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analyst75

Market Wizard
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Everything posted by analyst75

  1. Cathie Wood is the founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Investment Officer of Ark Invest an investment management firm. And while I admire her commitment to investing in the technology of tomorrow, her investment discipline needs some tweaking. Cathie is invested in several companies my team and I believe will be long-term winners. Companies like NVIDIA, Shopify, Zoom, and Twilio. But repeatedly adding to a position while the price is in a steep downtrend doesn’t make a ton of sense. For example, after buying hundreds of thousands of shares of Coinbase Global from $234 all the way down to the low-$50s, Cathie turned around and sold 1.133 million shares on July 26, 2022, around $54. She then turned around and purchased more than 207,000 shares on November 9, 2022, in the mid-to-high-$40s and another 255,000 shares on November 18, in the mid-$40s. If Cathie believes in COIN, a more logical approach would be to wait for the stock to stop falling, give it time to build a base, and begin buying the stock on strength once the bear trend is over. Look, I’m the first to admit that investing in innovative technology is both risky and highly volatile. If you’re going to invest in companies developing tomorrow’s technology, you must do so cautiously and with an appreciation for how extreme highs and lows will be. In Cathie’s case, I love some of her investment choices, but investment execution needs some refining. – James A. Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
  2. “One way to make more money investing is to have good habits. But another is to simply get rid of bad habits…. Bad habits need to turn into Good habits over time in order to become a successful long-term investor.” – James A. You can see the attached image… The kind of scenario in the Daily chart is no longer a rare occurrence in the markets if you have been in the market for years. And you can see James Altucher’s quote above. We often tell professional traders to use stop loss and cut their losses: But they won’t listen. We always tell pro traders not to use big lot sizes per trade and not to overtrade. Even 0.1 lots are too risky for 1000 USD: But they won’t comply. We tend to beg trading gurus to test their trading idea for at least 4 months or better, for up to one year or more, so that they can see how their trading idea can withstand all market conditions (including black swan events): But they will never obey. NEVER! Why would you trade a demo for only one or two weeks and then go live? Why would you use your live accounts as a guinea pig project? Your strategy will occasionally undergo the baptism of fire and 95% of floored. Can your strategy survive adverse market conditions? I have seen a trader being moved from one prison to another, because of losing clients' money. After he came from prison, his trading habits show the same thing that led him to jail in the first place. I have seen traders with many years of experience, still blowing accounts, because they tend to trade the way they did in the past, owing to undisciplined psychology. Give them another chance again? They will blow the accounts again. Some are heavily in debt because of stubbornness. Pros who have destroyed numerous accounts over the years would be seen begging people here and there, for funds to manage money. And if you ever give them any chance again, they will blow the new funds. Most experienced traders have mental problems. Why would you keep on doing what is putting you into problems? And plunging into deeper debts. Your trading results show that something is wrong with your brain, and you need to find solutions before it is too late. The markets can ruin one’s life if one proves too stubborn. As for me, I am a trading idiot. I am a certified, pathetic, and intercontinental idiot. This is the reason why I don’t risk too much per trade… My position sizing is very conservative and that has worked well for me. I don’t blow accounts. Because of my stupidity, I tend to test a new strategy for at least one year, and I have seen how my super strategy can withstand all market conditions and I am happy. I don’t argue with the markets or rely on hope. I know the market is opaque and the next movement cannot be predicted. Since I am a compound fool, a universal fool, I use optimal stop loss always and I even cut some losses before the stop is hit. I let my profits run. My foolishness has enabled me to reach financial freedom because I have a strategy that can withstand all market conditions (developed from over 15 years of experience). It can make money in all market conditions. The strategy is the simplest strategy I have ever seen because even a moron like me can trade it (and a monkey can trade it). It suffers minimal drawdowns in adverse markets and bounces back quickly. I not only survive the kind of market condition in the image above, but I also jump back quickly and make money within a short time, owing to my stupidity. And on the other hand, wise, intelligent, and sensible traders are blowing accounts. Doing the right things pays (cut your loss and risk very small), and permanent success is possible. Make money in bull markets, bear markets, sideways markets, and during unusual, unexpected events. I am a living witness. Kind regards. Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
  3. Hello Traders: Why is USDT so popular? It is the most popular stablecoin and the largest-cap stablecoin in existence. 68,977,092,527 USDT is currently in circulation. There are certain types of USDT, but the most popular and the most widely used is TRC20, followed by ERC20. At least, 90% of online trading brokers now accept USDT for deposits and withdrawals, and the adoption rate is projected to increase further. So, you can use it to fund your trading account and trade for profits. You can use it to pay people or receive payment. You can use it as a bulwark against crazy fluctuations in the markets. If BTC or ETH or TRX crashes, USDT will not. Having USDT is like having US Dollar because they have the same value and USDT is pegged to USD. You can use it as a store of value. You can convert it to any cryptocurrency offered by your exchange, and you can convert any available cryptocurrency to it. So, if you need any crypto, buy USDT and convert it to that crypto. If you want to withdraw any coins, covert them to USDT and sell for money! You can trade it versus many other popular currencies, as pairs. You can use any trading styles you want. You can also trade it versus other popular coins. We have ETHUSDT, BTCUSDT, TRXUSDT, BNBUSDT, ADAUSDT, DOGEUSDT, SOLUSDT, etc. The uses for Tether – USDT – are so versatile that it is now more popular than Perfect Money, Neteller, Webmoney, Skrill and PayPal (who imposes obnoxious restrictions on people). And this is just the beginning. Therefore, open a crypto wallet and buy USDT today. Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
  4. 7 Trading Truths 1. Nobody has the perfect trading plan. Seeking perfection will stop you from trading, and the markets lessons will be forever shrouded in mystery unless you put money into the markets. 2. Most of the things you’re worried about will never eventuate. The frantic and neurotic barely ever excel in the markets. Find that quiet place inside your heart and remember to breathe before you put on your trades today. 3. Clinging to past victories will lead you to miss the chart patterns in front of you right now. 4. Admonishing yourself harshly for past failings will annihilate your energy to keep trading. 5. Do the right thing, even when no-one is looking, because integrity in the rest of your life translates to integrity in following your trading plan. The way we do one thing is the way we do everything. 6. Your self-esteem should never be in the market’s hands. The market is an inconsistent teacher, subject to aggressive swings of fortune and failure, with smatterings of sadism. It’s up to you to stay level and consistent, and not be flung about on tumultuous tides of price action. You decide how good you are. You decide how you’re going to do this. You decide to implement your trading plan. No one, and I mean no one can topple your tower if you decide to build it with exceptional foundations. It’s in your hands. There’s no one to blame, no circumstance to use as a scapegoat. Author: Louise Bedford Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
  5. What If I Sent Some Crypto To Scammers? “Illusions are something pleasant. The disadvantage is that they tend to burst like a bubble.” – Wolfgang Kurz There are many Internet fraudsters and scammers out there whose primary aim is to turn you into a dupe. They will do everything possible to convince you that their claims are genuine. This includes fake websites and/or fake groups, doctored results, phony testimonies from their fellow swindlers who are members of their criminal networks, and dogged persuasion. What is their ultimate aim? It is to take money from you and never return it and never deliver on the promises they made to you in the first place. And even if possible, they want to take more money from you.They impersonate people and pretend to be reputable and authentic. You may never know their true color until you fall into their trap. Once you have fallen into their trap, you will then know what they’re up to, but it would be too late then. In most cases, they will never ask you to send funds via traditional payments systems, because, with traditional payment methods, recipients are easy to trace and possibly arrested. They will usually ask you to send funds via any popular coins/tokens or stablecoins. Some Ways To Identify ScammersUnbelievable promises: If something seems unbelievable to you, then it is. Scammers will give you guarantees like: “We can never lose money” “Once you send money to us, we give you double or triple it soon.” We will give you so and so percentage returns every day or every week.” Etc. Statements like above are a red flag. Giving guarantees is unethical and it is a very simple way to identify a scammer. Sadly, giving guarantees is a proven method to trick greedy souls, who like to reap where they did not sow. No-one wakes up in the morning and says, “I want to make so-and-so person rich today.” If they can really double funds every day, they should be able to do so for themselves and their family members. You know that if they can really never lose money, they should be among the richest people on earth and they need not persuade small fries like you. They don’t even need to beg strangers for money if it is true that they have the secret to make money out of nothing.They direct message you first (DM) or private message you first (PM): The rule here is very straightforward; anybody who DMs or PMs you first is a thief looking for potential victims like you, no matter the kind of impression they