The market keeps rising! While I’m taking a more cautious approach to this spike, it certainly is indicating that the bottom may be in. I personally think we will see a pull back over the next few days.

Anyway, the most common question I have been asked over the past few days is “What are your top cryptos for the next bull run?”.

As a few have now changed, I want to dedicate the next 5 Newsletters to the Top 5 Cryptos in 2019.

I was going to put all 5 in one Newsletter but it was just far too long. This first crypto will be shared with everyone, but the other 4 will only be for paying subscribers.

This is of course my own opinion based off of my research and experience. Always do your own research before investing.

Market Cap: $171,075,595,404 (Higher)

BTC Dominance: 50.7% (LOWER)

Bitcoin Price: $4,950 (Higher)

1) Binance Coin (BNB)

Binance Coin (BNB) has already had an incredible start to 2019, increasing from $6 to almost $20 in just a few months. This type of return hasn’t been seen for a very long time in the crypto space.

BNB currently sits within the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, and has a very high volume due to Binance pushing the use of their native token.

So, what exactly is Binance coin?

BNB has a total supply of 200 Million and is actually an ERC-20 Token - meaning it runs on the Ethereum Blockchain - and is compatible with MyEtherWallet and all other ERC-20 Token wallets.

BNB is Binance’s native token, and performs many functions on the exchange and throughout the ecosystem.

What is it used for?

1) Trading

Binance promotes using their native token by offering substantially discounted trading fees when using BNB. This alone will shift a proportion of traders and investors to choose BNB as their currency pair instead of Bitcoin or Ethereum.

As Binance controls a significant amount of volume, they have a huge audience that can (and will) use BNB to trade.

2) ICOs

Binance have very cleverly (and recently) introduced their launchpad ICO platform where users can invest directly in vetted ICOs on Binance. Binance have changed the rules to a lottery based system where users will be randomly selected to participate in the ICO’s, but there’s a catch… they have to own BNB.

Users can gain up to 5 tickets by holding a certain amount of BNB.

WARNING: Due to the nature of this lottery based ICO, expect volatility in the price near the time of the ICOs.

Why is BNB my no.1 pick?

The “Secret” that many people overlook… “Binance plans to use 20% of [their] profits each quarter to buy back and burn BNB, until 50% of the total BNB supply (100 million BNB) is burned.”

In other words, the supply is constantly decreasing and will stop at 100M.

So, as supply decreases, take into account the following…

* Binance is the most popular exchange, and has positioned itself to be so for the foreseeable future.

* As the overall market cap increases, users on the platform will increase in parallel - meaning BNB will naturally have a higher demand (for the reduced fees).

* As the market increases, demands for ICOs will increase in parallel - meaning the demand for Binances launch pad will increase.

* As the market cap rises, Binances profits will increase (more users, more volume etc).

* The profits used to Binance Coin will increase the price of BNB (given a rising / flat market)

* As the supply dwindles down to 100M, the economics of supply vs demand will increase - meaning people will FOMO into BNB.

* Rising tide… even without the above, BNB will increase with the overall market cap. But the above reasons are why I believe it will increase much more than average.

Where to buy BNB: Binance

…lol… this is really the only place to buy BNB and I’m sure you’re already on Binance so that should be ok.

If not, click HERE to sign up.

Where to Store BNB: MyEtherWallet or Binance

MyEtherWallet is a paper wallet that is compatible with all ERC-20 tokens, click HERE to visit.

You can also store your BNB on Binance, my rule of thumb is that as long as no more than 1/3 of your overall holding is on any one exchange then you should be ok. I normally store 1/3 in cold wallets, 1/3 on one reputable exchange and 1/3 on another.

Let me know what you think of Binance coin. Any questions, just let me know.

All the best,

Devin

* Market Overview

* Daily Stats

* Bithumb Hacked?

* VK to launch a Crypto?

* Bakkt hire renowned executive…

Hope you all had a great weekend.

Over the weekend we saw the price of Bitcoin hover just below the $4,100 level eventually breaking above early hours this morning. Bitcoin is currently sitting at 4,120, so it’s only slightly above the 4.1k level.

What I find interesting is that again we saw significant movement on a Sunday / Monday morning. The price of Bitcoin spiked down to 4,050 before very quickly bouncing not only back to 4.1K but above it.

Momentum seems positive, despite potential exchange hacking - which normally sends the market downwards… maybe this is a sign of exhausted bears?

