually took the feedback and set their max token supply to match it.

By doing the tasks you can get yuppie which is the crowdholding token that hasn't been released to exchanges yet.
Apparently, startups can offer their own coins as well as rewards.

For me, it was more rewarding than your standard signature bounty campaign stuff and I like it a lot.

Anyone else have thoughts on it?

Then do your part: buy more btc.

This isn't a shill or fud or anything.

BTC is not expensive.
BTC is not dead.
BTC will go to 50k this year.
BTC is still king.

For all of you fools thinking that there is only doom and gloom, and the only way to become a millionare is to find the "next big thing".  Well, there will be no "next big thing" until the current "big thing" (BTC) has finally grown so big that it pops and dies.  And if you think a 149billion market cap is too big, then you have not researched just how HUGE bubble and speculative economies can go.  We are talking trillion dollar economies; crypto is still a little baby that hasn't even learned how to walk yet.

So buy some now, you will thank me later, my magic 8 ball told me so.