are trying to make or what they want you to believe. They appear so friendly, and can even exercise enough patience with you until you fall into their traps.They offer you free tokens via airdrops: That formula is simple, when online robbers are offering you free coins via airdrops, they will require you to send crypto/money before you can benefit or you need to reveal sensitive details about your crypto wallets before you can benefit.Learn2.Trade (L2T) impersonators: Don’t join L2T impersonators’ groups. This is a WARNING! Traders, note that we never speak to any of our subscribers via Telegram. Only the official Learn2.trade email is how we deal with communication. If you are speaking to anyone pretending to be from Learn 2 Trade on Telegram it is a scam and do not send them any money! There are many FAKE TELEGRAM ACCOUNTS pretending to represent Learn2.Trade. It has come to our attention that some persons/organizations are offering profit-based investment schemes, pretending to be our company. They are using our logo to contact subscribers in order to scam them. Please DO NOT invest. You must report this telegram group for wrongful actions immediately. Please be aware we do not offer any communication or admin support via telegram. We are available via email only at support@learn2.trade. Any supposed L2T employee or admin who communicates with you via a Telegram ID/handle or any other medium apart from the email in this paragraph, is trying to steal your money.To put it in a simple way, if anyone who claims to come from L2T communicates with you via any other means apart from support@learn2.trade (the only legitimate means), the person is a bandit.What If I Sent Some Crypto To Scammers? “Unfortunately, if you’ve sent crypto, it’s likely gone for good, never to be recovered. At this point, because of the worldwide nature of cryptocurrency, there is no central authority that can help you recover your crypto. Make sure that whatever price you paid becomes tuition in the school of crypto life. You’ve learned a hard lesson. Print a certificate or do whatever you need to do to help you move on, but ultimately learn from the experience and move on. Trying to recover what you sent is a battle you will likely waste more time, energy, and maybe money on with NOTHING to show for it in the end.” (Source: Airdrops Blog) Source: https://learn2.trade/what-if-i-sent-some-crypto-to-scammers?fbclid=IwAR05wSjypyI-oBwLXSfKmzIpIiTzbQZrgNlmnfrpphNiioGIPwks-JLC1m4
  6. Successful traders may differ in their trading strategy, but they do have one thing in common. Pro traders have learned to manage key emotions that affect their results. Here’s how you can do the same. Finding and properly following a proven trading strategy is one of the most important steps to becoming a successful stock or crypto trader. But becoming a consistently profitable trader requires more than just having a winning trading system. It also requires you to understand yourself as an investor and how you react to stress, greed, and the virtue of patience. As an investor, you must understand your own emotional reactions to market volatility before putting your money on the line. Your ability to properly manage stress, greed, and patience plays a huge role in your long-term trading success.1. Stress and Trading We all experience stress from time to time, but it can destroy your health and relationships when it becomes a way of life. You are also far more likely to make bad decisions with your money if you’re in a constant state of stress. Stress may cause you to make rash decisions, such as exiting a trade too soon or staying too long and losing money. If you want to trade profitably, you must remove as much stress from your trading as you can. Having a rule-based trading system that works is a great way to reduce stress because it eliminates trading decisions based on emotion. Also, if you find yourself becoming extremely stressed out when the market is going through a correction, it’s a fantastic time to take a break! Spend some time to determine what causes stress in your trading and take immediate steps to remove it.2. Greed and Trading Greed is one of the most dangerous emotions that any trader or investor can experience. Greed will lead you to take outsized risks with your money that you really shouldn’t take. When you are greedy, it’s nearly impossible to walk away from a bad trade when you should. Greed makes you believe that you deserve to make more money from a trade than you actually do. Greed also makes it easy for you to take on too much risk with your money. You might decide to aggressively invest in a trade that is outside your risk tolerance level. You may also buy a larger position of a stock or crypto than you can afford to lose. Greed is a feeling that is challenging to get rid of, but it can be managed.The best way to keep greed from ruining your success as a trader is to set strict rules for yourself. That’s why we always suggest a fixed position size to members for each new trade in The Wagner Daily stock portfolio or Morpheus Crypto portfolio. Don’t let greed make you break your own rules.3. The Virtue of Patience Even short-term swing trading is a long-term game, so don’t try to rush the process. Nearly everyone who properly follows an effective trading technique can eventually become a successful trader—but it requires patience to get there. When you first start trading, don’t rush to buy every stock or crypto that catches your eye. Take time to research and determine if the potential trade entry falls within the parameters of your trading system. If you miss the trade entry, another profitable opportunity is just around the corner. When the market becomes too challenging, don’t be afraid to shift your portfolio to cash until conditions improve. Cash is always a valid position. In fact, the most successful traders we know are out of the market more than they are in it! At Morpheus, we step on the gas pedal in ideal market conditions, but quickly press the brakes when the bear strikes.SummaryBecoming a winning trader or investor requires more than just about having a successful trading strategy. You must truly understand yourself as an investor, and how you react to stress and greed. If you’re naturally an impatient person, make it your mission to change. Consistently finding winning stock picks is an obvious element of success, but you must also understand your own reactions to emotions that can affect your trading decisions.The best way to deal with these emotions is to prepare yourself for them. Read your emotions and understand how they might affect you. Doing so arms you with the ability to combat them before they have a chance to affect your trading results. Source: https://learn2.trade/3-emotions-pro-traders-have-mastered?fbclid=IwAR2FTXYf0nD8LiHOpXkbRmrQ8BxROxkb3WQ5YwUmTvAHS8gb17WXOt7ni1E
  7. Post-Merge Long-Term Price Forecast For Ethereum (ETH), 2022 – 2025 Updated: 25 September 2022 Ethereum currently is bearish. The bearishness started in 2021 and has lasted till date and will continue for the rest of this year and the year 2023. Even on the day of the Merge, ETH plummeted furiously. The most important reason for the bearishness is crypto winter. During crypto winter, ETHUSD will be trending downwards no matter how positive the fundamentals surrounding it, are and no matter the number of developments and improvements on the Ethereum blockchain. When a crypto summer begins, ETHUSD will experience overall bullish movements, even when negative fundamentals are coming out as regards it. The overall bullish movement will inevitably happen irrespective of occasional pullbacks in the market, leading to lower highs, and higher highs. This is what is called seasonality in the world of crypto. There is a bullish season and a bearish season, and that is the biggest determinant of the overall movement of a major crypto like ETH. Seasonality trumps everything! ETHUSD – Daily Chart ETHUSD Long-term price territories Distribution territories: $5,000.00 $15,000.00 and $20,000.00 Accumulation territories: $1000.00, $500.00 and $100.00.ETHUSD Daily Chart: The daily chart shows that the overall market tendency is bearish. This is a kind of market in which short-term sellers will make lots of money just by selling rallies in the market, using margin trading facilities. Using margin trading techniques, going long in this market would invariably result in financial disaster, as the price is projected to reach the accumulation territory of $1,000.00 before the end of this year. The most logical trading approach for margin traders is to sell every considerable bullish attempt on this crypto; since every bullish effort will invariably be transitory. In the year 2023, the accumulation territory of $500.00 will be tested (or possibly breached to the downside, albeit briefly). That is when Ethereum will be prepping up for the next big rally, which would happen in 2024. ETHUSD – Weekly Chart ETHUSD Weekly Chart: In the weekly chart, it is depicted that the price would reach at least $500.00 territory before the next major rally. In the year 2020. ETHUSD reached a low of $89.55 and then reached a high of $4,856.65 in November 2021. The next major rally will begin any time after the next Bitcoin halving has been completed. According to one source, the next Bitcoin halving is scheduled to take place in 2024 at block 840,000. On Apr 28, 2024, 12:16:22 AM UTC the Bitcoin block reward is scheduled to drop from 6.25 Bitcoin per block to 3.125 Bitcoin per block.Will Ethereum Hodlers Make Profits? Yes, they will make profits. In spite of the ongoing bearish bias on the market, Ethereum is always rated a “BUY.” Investors who buy it during massive bearish markets will also make profits if they can wait for just a few years. On the other hand, those who buy ETH in the month of the next Bitcoin halving will make at least 1,000% (10X) returns within several months. So, investors (apart from margin traders who buy and sell, using stop loss and take profits), can rest assured that ETHUSD will never go to zero (even if they invest when the market is very weak), making the value of their investment go down. They will eventually recover their loss and make massive returns on ETH. It all boils down to timing: Some investors make money within years and some make money within months, just because of timing.Ethereum to Reach $20,000.00 in the Year 2025 ETHUSD will breach its All-time High of 4,856.65 in 2024, reaching at least the distribution territory at $10,000.00 in that year. In the year 2025, the distribution territory at $20,000.00 will be tested and surmounted, and then possibly surpassed, since that is the minimum target for the year 2025. However, the price territory of $25,000.00 is another possibility before the end of the same year. Source: https://learn2.trade/post-merge-long-term-price-forecast-for-ethereum-eth-2022-2025Ethereum (ETH) is always a buy, for the long-term bias is bullish, in spite of the current medium-term bearishness.