Market Cap: $145,381,554,303 (Higher)

BTC Dominance: 50.1% (Lower)

Bitcoin Price: $4,134.63 (Higher)

3) Bithumb Hacked?

Bithumb posted on twitter that their exchange had temporarily frozen withdrawals / deposits. This is common practice during times of maintenance and if exchanges get hacked - to stop funds being withdrawn.

As there was no planned maintenance, the community have instantly thought the worst… a potential hacking.

Of course, like every exchange before, Bithumb has initially denied any security breach and have stated that “funds are safe”.

However, the crypto community on twitter (pretty much the FBI) did some digging and found that over 3M EOS as well as several other tokens had been transferred out of their exchange.

The value is roughly 19M USD in total.

Here’s a flow chart of where the funds were moved to… Several non KYC compliant exchanges that allow anonymous withdrawals as well as several well known exchanges such as Binance (to sell for other tokens).

Many critics are thinking that this was not a hack at all, and is more likely an inside job. Again, this is NOT the first time we have seen this type of activity. Exchanges are really struggling at the moment due to low liquidity and trading volume. In other words, they aren’t getting their fees, and are struggling to stay afloat.

This is pretty much breaking news, it happened on Friday but the investigation is ongoing.

4) VK to launch a Crypto?

Russian social media giant ‘VK’ are launching their own cryptocurrency according to Russian news source RNS. The cryptocurrency will be available to all users on the platform and is rumoured to integrate with the market place native to VK.

RNS also seem to think that VK might attempt to charge users for their time and activity on their platform through this token. I personally think this is extremely unlikely, and would make more sense if they rewarded users for their time and activity by giving them this token.

Imagine if Facebook started charging users to use it… users would disappear.

I suspect that this token - if true - will be used within their marketplace, used to purchase premium elements of the service and also an option for advertisers to use. However, this token will almost certainly be centralised and more than likely remain on a private blockchain (I.E not listed on any exchanges).

Will be interesting to see what happens…

5) Bakkt hire renowned executive…

While not major news, its great to see talent migrating into the crypto space, even with the market being down.

Tom Noonan, a former executive at both IBM and Cisco has joined the Bakkt team as Chairman of Board. Tom is a cyber security expert and fits well within the team.

Bakkt also announced that the CEO of ICE has also agreed to be a member of the Bakkt board, which gives them leverage when it comes to institutional connections.

I thought I’d add another small feature to DDCT, from today I will be adding a daily overview of the important metrics 1) Overall Market Cap 2) Bitcoin’s Dominance 3) Bitcoin Price.

This will help give an indication on what the market is doing. Obviously market cap rising means that prices (generally) across the board will be rising too. Bitcoin’s price rising tends to mean the same, unless the market cap stays the same, which is normally when people are selling alts for BTC.

BTC dominance is a great signal for alt runs, if BTC’s dominance is rising, this is an indication of altcoins bleeding and the reverse is true too (BTC spilling over to alt market).

My goal is to make sure this newsletter is the only crypto resource you need - saving you a significant amount of time.

Market Cap: $142,553,406,355

BTC Dominance: 50.3%

Bitcoin Price: $4,074.26.

1) Bitcoin Price Analysis

2) Potential Hacking of Exchange “Coinbene”

3) How Percentage Loss Is Calculated…

Bitcoin Price Analysis

Since February, the trend we have seen is a very slow upward trend ranging between the high 3K levels and the low 4K levels. I’ve drawn a white trend line to illustrate the trend over the past few months.

Although this looks positive, I’m still waiting for BTC to hold above $4,200 before having a more bullish outlook. By holding above, I mean for a period of time longer than a couple weeks (outside the P&D realm).

Potential Hacking of Exchange “Coinbene”

Apparently, deposits and withdrawals on the exchange Coinbene are being extremely difficult, if not impossible.

A user tweeted them in rage about this concern, to which they responded:

“Part of the wallet upgrade and maintenance has been completed, CoinBene will open BTC and USDT deposit and withdraw functions at 11:00, March 27, 2019 (GMT+8), and ETH deposit and withdraw functions will be opened at 15:00, March 27, 2019”

Following this statement, they further commented…

“#Announcement  Somebody doubt CoinBene was attacked by hacker recently because our maintenance. We CoinBene are so sorry that made everyone worried for this problem.”

(bad English, probably translated directly).

Breaking news seems to indicate that they are moving a large amount of Cryptos between wallets. This is not unusual for exchanges, but in these circumstances it does seem rather odd.