  8. A TRUTH ABOUT TRADING A couple of things in life that I really don’t look forward to are:1. when they draw blood for my semi-annual health checkup and2. when I have to go to the doctor. Yet, when I think about it, not going could be a lot worse than going. I don’t know which I would dislike more, finding out I have too high a cholesterol reading or finding out that my blood sugar is too high. Hopefully, I’ll never have to compare the two. Fortunately, I don’t suffer from either condition.Regardless, as I was sitting in the doctor’s office one Monday morning, I realized that sometimes I am like the doctor in regard to the occupation of trading. Sometimes my being blunt about the things that need to be said is not well-liked by some traders. Much of the time there is a little pain involved in doing things the right way, because there is rarely such a thing as instant gratification when you are a trader. However, in the long run, you are far better off if you do things the right way. As much as I hate going to the doctor, I know that if I take care of things now, even though I experience a little bit of pain, it will save a great deal more pain in the future. For those who cannot see past the desire to always receive instant gratification from their trading efforts, I am not well received. For those who can see that the information and experience that I provide, although sometimes painful to realize, and even more painful to actually follow at first, will ultimately save them from a great deal of pain in the long run compared with how most traders actually fare. Knowing this does not make it any easier to go to the doctor, because the immediate pain is the same whether I like it or not. However, knowing and understanding this enables me to go in spite of the small bit of pain that it may cause.Each Spring I enjoy planting a garden. A garden requires work. Tending the plants while they grow requires even more work. Even harvesting the fruit of my garden requires work, but then comes the enjoyment. It is always in that order, which is the way God created it. It’s the same way with investing and trading.No matter what your situation is right now, don’t compromise to receive instant gratification at the cost of a great harvest later on. I write from many years of experience and from making these kinds of mistakes in the past. And that is a truth about trading. Source: https://learn2.trade/you-need-to-accept-this-trading-truth-if-you-want-to-survive
  9. The most hated people on the internet: Where are they now? The Most Hated Man on the Internet What he did: Hunter Moore started the revenge porn site isanyoneup.com about 10 years ago. Users were encouraged to upload nude photos of their ex to be ridiculed and insulted by visitors to the site. Moore called himself a “professional life ruiner,” and repeatedly claimed to have no remorse about it. The website stayed up for 16 months until an internet watchdog convinced Moore to sell it. It was then learned that Moore had been paying an accomplice to hack into people’s computers and steal any compromising photos to post them on the site. Moore served two and a half years in prison for his crimes. What he’s doing now: Released in 2017, Moore now seems to be living a more low-key life. According to GoodtoKnow, he is banned from Facebook but continues to post on Twitter, showing photos of his gym workouts, his dog, and continually talking about how rich he is. (Moore claims to have $3 million in the bank.) A quick check on Twitter at the time of this publication, however, shows Moore’s account has been suspended. Read more here: https://blog.avast.com/most-hated-people-internet-where-are-they-now?utm_content=838991&utm_term=173432284_5191_1594&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc&utm_campaign=c_oo_fr_a_a_22q3_kz_news8gdpr&ajs_prop_utm_term=173432284_5191_1594&ajs_event=Email%20ClickthroughLanding Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
  10. When Reality Wins, the West Will Suffer The Ukrainian money-laundering racket continues. Last week Joe Biden pledged another $3 billion in aid to Ukraine. The aid includes weapon systems that will allow Ukraine to defend itself over the “long term.” Just how long is the long term? How long does the administration plan on watching Ukraine be destroyed simply because they want to weaken Russia? By now, it’s a familiar script. Ukraine says, "Give us more money and we'll counterattack." Then they skim the money, wait a week or two and make the same demand. Biden gives them your tax money. Wash, rinse and repeat. But support for Ukraine’s money-laundering racket is resulting in the impoverishment of Europe. Germans are buying firewood. Poles are lined up for days to buy coal. They just want to keep warm in winter, but globalist elites don't care. Regular people are just pawns in the service of the globalist agenda. Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “We are living through the end of abundance.” Well, that’s true if elites manage to shut down the oil and gas industries while forcing everyone to use costly and inefficient “green” energy. Let’s unpack this… Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing The green energy crowd talks about sustainability and saving the planet, which sounds nice. After all, who doesn’t want a clean environment and to save the planet? That sounds like a policy we should all applaud. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different. The movement is controlled by corporate and government globalist elites aligned with the World Economic Forum. The environmental target is part of the climate alarmist effort to use phony climate change claims as a Trojan Horse to destroy the oil and natural gas industries, shut down internal-combustion engines and force countries to use wind turbines and solar modules that are intermittent and nonscalable. They’re also trying to take over global finance and central banks (through the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, or GFANZ), to prevent new loans to oil and natural gas firms and to force loans to subsidize electric vehicles (EVs) and battery manufacturers. Never mind that CO2 is not poisonous (it’s plant food and humans exhale it all day) and that batteries are poisonous. Never mind that there is no climate change emergency. There simply is no existential climate crisis as the alarmists claim. There may have been very slight warming from 1995⁠–⁠2005 (which is perfectly normal) but there is no evidence either that CO2 is the principal cause or that human activity is a material factor. Here, I discuss U.S. and Chinese CO2 emissions and the folly of the Paris Climate Accord, which Biden recommitted to after Trump wisely pulled the U.S. out of it. Real Climate Change Climate change itself happens all the time and had happened long before the invention of the automobile. The Medieval Warm Period from about AD 950–1250 featured unusually warm temperatures in the North Atlantic region. This was the period when the Vikings roamed as far as Canada and farms were thriving in Greenland in areas now covered in ice. The Little Ice Age, which reached an intense phase from 1650–1725, featured frozen canals in Holland — one reason the Dutch are such competitive speed skaters today. In London, you could cross the frozen River Thames on ice and winter carnivals were held on the frozen river. Both of these episodes occurred centuries before the invention of the automobile. You get the point. But the elites just want you under their thumb using expensive technologies that they themselves control. If that means you must suffer from greatly diminished living standards, so be it. It’s also why Germans are stocking up on firewood and Poles are lining up for days to buy coal in the 21st century. It's more like the 18th century. We need to consider the role of sanctions in all this. I Hate to Gloat, But… As soon as the first economic and financial sanctions were imposed on Russia by the U.S. and EU at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, I wrote and said that the sanctions would fail to deter Russia. I went further and said that the sanctions would do more harm to the U.S. than Russia and that sanctions would actually help Russia by reducing the power of the oligarchs (Putin’s rivals) and increasing the price of energy (Russia’s main source of hard currency). All of those forecasts proved to be correct. I’m not trying to toot my own horn. I just want to illustrate how clueless our so-called elites and policymakers are. They’re simply incapable of thinking even one move ahead. Instead of sanctions hurting Russia, it’s making over $21 billion per month from its energy exports. That’s far more than they made before the war, and the Russian ruble is stronger than it was before the war. In fact, the head of the Central Bank of Russia recently cut interest rates because the ruble was too strong. Of course, all the “experts” said that sanctions would cripple the ruble. Meanwhile the U.S. is in a recession, inflation is at 40-year highs, interest rates are rising and gas and food prices have doubled in the past year. In Europe it’s worse with energy and food shortages looming in the months ahead. Could the situation get any worse? Actually, yes. A New OPEC Based on Natural Gas? By weaponizing the U.S. dollar, freezing Russia’s assets and ejecting Russia from the global payments systems, the U.S. has forced Russia to consider alternative payment currencies, alternative payment channels and possibly a new global reserve currency including new digital currencies backed by a basket of commodities including gold. These projects are already underway in the BRICS+ meetings and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, both of which are centered around Russia and China. Now a new effort has begun to form a natural gas cartel with participation by Russia and Iran and eventually other countries. This new organization could function like OPEC except that the strategic asset would be natural gas rather than oil. Other countries that could join this new cartel include Qatar and Azerbaijan. Russia, Iran and Qatar alone control about 60% of the world’s natural gas reserves. Such a cartel would be in a position to strike exclusive deals with favored buyers like China, which would leave Europe out in the cold literally and figuratively. We need to confront the reality that the sanctions were a blunder from the start. But the “hate Russia” crowd was so blinded by their contempt for Putin that they plowed ahead regardless. Now the unforeseen consequences are emerging and they’re even worse than the critics imagined. The globalist elites and Western politicians pursue their fantasies of windmills and solar modules while serious countries like Russia and Iran gain a lock on the only energy supplies that will really matter for the foreseeable future — oil and gas. When ideology and reality collide, reality always wins in the end. That doesn’t bode well for the West. Author: Jim Rickards (for Altucher Confidential) Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