My opinion is that they were not hacked, but they might be planning some sort of exit scam. Many smaller exchanges are struggling to stay solvent during the bear market, and some would rather dive into their clients holdings than downsize / liquidate.

How Percentage Loss Is Calculated…

The easiest way to explain this is with an example.

Bob lost 80% of a $1,000 portfolio, leaving him with $200.

Jane lost 70% of an equal $1,000 portfolio, leaving her with $300.

In order for Bob to return to the $1,000 level, he will need an overall return of 500%!

HOWEVER: in order for Jane to return to break even, she will only need a 334% return.

This is one of the perks of owning bitcoin during a bearish trend. You will lose less than the market average and therefore it will be easier to recuperate losses down the line.

P.S. You cannot lose more than 100% of your investment. I see a lot of people saying they’ve lost 400% or figures like such, this is impossible…

See you tomorrow!

Devin

I’ve had a few questions about event based trading, especially after mentioning the new BNB ICO structure that Binance recently announced. In this Newsletter I will cover how to trade events (based on historic success) but with a particular focus on Binance Coin.

I’ve copied Secret 14 From my book “21 Crypto Secrets” that helps put event based trading into perspective…

In a market where intrinsic value is very hard to measure (at the moment), investment decisions are almost entirely dependent on speculation. Speculation thrives off of events, which can be broken down as follows:

• Exchange listings (we’ve covered)

• Hard forks (we’ve covered)

• Rebranding

• Partnerships

• Events (conferences etc.)

• Development updates

Once I understood how to trade around all these “events”, I significantly increased my ROI and reduced the massive drawdowns that I kept on having.

The fundamental rule is: Buy the rumour, sell the news.

This is quite a generic statement that is thrown around a lot in the crypto markets, but very few people actually know why this strategy is effective. I want to begin by stating that this strategy is not exclusive to the crypto market – the stock market behaves in a very similar fashion.

It really boils down to the media being a lagging indicator, and the public always getting in at the last minute – it’s human nature. Say, for example, there’s one of the events above about to happen in 30 days’ time. The price of that asset will likely increase leading up to the event, and then it will crash on the day of the event. This happens 90% of the time.

Here’s why…

Company X announces the event. Almost instantly, the active investors have acted on this announcement and have placed trades in this token. The price has likely increased a fair amount.

Then, the wider market starts to pick up on this event, and the blogs and small news sites pick up on it too. This normally lasts a couple weeks be-fore the bigger media sites decide to comment on this event.

By this point, the price has increased a significant amount compared to a few weeks back and the event is right around the corner. Newer investors in the market are now both aware and excited about this event, while the investors who have been in this trade since the beginning are planning their exit. The event is further hyped by the token’s community and team, drawing in more short-term speculators, who are all eager to buy the token on the day of the event.

* The day of the event occurs. *

Most investors who got in early on are now entirely out of this token, ready to buy the dip when it hap-pens. The newer investor has just bought in, waiting for the event and thinking about which Lambo he’s going to buy after the event pushes the price to the moon.

* The event happens. *

And the price plummets. The smart investor’s order fills at the low levels. But the newer investor is left confused, wondering why the price fell even though the event was good.

Here’s why…

The market has already priced in the event.

This is so important I need to repeat it. If something is expected to happen, don’t assume that the market will react when that event will happen. The market has likely already priced in that event and therefore, the expected outcome will not increase the price any further. People who are “in the know” about this sell to capitalise on profits and then the public panic sells, and loses a significant amount of their investment. The market has already priced in the expected.

If you listen to the audio version, I explain this concept using Binance as the example.

Hope this helps a lot.

Devin

I often get asked “where is Crypto heading in 2019?”… So I thought I’d write a short piece giving my opinion on where the Crypto market is likely heading over the next 12 months.

Of course it’s impossible to predict the future, but there are many indicators that can help guide the general direction of where the market is likely to go… remember, it’s all about probabilities.

* An overview of Bitcoin

* Market Overview

* What’s going on behind the scenes

* What will a financial crisis do to Crypto

* Final thoughts

1) An overview of Bitcoin

I saw a post by Forbes today highlighting that Bitcoin has fallen over 80% from its peak in 2017. Whilst this is true, lets have a look at the overall change in the price of Bitcoin since the earliest date CMC lets us go…

April 2013: $1.5B market cap | Price = $135 .

April 2014: $5.5B market cap | Price = $400 .

April 2015: $3.5B market cap | Price = $250 .