  11. Dear Customer, Keep your account safe by doing the simplest of things - IGNORE. If you receive an email, text or a chat telling you your token is expired, expiring soon or that you need to synchronize your token by clicking a link, just know it is a scam. GTBank will never ask you to click a link to "synchronize" or "update’’ your token. Do nothing by ignoring or deleting the message, but very importantly do not click the link. Stay safe online. Thank you for banking with us. From GTBank Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
  12. The newest Doge on the block Tamadoge is coming out the gate barking, becoming one of the biggest hyped meme coins of all time and pushing the boundaries of the Play-to-Earn space, in order to provide a game that people will be climbing over each other to use. Tamadoge (TAMA) is the gateway token of the Tamaverse - where you'll be able to mint, breed and battle your own Tamadoge pet in the metaverse. Tamadoge will give everyone the ability to mint the doges they want to, and will allow users to breed, train and battle their Tamadoge NFTs to top the leaderboard every single month. Over time the Play-to-Earn opportunities will be expanding to include augmented reality experiences, allowing your NFT to play with its friends in the Tamaverse. Tamadoge isn’t just the future of the Doge ecosystem, it’s the future of Play-to-Earn. How can you buy Tamadoge? Please check here: https://tamadoge.io/how-to/
  13. 3 Ways To Invest In The Merge Summary: The big upgrade to Ethereum — a.k.a. “The Merge” — is planned to be a once-in-a-lifetime switch from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, making Ethereum more energy-efficient and potentially much more valuable. Three ways to invest now: buy ETH, stake ETH, or invest in the top staking companies. Windows 95 was a huge deal. It’s hard to believe now, but the launch of Windows 95 was a global phenomenon. Journalists from around the world descended on Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters for a massive event, hosted by the comedian Jay Leno. To celebrate the new Start button in the lower left corner, Microsoft paid millions of dollars to license “Start It Up” by the Rolling Stones. Sales of the operating system immediately broke records. Windows 95 was a radical departure for Microsoft.It was the first Windows to streamline the graphical user interface for the masses: even your grandpa could find the Start button. It was the first 32-bit operating system, which meant every app needed to be rewritten to take advantage of its new architecture. It was a huge step forward. And it was a massive success. At computer stores (most people still bought software in stores), lines stretched down the block. It sold 40 million copies in its first year, quadrupling sales of all previous Windows versions combined. Microsoft’s stock price soared, quickly doubling in value and starting a magnificent 25-year run:The Merge as an Inflection Point Technology often has these “inflection points.” Because Windows was the operating system installed on most computers (Apple was in its death throes at the time, and only weirdos used Macs), Windows 95 radically changed the world. Ethereum’s upcoming upgrade — “The Merge” — is a similarly huge event, but it won’t be celebrated with traditional marketing campaigns. There will be no big-name comedian at the launch event (there may not even be a launch event). But The Merge will be every bit as transformative as Windows 95 because The Merge will upgrade the operating system of crypto. Here are 3 ways to invest early.Investing Opportunity #1: Buy and Hold ETH There are plenty of Layer 1 blockchain platforms, but Ethereum is the largest by far, holding 2/3 of the overall market: That huge slice is Ethereum. In blockchain, the principle of “network effects” is enormous: the more people using a tech platform, the more valuable it becomes. Ethereum has network effects galore: more users, more developers, and more apps than any other L1 blockchain. If Ethereum keeps innovating — as Microsoft did with Windows 95 — they’ll further that lead, creating a significant competitive moat. The Merge is an enormous innovation because it will cut Ethereum’s energy usage by 99.95%. (You read that right.) All the arguments about crypto using too much electricity will go up in a puff of smoke … except for the energy-hungry bitcoin, which may start looking like a worse investment than Ethereum.The new Ethereum may also become deflationary. That’s a good thing for investors, as it means that instead of continually enlarging the pie and diluting your ownership stake, the pie may start shrinking – making your stake more valuable. The easiest investing opportunity is to simply buy and hold ETH. You can already see the correlation between The Merge getting closer and the price of ETH going up as investors start to wake up from their crypto winter hibernation: ETH price over the last month, as The Merge looks more and more likely In my view, The Flippening — where Ethereum eventually overtakes bitcoin in total market cap — is likely. Ethereum is innovating at a furious pace; bitcoin is not.Investing Opportunity #2: Stake ETH When you stake ETH, you earn rewards, generally in the form of more ETH (like earning interest), and sometimes in another token as well. (See our workshop on How to Stake ETH for more.) There are a few staking options.Solo staking. If you’re tech-savvy with at least 32 ETH (about $50,000 today), you can run a validator node (instructions here): basically, souped-up PCs running special validator software. These machines “run” the new Proof-of-Stake Ethereum network in the same way that mining machines “run” the bitcoin network.Staking as a service. If you’ve got the ETH but don’t want to manage your own node, you can deposit it with a staking service, which will run the validators on your behalf, and split the reward. (List of Ethereum staking services here; please DYOR.)Pooled staking. For most of us, the cheaper and easier option is to stake your Ethereum with services like Lido or Rocket Pool. These let you stake smaller amounts of ETH, which they “pool” together to run their own validators. Users share in the rewards. Lido is the more user-friendly option by far, allowing you to stake any amount in an easy Web3 interface (try it out here). Lido has grown so popular that a new problem has emerged: the service may end up staking up over 50% of Ethereum, which would give it control over the network. (Mo money, mo problems.)Rocket Pool offers a similar service, but it also lets you run “minipools” with just 16 ETH, plus additional collateral (instructions here). It’s a cheaper option than running a full node, but it still requires an IT background and a lot of spare time. Centralized exchange staking. The easiest option is to simply stake your ETH using exchanges like Binance. You won’t get as many rewards, but it’s probably the safest and easiest option, as the big exchanges want to keep their investors safe: they have a lot at stake.Investing Opportunity #3: Invest in LDO and/or RPL directly Both Lido and Rocket Pool have their own native tokens (LDO and RPL, respectively), which are used as additional rewards. Our investing thesis is always that buying a token is like buying stock in the underlying “company.” Rather than staking ETH with Lido and gradually accruing LDO rewards, in other words, you can simply buy LDO now if you believe the value of the Lido “company” will increase over time. Think about it this way: you see a transformative new technology hitting the market, but it’s still too geeky for the mainstream. A company finds a way to make it more user-friendly, and they rapidly gobble up a third of the entire market, with people worried that it might go even bigger. This is exactly what is happening with Lido. But who or what is Lido? It’s a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, which means you can see what’s happening in the “company” in real-time via their message board. For example, here’s a proposed budget that would grow the team to 80+ employees. Today, however, the team is small: they have just six core devs, located primarily in Russia and Eastern Europe. But they’re backed by a number of big investors, including some OGs in the crypto space. And they’re growing like a weed. Rocket Pool, on the other hand, is trying desperately to keep up with Lido. Compared with Lido’s smooth Web3 interface, trying to set up a Rocket Pool minipool is like trying to build a quantum computer in your bathtub. If Rocket Pool wants to beat Lido, they have to focus on one thing: making the product user-friendly. That’s it. Product, product, product.In my view, both LDO and RPL are high-risk, potentially high-reward investments. The hope is that you’re investing early in the next big thing, and their fortunes will rise with the launch of The Merge.Mo reward, mo risk If you want to take advantage of the sweet rewards of The Merge, never invest more than you’re willing to lose, because there are still significant risks, such as: The Merge is not guaranteed to happen. It is looking increasingly likely, but it has been delayed several times already. If you stake ETH now, you may not be able to get it out until The Merge does happen. If you invest in LDO or RPL, those services may not stand the stress test of The Merge – or they may be eclipsed by even better staking services.That said, I think these are some of the most exciting times in crypto — this generation’s equivalent of the Windows 95 launch. This is why we’re issuing our first-ever BUY ALERT for both ETH and LDO. Start it up. Source: https://learn2.trade/3-ways-to-invest-in-the-merge