April 2016: $6.5B market cap | Price = $425 .

April 2017: $20B market cap | Price = $1,100 .

April 2018: $120B market cap | Price = $7,000 .

April 2019: $70B market cap | Price = $4,000 .

In 2013, Bitcoin peaked at $1,125 and then fell all the way to $185, just over 85% decline from peak. It then of course went on to climb to greater heights each ‘cycle’, with the most recent peak being just under $20,000.

I just think it is worth mentioning that data can be manipulated to push a narrative to potentially influence the public’s perception of Bitcoin / Cryptos. The facts are that Bitcoin over a 5 year period is up more than any other asset class combined. Bitcoin over a one year period is down around 45%. The total Bitcoin has fallen since its peak is very similar to the 2014 bear market, around 85%. Those are facts.

Now, lets speak about market cycles and why I believe we are about to shift from a bear market, into the beginning of a bull market…

2) Market Overview

Markets work in cycles. They go from undervalued to fairly valued to overvalued then back down to undervalued. The famous saying “the bull climbs the stairs and the bear jumps out the window” is one I often use to describe how this works.

Put simply, when an asset is undervalued, it takes a very long time for it to return to the fairly valued section, and then momentum builds until it is extremely overvalued and then pop, it plummets back down to undervalued again.

We’ve seen this happen time and time again in all markets.

Different markets take different time periods for this sequence to occur, the stock market on average goes through this cycle every 10 years for example.

Think of it like this. Undervalued (35% of the life-cycle) Fairly Valued (40% of the life-cycle) Overvalued (15% of the life-cycle).

Lets look at when this happened to Bitcoin in 2014…

(Image A.1 - 2013-15 Bear market).

The bear market shows the peak around 1,000 USD, where Bitcoin was clearly overvalued and then saw a sharp decline in the price, this is the market being rapidly thrown into the undervalued segment.

This bear market lasted until May 2015 and then the reversal started to happen (going from undervalued to fairly valued)…

This can be noticed by a lot less volatility and volume, almost as if the bears are exhausted. This is often the case when the market seems dead and there’s little interest (relative).

Then the market starts to gain momentum, shifting into the later stages of fairly valued. More people start making money, and they then tell their friends. Think of this point like a snow ball rolling down a mountain, it’s gaining size and momentum.

Then you have the overvalued section, this is where everyone is speaking and investing in that asset, you can’t escape the news about it, you’ve made a lot of money on paper and feel as if the market is going to increase forever.

and guess where that leads to…

This is where we are today. We hit overvalued in 2017, and we have now experienced very similar volatility on the way down like in 2014/15. In my opinion (I don’t have a crystal ball) we are shifting from the undervalued stage into the fairly valued stage. In other words, the market has been beaten down to levels where the bears are near enough exhausted and now we should start to see slow, but meaningful growth.

Markets go in cycles, and tend to reach higher peaks each time. I don’t think we’ll see all time highs until at least 2020, however that does not mean we won’t see 10K BTC for example, and altcoin increase by a substantial amount.

The snow ball has been put back on top of the hill, and will start to gain even more momentum than last time.

3) What’s going on behind the scenes

One of the main reasons I created this Newsletter was to keep you informed as to what is going on behind the scenes. I’m not going to dive into great detail about what is being done on a micro level, instead I want to point out one key differential element that we have now that was not present during the last market cycle…

Institutional Investment Vehicles…

Whether we are talking about ETF’s, Futures, Funds, Circle Invest, User-friendly applications, infrastructure that can support the demand, regulated stable coins, SEC guidelines, laws, gateways, information and community have all exponentially grown over the past few years, and are certainly much more robust and ready for mass adoption than in 2017.

2017’s demand during the end of the year saw many exchanges closing their doors due to the inability to handle such volume. We also saw many people that wanted to invest in cryptos be turned off by the difficulty of such (private keys, wallets etc).

We now have solutions for both of those issues, as well as many more. Both institutional and retail investors will have more ways to get into the market, and the barrier to entry will be pretty much removed.

4) What will a financial crisis do to Crypto

This is a topic that I could speak about for days. I have mentioned before that due to the infancy of the crypto market, it is pretty much impossible to tell how it will perform during a financial crisis.

Bitcoin is widely referred to as “digital gold”. As mentioned before, during times of fear, investors are looking to preserve as much of their capital as possible, and have historically used precious metals to become a store of value.

Many investors are already using Bitcoin as a store of value, despite its volatility. If everyone believes that Bitcoin is a safe haven and a store of value, then during a crisis, it may very well live up to these expectations.

This is one of the most common reasons that people give.

Another reason closely tied to the first is the fear of hyperinflation due to excess printing of fiat capital.

A great example is Venezuela, where their levels of inflation have exceeded 1 million percent (and still rising). Their currency is worthless. Holding onto it will dramatically reduce your net worth in a very short period of time.

Venezuelans do not want to be paid in their national bolívar currency,rather in commodities, dollars or… bitcoin.

Yep, bitcoin. The demand for bitcoin in Venezuela has skyrocketed, increasing month on month despite the cryptocurrency market being in a downtrend.

Can we use this as evidence that during times of fear, people may in fact flock to cryptos? Very possibly.

The second biggest argument that cryptocurrencies will be adopted during a crisis is the fact that, for the first time ever, it presents an alternative to currency that isn’t controlled by the banks/governments.

It’s safe to say fewer and fewer people are trusting banks, especially after the 2008 financial crisis.

If a financial crisis happens, and many people experience significant financial difficulties as a result, they very much may shift to an alternative.

Unfortunately, this is the most likely scenario for quick mass adoption.

People are lazy, and will only act when they absolutely have to. Fear is a very powerful emotion, and gets people to act.

We already have a strong foundation of investors in the cryptocurrency space who strongly dislike banks (to put it nicely), so it is inevitable during a crisis that these investors will be able to easily convert those on the fence into the space and trigger a domino effect and rapidly progress adoption.

So to conclude, Bitcoin is a symbol of hope for many investors, or a symbol of protection against uncertainties. It provides an alternative to currency currencies and may very well be adopted globally as a result of other financial markets crashing.

5) Final thoughts

My final thoughts are that despite being in a bear market for the past 2 years, the crypto space continues to innovate, evolve and disrupt every industry globally. It is much easier for the masses to migrate to the space now, and once the demand starts to pick up, I expect a bull market in the trillions.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this piece. Let me know your thoughts.

All the best,

Devin

Hey all,

I’ve tried something new today, a podcast newsletter… let me know what you think (and maybe help think of a better name than podcast newsletter lol).

Have a great weekend,

Devin

* Bakkt getes $740M Valuation

* Tron & USDT promising 20% interest…

* Lbank & Bit-Z have more volume than Binance?

* Weekly Summary

1) Bakkt getes $740M Valuation

Bakkt, which have yet to release their crypto institutional trading platform, or any investment products, yet they seem to have reached a $740M valuation figure based on the seed investment.

Bakkt’s business model is reliant on volume, a decision which was probably made during the forever increasing volumes of 2017. With the proposed trading $0.5 per contract (which is relatively cheap), Bakkt are going to need significant volume to return a profit. Remember, they’re a business and not a charity. Their shareholder’s interests are at the top of their priorities, not cryptos.

2) Tron & USDT promising 20% interest…

Another bold move from Justin Sun, offering 20% USDT interest for buying TRX on a few small, riskier exchange such as OKEx and Huobi.

Where is this 20M + coming from?… TRX investors… the alarm bells are ringing for an awful ending to this.

On a side note, it seems as if Justin Sun has been buying followers on Twitter, rather embarrassing…

and here’s where the fake bots / engagement come from…

3) Lbank & Bit-Z have more volume than Binance?

Binance is by far the largest exchange by volume and user base so when 2 rather small, unheard of exchanges indicate significantly higher volume than Binance then it raises some questions.

The most probable cause for this is a thing called wash trading, where bots place a tonne of buy and sell signals near enough at the same level to give the illusion that there is a tonne of volume, when really only a small amount of capital is actually being used.

Pump and dump schemes thrive off of wash trading too.

Long story short, the volume is fake and obviously manipulated (which is illegal). I’d avoid these exchanges.

4) Weekly Summary

This week we’ve seen Bitcoin hover around 4K, break above 4K and then get thrown back down to where we were at the beginning of the week. So we’ve remained pretty much exactly where we were?

In terms of overall market cap, yes.

In terms of progression, no. A lot is going on at the moment (as I mention in the Newsletters) and short term price action is not reflecting the forthcoming events.

It would be good to see BTC break and hold above 4.2K, we might see this towards the end of next week.

Interested to see what happens on Sunday, we normally see a move near midnight.

Hope you enjoyed this type of Newsletter. Let me know what you think!

All the best,

Devin