  14. How To Pick Winning Cryptos – Part 2 In part 1 of the articles in this series, we examined some of the essential criteria to be considered when picking cryptos that have the potential for unusually massive returns. In this article, we would reveal another way of picking the winning crypto. We want to look at popular crypto exchanges, consider certain factors and invest in some exchanges that have huge potential as well as a promising future.Business models that survive economic adversities We went through crypto winters in the past and we will experience more crypto winters in the future. Some crypto exchanges that survived in the past, grew stronger. Crypto winters are testing grounds for crypto exchanges whose business models are resilient. These are exchanges that eventually become leaders in their category. Some great crypto exchanges today came about when most cryptos were bearish; a factor that proved their strong aims, ambitions, and business strategies. This is just as a good percentage of successful high-tech companies have proven to be able to survive adverse business conditions. High-tech companies invariably survive crypto winters, economic downturns, busts, bear markets, and depressions. Their teams know that the need for the services they render is perennial. Thus they remain committed to their visions.Crypto exchanges with a great future Now, back to crypto exchanges. When investing in crypto exchanges, we are looking for exchanges that have strengthened their effort, strategies, and actions in the face of uncertainties. That is a dependable sign of their ability, perseverance, and motivation; plus their faith in crypto industries. There are centralized exchanges (CEXs) and decentralized exchanges (DEXs). Going into details about CEX and DEX is beyond the scope of this article. However, apart from the factors mentioned above, we want to examine other factors that need to be considered when investing in crypto exchanges.More factors Let us consider a typical crypto exchange: What are the ratings they get from users’ experiences? What are the reviews about them on forums and other websites? What is their average trading volume? How many markets are available on the exchange? How many coins do they support? How many fiat currencies do they support? What is their average liquidity score? What about the traffic to the exchange platform? What are the average daily visit, average weekly visits, and overall unique visits? If an exchange is being hit by bad news, having problems, mismanaging funds, losing credibility, etc. I will never invest in such a company. If I do, the value of my investment will be reduced greatly. It could even go to zero ultimately if the company collapses. If an exchange is getting better, becoming more popular, innovating at a furious pace, blazing trails in the world of blockchain, etc. I want to invest in such a company. The easiest way for an ordinary investor to invest in a crypto exchange is to invest in their native token. It is like buying some shares of a company, so to speak. As the company grows, becoming more and more successful, the value of your investment will grow.Some examples:ONE Let us consider Binance, one of the most successful and most popular crypto exchanges. They also have a decentralized exchange called Binance DEX. Their native token is Binance Coin (BNB). Buying BNB is like investing in Binance. On August 1, 2017, a BNB was worth $0.09611. On May 10, 2021, it was worth $690.93. You can calculate how much you would have made in less than 5 years if you had bought more than 1000 coins for around $100. I bought BNB when it was around $11, and I made about 9000% profits in less than 3 years. By the year 2024, BNB would reach the resistance level of $3000, if not breaking it to the upside. That coin can reach at least $10,000 in value before the end of this decade. And that was a coin that was worth less than $0.1 just 5 years ago. Not all good exchanges have native tokens. Nonetheless, for those who have, I want to consider them, especially if the fundamentals around them are favorable.TWO Another example is FTX. The company was launched on May 8, 2019, and its native token is FTX Token (FTT). In 2019, FTT was worth around $0.8. On Sep 09, 2021, it reached a value of $85.02. How much would you have made if you’d even bought the coin when it was worth $1? FTT can reach at least, $1000 within the next 6 years.More crypto exchange tokens This is not a complete list. It is just for you to be aware of some crypto exchanges (DEXs and CEXs) and their native tokens. Binance Coin (BNB) FTX Token (FTT) KuCoin Token (KCS) Pancakeswap (CAKE) Huobi Token (HT) Bitmart Token (BMX) Uniswap (UNI) Bancor (BNT) Compound (COMP) UNUS SED LEO (LEO) Trust Wallet Token (TWT) Sushiwap (SUSHI) Cronos (CRO) Curve Dao Token (CURV) Quidax Token (QDX) AAX Token (AAB) Hit BTC (HIT) Coin EX Token (CET) Bitrue Coin (BTR) Probit Token (PROB) Toko Token (TKO) Bitforex Token (BF) And so on.NB: This is not a financial advice. You trade and invest at your own risk. Source: https://learn2.trade
  15. How To Pick Winning Cryptos – Part 1 According to one source, there are more than 19,000 cryptocurrencies in existence and dozens of blockchain platforms that exist. Most of these cyptos will not make money in the long run. A large percentage of them would even become eventual losers. However, there are certain cryptos that will bring fortunes to those who invest in them. In the past several years, many an investor has become rich by investing in coins like BTC, ETH, BNB, AXS, XMR, etc.Picking winning cryptos, just like picking winning stocks: Investopedia defines a stock pick as when an analyst or investor uses a systematic form of analysis to conclude that a particular stock will make a good investment and, therefore, should be added to their portfolio. Good stock pickers consider important factors like company strength relative to its peers, trends in earnings growth, the debt-to-equity ratio in line with industry norms, long-term strength and stability, price-earnings ratio as an indicator of valuation, and effectiveness of executive leadership, how the company treats dividends, etc.Those who are excellent at picking winning stocks inevitably become successful investors. Just like stock picking, crypto picking requires good knowledge and diligence. FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN INVESTING IN CRYPTOS Are you looking for cryptos that have great potential for unusually massive returns? If you want to pick cryptos with huge future potential, you need to make research with due diligence. The factors to be considered are listed below. If a crypto meets all the requirements listed below, then there is a very high probability that it would succeed in the long term, bringing enormous riches to those who buy and hold it.What problem does the crypto solve? We know the problems solved by Bitcoin. Ethereum is known for smart contracts, plus many other uses. Monero is known for privacy. Tornado Cash improves transaction privacy by breaking the on-chain link between source and destination addresses. Helium is a blockchain-powered wireless service that provides a long-range connection to nearby Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Uniswap is trying to solve decentralized exchanges’ liquidity problem, by allowing the exchange to swap tokens without relying on buyers and sellers to create that liquidity. What problem does the token of your choice solve? Many people will just create “shit” coins and market them, hoping that the price will continue to skyrocket. A lot of useless coins like that will end up going to zero in the long run. In the past a lot of coins have gone to near zero and will never recover. Many more coins will go to zero because the business models behind them are not sustainable and they do not solve unique problems. If a coin solves a unique problem, then it’s already on my radar.Look at the tokenomics Robert Stevens defines tokenomics as a combination of “token” and “economics.” It is a catch-all for the elements that make a particular cryptocurrency valuable and interesting to investors. That includes everything from a token’s supply and how it’s issued to things like what utility it has. For instance, let’s take a glace at a summary of the tokenomics of Lucky Block, a token with a very huge future potential. LBLOCK has lower operating costs. Lower operating costs mean Lucky Block can give back more in rewards to its token holders and charitable organizations and good causes. Winners are paid in LBLOCK, which they can either hold to benefit from the token rewards or cash out. Every time LBLOCK is sold on a DEX a 12% transactional fee (tax) is applied (see table 1 below). 4% of this transactional tax is added to the prize pool available for weekly jackpots. The remainder of the 12% tax will be distributed to the liquidity pool, token burn, and the LuckyBlock NFT fund (see table 2 below). A 1% burn rate means Lucky Block is a deflationary asset and this will help to underpin token value.Who are the people behind the project? You need to vet the team. Who are they? Do they have a good reputation? What is the biography of an individual in the team? Have they been involved in any businesses and projects in the past, and what are the outcomes of those projects? Do they have criminal records? You need to ask questions, since the team behind a project is also a big determining factor.Try to talk to the team Can you talk to the team behind the crypto project? Are they friendly? Are they willing to answer your questions? What are their aims and ambitions?Look at the token distribution Once again, let us use the token of Lucky Block (LBLOCK) as an example: Lucky Block Token distribution Total token supply: 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) Presale: 32,500,000,000 (32.5 billion – 32.5%) Strategic partners and advisors: 20,000,000,000 (20 billion – 20%) Marketing: 22,500,000,000 (22.5 billion – 22.5%) Team: 20,000,000,000 (20 billion – 20%) Product development: 2,500,000,000 (2.5 billion – 2.5%) Locked liquidity – 1-year lock: 2,500,000,000 (2.5 billion – 2.5%)Look at the developers Are the developers really competent? Do they even know what they’re doing? Furthermore, some of the questions that need to be asked as regards the team behind a crypto project also need to be asked as regard the developers.Look at the competition Does the crypto have a competitive advantage? Are there other competitors who have similar projects, trying to solve the same problem which the crypto on your radar is trying to solve? Do they have better tokenomics? What are the strengths and weaknesses?Conclusion: Why do I need a particular token? The answer is that 90% of the time, I don’t need the token, or else I could end up losing money on it. However, if a certain token project meets all the criteria mentioned above, I would invest in it.NB: There is another big method of picking winning cryptos, and it has proven to be invaluable, with verifiable results. That important method will be examined in the next article in this series. Source: https://learn2.trade/how-to-pick-winning-cryptos-part-1
  16. The Bitcoin Discount Store Recently I went shopping at a gas station where everything was 75% off. I’m not in the habit of shopping at gas stations, because I drive a Tesla (which, incidentally, I bought with bitcoin). One of the great things about owning an electric car is you no longer have to worry about gas prices. It’s enormously freeing. I was taking a road trip to pick up my son from college and stopped at a Supercharger to power up. I looked around for something to eat, and the only place nearby was a gas station. It had one of those convenience stores attached, so I wandered in. Tucked away in the back, behind the Slim Jims and the antifreeze, I spotted a cardboard bin that read “75% OFF.” Always one for a bargain, I looked inside.Energy bars. Canned goods. Cereal. Mixed nuts. Pasta.All 75% off. I couldn’t believe my fortune. I rummaged around, wondering if something was wrong with this stuff. Maybe they had been sprayed with DDT or had an expiration date of 1979. The store manager happened to walk by. “Is this for real?” I asked her. “Yep,” she confirmed. “We’re owned by 7-Eleven Corporate, and they’re changing over all the merchandise in our stores. This was all discontinued, so they just threw it all in a bin and marked it down. Did you see the personal goods?” I looked over and saw there were two more identical bins, all 75% off. One was overflowing with toiletries and medications: Advil, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, tampons, condoms (lots and lots for some reason). “Can I have a box?” I asked, “I’m going to need one to carry my haul.” “All the good stuff was gone pretty fast,” she mentioned when she came back with my box. “Are you kidding me?” I replied, “This will be my grocery shopping for the week.”I paid $20 for all this (retail price: $80). So what does this story have to do with investing? Well:Buy Stocks on Sale One of the principles of value investing is to buy “stocks on sale.” Do your research to find quality companies that are underappreciated, i.e., trading below their market value. When you find a bargain, buy it. For example, I think my Tesla is terrific, but TSLA stock is certainly not on sale.There’s no way Tesla is worth more than the next 10 auto companies combined. (Courtesy WolfStreet.com) There are two ways to find stocks on sale: the hard way and the easy way. The hard way is to look at core company metrics: revenue, earnings, cash flow, profitability, dividends, etc. Compare its stock price with similar companies, to see if it’s underpriced. The easy way is to watch for great companies that have been through some recent “shock” that has caused their price to drop. This shock could be external (like an overall market dip) or internal (something that spooked investors). I’ll give an example. Years ago, I invested in Netflix (NFLX), which had just started its streaming service. Netflix was still primarily a DVD-by-mail company, and I thought its model was much better than that of video stores. Here I had some experience: I had spent an unhappy year in college working at a Blockbuster Video, which I found to be a terrible company. (Any life experience can be useful, even working minimum wage at Blockbuster.) I didn’t buy NFLX stock right away, and to my dismay, the stock price kept going up, and up, and up. Then Netflix announced it was going to split the business into two offerings: the streaming service would keep the name Netflix, and the DVD-by-mail business would be renamed “Qwikster.” If you thought Facebook changing its name to “Meta” was a big deal, you should have been there for “Netflix” becoming “Qwikster.” There was a furious uproar usually reserved for political revolutions. Co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings was called a trickster and a huckster for pulling a Qwikster. Needless to say, NFLX stock tanked. And I scooped it up.You can probably guess when “Qwikster” was announced. This was not an easy decision. The DVD-by-mail business was their moneymaker, and Netflix was essentially betting it all on streaming. Netflix didn’t have experience as a streaming platform; no one did. The company had experience with logistics, shipping DVDs in red envelopes from giant warehouses. Streaming seemed a very risky bet. This is an example of buying a “stock on sale.” It’s the equivalent of finding the bargain bin at the back of the gas station: the merchandise is not pretty, and a lot of people will think there’s something wrong with it. But a discount condom is still a condom. I wish I could tell you that I held onto that NFLX stock until today, but I later sold it, only to buy it again in the early days of the pandemic, when the price suddenly plummeted again. (I told you about that opportunity, too.) So we have two “shocks” to NFLX stock, one caused by an internal decision (Qwikster) and one by external forces (COVID-19). In both cases, investors fled. But the core business remained the same. In fact, Netflix quickly dropped the Qwikster idea, and still offers DVDs by mail. Sounds easy, but it is actually really hard to buy stocks on sale. You’ve got to get over the fear: What if I’m wrong, and everyone else is right? The great difficulty is overcoming our own brains: why would I buy something that’s losing value? Which brings us to bitcoin.Bitcoin is 50% Off Poor bitcoin is sitting in the bargain bin at the back of the gas station, with a sign reading “50% OFF.” You can buy bitcoin at literally half the price that people were paying just six months ago. Six months ago, people were lining up to place their orders; today, bitcoin can’t get no love. Guess what? It’s the same bitcoin. Nothing’s changed. No regulatory announcements, no technology failures. They haven’t renamed bitcoin “Qwikbux.” As market strategist Jeff Sommer wrote in today’s excellent New York Times column, no one should be investing in the stock market if they need that money to pay rent or gas. (That goes double for bitcoin.) But if you have the means and the mettle to stick with it if prices drop lower, these are the conditions that long-term value investors love. (Look at how Warren Buffett is spending big right now to snap up stocks on sale.) And even if you don’t want to spend big, you can use the lure of discount bitcoin to get started with steady-drip investing, then “set it and forget it.” It’s better than stocks on sale: it’s crypto on clearance. And no matter what happens tomorrow, one thing we know for sure: these prices won’t last. Source: https://learn2.trade/the-bitcoin-discount-store
  17. “James and I create a new list of cryptos we believe have the highest probability of succeeding in the long term. In order to make the list, each crypto needs to have the potential for massive returns. And then the fun part: We look at the PROBLEM being solved… We vet the team… We talk to the team… We look at the tokenomics… We look at the token distribution… We look at the developers… We look at the competition… We ask, “Why do you need a token?” (9 times out of 10, you don’t.)” – Chris C. Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
  18. “Everybody knows there’s no money in the Internet.” That’s what Marc Andreessen was told when he founded Netscape. He was in his early 20s and, by all accounts, starting Netscape was like sending coal to Newcastle. (That’s oldspeak for ‘a fruitless task.’) Consider what Netscape was up against. Until 1993, online commercial activities were illegal. You couldn’t do business online. There was no trust. No money. No economic incentives. Netscape set out to make the Internet a commercial medium. Because it utilized encryption, it was actually labeled as munitions by the U.S. government. Congress believed that only the baddies would want to use encryption. Andreessen said: “Well, no, we’ll need encryption for credit cards online, for example.” Their response: “Nobody’s doing that! Nobody will ever trust the Internet with their credit card numbers or any private information!” Everyone thought it was a dumb idea. During this time, Bill Gates went on David Letterman’s show and got made fun of for calling the Internet the “next big thing.” It didn’t take long until Andreessen was vindicated. Today, he’s a billionaire tech investor through his fund a16z. He’s also a big crypto bull. During a recent podcast interview, Andreessen talked about the similarities between the early days of the Internet and crypto. Here are three major points: 1.] All of the problems we see in crypto today are the same problems we saw with the Internet in its early days. The fight against encryption was just the tip of the iceberg. There were many obstacles to mass-adoption of the Internet. 2.] Most saw problems. A few saw opportunities. The early Internet was slow, couldn’t scale, and was hard for the average Joe to use. Most people said “This won’t work.” They were mostly right at the time. In its current state, it wouldn’t work on a mass scale. But that was beside the point. Turns out, every single one of these problems were multi-billion dollar opportunities. 3.] In less than thirty years from now, the entire global economy could run on the blockchain. This is why crypto is perhaps the greatest asymmetric bet in all of human history.” – Chris C Profits from free accurate cryptos signals: https://www.predictmag.com/
  19. Stupidity And Trading Seven Varieties of Stupidity(and what to do about them)Note: I wanted to post an article titled: “3 Secrets of Everlasting Victory in the Markets – Part 2” but I had to postpone it in favor of the article below. Trading is a 100% psychological game, and that is why many experienced, knowledgeable, and skilled traders still suffer huge losses in the markets, and some of them remain poor, despite many years of experience. Once given another opportunity, they will end up making the same mistakes again, owing to undisciplined psychology. You will see traders crying like babies after receiving margin calls, only to repeat the same mistakes that led to previous margin calls, when they resume trading again with fresh funds. The article below is for the populace, but it also has a lot to do with trading and investing. The truth in it can make a difference in your trading career. “There are so many kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.” – Thomas Mann. Many words have been expended on the nature of intelligence, while the topic of stupidity is comparatively neglected – even though it is all around us, screwing us up. That’s probably because we assume stupidity is just a lack of intelligence. I think there’s more to it than that. It comes in many different forms; what follows is by no means comprehensive.1. Pure stupidity Let’s start with the most obvious type of stupidity: shit-for-brains (excuse the scientific jargon). The common sense definition of a stupid person is someone deficient in cognitive ability, specifically the ability to think and reason clearly. A stupid person has a low IQ. They flunk verbal reasoning tests and Raven’s matrices because they find it hard to spot patterns in data, manipulate language, or follow chains of logic. (I’m bracketing the question of whether analytical reasoning is intelligence – if it is, then according to the Flynn effect our ancestors were all morons – but the lack of it is what most people mean by stupidity). Presented with anything complex, the stupid person sees only meaningless chaos. Introduce a stupid person to a game and they will fail to understand the rules, even after they have been explained clearly and repeatedly, because they cannot learn, or can learn only slowly. Intelligence is inseparable from learning, something that it took AI scientists a long time to figure out; they spent years trying to design an intelligent machine until they realised it’s better to build a dumb machine that learns fast.1 What are the causes of this kind of stupidity? Genetics? The person may have inherited bad mental hardware. Environment? Maybe they grew up in a culture that never required them to learn or think. Or maybe they were poisoned: a recent study found that lead has been responsible for the loss of almost a billion IQ points in post-war America. Whatever its cause, stupidity in this sense means the inability to identify patterns, follow logic, or learn from experience. A stupid person is a novice at everything all the time.2. Ignorant stupidity Ignorance is also a common sense definition of stupidity: stupid people are people who don’t know shit about shit (another scientific definition). Now, ignorance is by no means always a sign of stupidity; any intellectual exploration, including science, depends on being aware of what one doesn’t know. But it’s also true that people who can’t draw on a bank of experience, technique or knowledge will find it very hard to cope with new problems and tricky questions. How do they get that way? Perhaps they have faulty hardware, as per #1, and so have been unable to acquire and retain information, or it might be that they haven’t been given the chance to do so: maybe they didn’t get much of an education, either from their parents or from school, and so lack the basic tools and frameworks needed to make sense of the world – verbal and mathematical skill, a knowledge of basic geography or political systems and so on. The education scholar E.D. Hirsch has observed that the ability to read a newspaper and have even the vaguest idea of what all the articles are about requires a level of general knowledge most of us take for granted. Background knowledge in any domain is like water for fish: we’re barely aware we have it but it’s what enables us to absorb new information. The less you know, the harder it is to learn; the less you can learn, the less you know – the stupider you get. This is the ignorance loop, and people with perfectly good hardware can get stuck in it.3. Fish-out-of-water stupidity So far we’ve discussed common sense definitions of stupidity. It tends to be described as a lack of something – either cognitive horsepower (‘intelligence’), or knowledge, or thinking. This seems inadequate. Defining it only as an absence of brainpower fails to account for what I’m calling fish-out-of-water stupidity. People with powerful brains who have acquired a great deal of knowledge in one domain, and who are therefore regarded as exceptionally smart, tend to assume they will have exceptionally smart thoughts in every field of knowledge they wander into. They take their own accumulated knowledge for granted and believe that the facility it gives them in their field is merely a function of their all-round brilliance. Now, to some extent, these experts are probably right to assume that because they’re smart at this thing they’ll be smart at other things too – there is such a phenomenon as general intelligence. But they can wildly over-rate how intelligent they are in new domains and end up making terrible decisions. Twitter has been great for revealing how scientists or historians can be stupid once outside of their academic field. Often, experts don’t even notice that they have moved into a foreign domain: the bankers who screwed up in the 2008 crash thought they were in the domain of risk when in reality they were in the domain of uncertainty. Regulators who were flat-footed during during the pandemic (more of a problem for the US than the UK) failed to clock that they were now in the domain of crisis management.4. Rule-based stupidity We often talk about stupidity as if it is an individual trait – something a person is or isn’t. It is commonplace to talk about smart people and stupid people, even among intellectuals: one of the few scholars to have taken stupidity seriously, at least somewhat, was the Italian economist Carlo Cipolla, who wrote an essay in 1976 called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity which you can buy as a book. As you can see from this summary of it, Cipolla starts from the premise that the world divides into stupid and non-stupid people and builds his “laws” on top of it (‘Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation’). The essay is wittily written but I suspect the reason it’s still being read is that it is comforting. It is nice to imagine that a person is either clever or stupid – and that since I realise that, I must be one of the clever ones. It is more unsettling to think of stupidity as something that anyone, even you, can be captured by. Stupidity can be systemic. The Santa Fe Institute complexity theorist David Krakauer observes that the Romans, as intelligent as they were in many ways, made no advances in mathematics. He puts this down to a numeral system that made it virtually impossible to do complex sums. Arabic numbers, imported to Europe in the Middle Ages (not as dumb as their reputation), are easier to manipulate. The new system made our civilisation collectively smarter, or at least less dumb. The tool or platform we’re using can keep us stupid, even when we’re smart. In fact, Krakauer’s view is that stupidity isn’t the absence of intelligence or knowledge; it’s the persistent application of faulty algorithms (itself an Arabic concept, of course). Let’s say someone hands you a Rubik’s Cube.Consider three possibilities. You might know an algorithm or set of algorithms which enables you to solve it quickly, and look very smart (actually Krakauer would say that is a kind of smartness). Or you might have learnt the wrong algorithms – algorithms which ensure that no matter how many times you try, you’ll never solve the puzzle. Or you might be completely ignorant and just go at it randomly. Krakauer’s point is that the ignorant cuber at least stands a chance of solving it accidentally (theoretically speaking – don’t try this at home) whereas the faulty-algorithm cuber never will. Ignorance is insufficient data to solve a problem efficiently; stupidity is using a rule where adding more data doesn’t improve your chances of getting it right – in fact, it makes it more likely you’ll get it wrong. Look around and you can see people trapped in flawed algorithms (if there is war, then it must be America’s fault’; ‘if there is a market crash then a recovery is just around the corner’) Rules of thinking inflexibly applied lead to stupid conclusions. You find a lot of stupidity among people who are highly partisan on behalf of a political party or ideology. Those people tend to be cognitively inflexible, regardless of which side they’re on. They are drawn to clear stories or chains of reasoning. The politicians or activists who capture them are skilled at building and disseminating these algorithmic structures of thought. Very often, stupidity isn’t derived from an absence of mental materials but from a superfluity of them. It is the product of all the stuff we carry around in our minds and absorb from others: powerful algorithms, bad theories, fake facts, seductive stories, leaky metaphors, misplaced intuitions. The stuff that feels like solid knowledge even though it isn’t. As the old saying goes, it’s not what you don’t know that will get you into trouble but what you do know that isn’t so.5. Overthinking-stupidity When the psychologist Philip Tetlock was a graduate student he witnessed an experiment, designed by his mentor Bob Rescorla, which pitted a group of Yale undergrads against a rat. The students were shown a T-maze, like the one below. Food would appear at either A or B. The students’ job was to predict where the food would appear next. The rat was set the same task.Rats and Mazes Rescorla applied a simple rule: food appeared on the left 60% of the time and on the right, 40%, at random. The students, assuming that some complex algorithm must be at work, looked for patterns and found them. They ended up getting it right 52% of the time – not much better than chance and considerably worse than the rat, which quickly figured out that one side yielded better results than the other and so headed to the left every time, achieving a 60% success rate. Smart people, or at least people who have come to believe they are smart, dislike strategies that incorporate the inevitability of error. Confronted with what looks like randomness, they won’t throw up their hands and go with the flow. They wish to impose themselves on the world. That kind of intellectual ambition can lead to insight and innovation but it can also lead to stupidity, when errors are energetically and skilfully defended. Once a clever person has adopted a mistaken belief it is very hard to talk them out of it: ‘cognitively sophisticated’ people are if anything more susceptible to flawed thinking than average, because they are so skilled at bending reality to fit the model of it they have constructed. I suspect this tendency is associated with high verbal fluency, a quality I used to admire unreservedly but now view with suspicion. People with the ability to speak brilliantly off-the-cuff are also likely to be very good at finding instant and persuasive justifications for whatever it suits them to believe at any point. The right words just magically appear, perfectly turned, glistening like truth. You can observe another manifestation of overthinking every time you use a product or app that is so crammed with ingenious features it’s impossible to use, or watch a movie that has everything going on except a coherent story. Clever people have a tendency to add features to a product or movie or argument rather than subtract them, which can produce stupid outcomes. I am particularly wary of cleverness when applied to social and political questions, which can’t be solved with maths. In this I’ve been influenced by some clever thinkers. You can trace a fundamental divide in Western thought between those who believe that knowledge and rationality invariably make us smarter and those who warn they can also make us dumber. On one side, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Voltaire, Paine, Russell; on the other, Socrates, Montaigne, Burke, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein. The latter group includes thinkers who are, in their different ways are interested in the ways that human intelligence generates a unique kind of stupidity. These are my guys.6. Emergent stupidity Quite often in organisations that do stupid things, it’s hard to pin the stupid decisions on any one person even in retrospect, and there may be no stupid individuals involved. Sometimes, as with Enron, the people are very smart. Stupidity can emerge in the same way that intelligence emerges in a flock of geese, or an ant colony, or the cells and synapses of the human brain. When a group of individuals are following a few simple rules in co-operation with each other, then collective behaviour which is much smarter – or much stupider – than the sum of its parts may emerge. In any organisation, leaders should reflect on the simple rules that people follow even when they’re not thinking, and ask if they’re more likely to generate intelligence or stupidity. There is no innate human drive to avoid stupidity. We evolved to survive and thrive and that means getting along with others – that’s our priority, most of the time. The good news is that getting smarter and getting along are not necessarily at odds with one another; the bad news is that they often are. In my book CONFLICTED I show how avoiding open disagreement reduces the collective intelligence of any group. The more that members of a group follow a rule like ‘agree with the consensus’ or ‘agree with the leader’ the less gets contributed to the general pool of ideas and arguments. The shallower the pool, the more likely it is that something stupid will crawl out from it, covered in slime.7. Ego-driven stupidity We’ve talked about stupidity mainly as a cognitive phenomenon but of course it’s deeply bound up with emotion, and with the sense of self. We could probably name seven varieties under this heading alone but the basic principle is that the more insecure a person feels, the more willingly they will make themselves stupid. Psychologists call it ‘identity-protective cognition’. We might call it the ‘I’m with these guys’ effect. There is a well-established correlation between the propensity to fall for conspiracy theories and feelings of anxiety, specifically the feeling of not being in control. You could see this in action after 2016 when the online left in the UK and US started feeding hungrily on conspiracy theories about Brexit and Trump. Lots of clever people felt helpless and scared and displaced and made themselves stupid in response. Political extremists and conspiracy theorists crave the safety of clarity. It’s not just the ideology or conspiracy theory to which people are drawn, but the community that forms around it. The ideology or theory is like a park or stadium – it is social infrastructure. You like being there, and your beliefs are the wristband. If you’re worried about being thrown out you’ll do everything you can to show how loyal you are to these beliefs, and how little you care about the opinions of outsiders. Even if it means repeating and believing stupid things. I wrote positively about Twitter last time so I think I’ve earned the right to say that it’s also a space where the forces of stupidity converge and dance. You have experts who feel compelled to pronounce on matters outside their expertise. You have insecurity and status anxiety: everyone jostling for followers, likes and retweets. You have people doing their thinking in public, in the gaze of peers and enemies. You have ideological communities and sub-cultures who are also up in each other’s faces all the time, in-groups gaining energy from out-groups. The result is that some quite stunningly stupid threads go viral and get celebrated by lots of smart people (you’ll have your own examples – this one is a doozy). But it’s also an interesting laboratory in which you can observe the process of someone struggling to manage and reconcile affiliations with different groups. People can have more than one identity to protect – a scientist may want to maintain a ‘good scientist’ identity with peers and a ‘good liberal’ identity with the public. It’s revealing to see which one they go with when a conflict between these identities arises. More often than not they choose unscientific stupidity (a recent example of this below the fold). The truth is that stupidity is often an act of will: people make themselves stupid, when it suits them. That humans are able to do this at all is, in its way, quite impressive. The English psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion fought in the First World War, and his ideas were shaped in part by that experience. Bion was fascinated by the way that people shut down their capacity for thinking and reasoning when they go into battle, figuratively as well as literally. His theory of how people learn was unusual in that he incorporated the fact that we don’t always want to know. People don’t just miss out on knowledge; they unconsciously resist or reject it. They seek minus knowledge, which Bion called -K. Failing to learn from experience stems from fear of thinking about what we don’t know, and sticking to the reassuring heuristics and habits at hand. Learning from experience, according to Bion, requires the hard, uncomfortable work of thinking about our own emotions. Put it that way and you can see why many of us so often choose stupidity.Author: Ian Leslie Source: https://learn2.trade/stupidity-and-trading
  20. 8 Things I Wish People Had Told Me About Being A Trader Not everyone will be happy for you. The tall poppy syndrome is alive and well. Be careful who you share your dreams with, especially early on in your trading career. A dream is the most fragile when it is first birthed.Trading sounds glamourous, but it isn’t. The best traders follow the same routines day in and day out. This is less ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ and more ‘Groundhog Day’.People will always ask for your latest tip. Never mind the discipline required to develop your short list of buys. Disregard the fact that most of those won’t even be the winners you were hoping they’d be. Your friends just want to know the name of the stock that is going to the moon on a one-way trip – and they feel sure that you know and you’re not willing to share.Your friends and family will think you’re unemployed. Full-time traders look like they don’t have jobs, so they’re asked the most unreasonable favours e.g. Can you drive my son into the city on Wednesday at 4.30pm? Goodness me… just because I don’t LOOK like I’m working doesn’t mean I’m NOT working.Strangers will think you’re a gambler. You’ll be hit with some complete fallacies and expected to agree with people who have zero knowledge about what you actually do. “But trading is like gambling, isn’t it?” “You have to be really lucky to get a big win”. “My neighbour’s cousin bet big on crazycrypto and bought it when it was $1.00.” You will be subjected to these STUPID comments. Get ready for it.You’ll be wrong more times than you ever imagined (but still make a good return). The greatest trading group in the world – The Turtles, only win thirty five percent of the time. It’s how much you make each time you win that counts (and keeping your losses small).This may be your next friendship group. When I started trading, I had no idea that I’d have so much in common with such a diverse group of like-minded people all striving to perfect a high-performance endeavour.Civilians will think you’re mad. And because we are such a tight-knit group – those outside our group will never really relate with the calculated risks we take and the way we live our lives. They’ll never make the choices we made to excel and live life on our own terms.Author: Louise Bedford Source: https://learn2.trade/8-things-i-wish-people-had-told-me-about-being-a-trader
  21. On the day Apple was founded, here’s how the founders divided the shares: Steve Jobs — 45% Steve Wozniak — 45% Ronald Wayne — 10% You’ve heard of Steve Jobs. You’ve heard of Steve Wozniak. You probably haven’t heard of Ronald Wayne. Why? Because Wayne didn’t last. 12 days after they founded Apple, Wayne sold his 10% stake for $800. One year later, he forfeited any potential future claims for $1,500. In total, he walked away from Apple with $2,300. Big mistake. In 2018, when Apple became the first $1 trillion company, his shares would’ve been worth $100 billion. Today, with Apple’s market cap hovering around 2.87 trillion… it’s worth a lot more. It doesn’t end there. In the 1990s, Wayne sold his copy of Apple’s original founding documents for $500. In 2011, the same documents were auctioned off by the buyer for nearly $1.6 million at a Sotheby’s auction. We All Make Mistakes In many ways, we all can kind of feel Ronald Wayne’s pain. We’ve all missed the boat. Made mistakes. Have regrets. Regret is a powerful teacher. That is, if we can learn from it. Truth is, 99% missed the boat on today’s titans. But consider when many of them were founded: Intel → 54 years ago Microsoft → 47 years ago Apple → 46 years ago Amazon → 28 years ago Netflix → 25 years ago Google → 24 years ago SpaceX → 20 years ago Tesla → 19 years Facebook → 18 years Twitter → 16 years Airbnb → 14 years Uber → 13 years Zoom → 11 years That, on average, is about 25 years. In 25 years, I bet half of these companies won’t exist. They’ll be replaced by new industry titans. Right now, many of those titans are just getting started. And these new titans will look nothing like the companies today. Web3 Barons Most people can’t see it yet… But many of today’s largest companies will be replaced by trillion-dollar crypto networks. And here’s the thing. Years from now, you might look back on this email… And one of two things will happen: You’ll either feel like Ronald Wayne. Or you’ll feel like the person who bought 10% of Apple for $800. If you want to feel like the latter… There are only a few strategies we know of.” Author: Chris C. Profits from games of knowledge: https://www.predictmag.com/
  22. The DEFC price is up over 175% in the past 24 hours, currently trading at $0.23 on Bitmart exchange. From its daily low of $0.08 to its high of $0.25 was an over 300% move for DeFi Coin. Liquidity is low on Bitmart however the DEFC / USDT pair is currently green again with today’s daily candle holding most of the gains from yesterday, suggesting new buyers have stepped in. There is likely to be little selling pressure as DEFC already retraced 98% from its all time high of $4 set in July 2021. DeFi Coin has completed another phase of its roadmap, the version 3 launch of their Defiswap.io DEX, app and farming pool. The DEFC project aims to be an alternative to decentralized exchanges such as Pancakeswap, Uniswap and Sushiswap, providing liquidity for crypto swaps with no centralized third party required. More info here: https://deficoins.io/# Want to buy DEFC/USD?: https://pancakeswap.finance/info/token/0xeb33cbbe6f1e699574f10606ed9a495a196476df
  23. Is this kinda program still accessible? Make money from Forex, stocks, commodities, indices and cryptos with us: https://www.instaforex.com/en/index.php?x=LYZG
  24. This is really an old broker. Make money from Forex, stocks, commodities, indices and cryptos with us: https://www.instaforex.com/en/index.php?x=LYZG
  25. Lucky Block (LBLOCK)’s highly-anticipated $1 million jackpot is only a few hours away. At press time, the LBLOCK jackpot and NFT winner will be announced in 35 hours, according to data from the network’s website. Apart from the $1 million jackpot up for grabs, Lucky Block is also giving away another $1 million in its NFT draw alongside a Lamborghini Aventador, priced at over $400,000. The daily main prize draws will begin on June 6. Participants in the lottery continue to flood the network by purchasing the network’s native token LBLOCK and its Platinum Rollers NFT to stand a chance to win. Holding either the token or the NFT is your ‘ticket’ for the draw, making this a multidimensional income-making endeavor. That said, the time to stock up on tickets (LBLOCK token and Lucky Block NFTs) is now. Interestingly, holders of Lucky Block’s NFTs have twice the chances of winning the jackpot, considering the limited circulating supply of NFTs. Also, NFT holders are automatically awarded free entry for life into the daily draw. For those who haven’t already purchased a ticket and are interested in a rare opportunity to become a millionaire, the Lucky Block website provides detailed directions on how to partake in the jackpot. Key Lucky Block Levels To Watch — May 30 Unsurprisingly, LBLOCK has recorded a notable rally on the eve of the jackpot draw. The play-to-earn cryptocurrency has jumped by over 25% in the last 24 hours. LBLOCK 4-Hour Chart on TradingView We expect to see more price rallies to the runup of the jackpot. That said, estimates suggest that LBLOCK could jump by 100%, double its price, before the end of the week. This would put LBLOCK back at the $0.0050 mark for the first time since early March. The potentials for profits in the coming weeks are even more exciting, and LBLOCK holders are set to smile to the bank in the near term. Meanwhile, my resistance levels are at $0.0030, $0.0035, and $0.0040, and my support levels are at $0.0022, $0.0020, and $0.0018. Total Market Capitalization: $1.27 trillion Lucky Block Market Capitalization: $251.21 million You can purchase Lucky Block here. Buy LBlock
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