Bitcoin, Etherum, cryptocurrencies

Last updated 2021-05-24

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This is obviously no investment advice. I'm learning in public. That's all.

High Level

March 2021: Thanks to the recent run-up in price, a whopping ~35%+ of my liquid wealth is in bitcoin and ethereum. (It's a whopping %, not a whopping amount 🤣)

I'm confident "crypto" will be huge. I'm not confident bitcoin will be the one to stick around and be worth trillions of dollars as a single asset. For now, it has an early head-start, and I think the bigger risk is choosing to stay out of it.

I'm not interested in day-trading or predicting the short-term movements. I'll review my exposure periodically. I'll cash out some if it rises too quickly, or buy dips if they're deep enough (but I'm plenty exposed as is). As long as the year is 2021 and the price is below $150,000, I'll likely HODL more than SELL.

14 May 2021 update: Today, I cashed out half my ETH, shy of $4200. Happy it's gone up so fast so quickly, don't want to be greedy, and nervous thanks to @patio11's tweets about Tether being a likely fraud. This was just the second time I sold crypto currency for cash. The transaction fee was about 1.5% – significant. You wouldn't want to be day-trading at that rate.

20-23 May 2021 update: With prices dipping below $2000, I bought back in (a few trades in the $1800-3000 range) to now own slightly more ETH than ever. The existential risks remain, but sentiment of many builders I follow on Twitter are very bullish on ETH (more so than BTC, lately). I don't plan to keep doing small trades, and don't plan to keep coming back to keep this page updated unless something major changes.

The Tether Scam and Other Risks

Risk of not owning crypto

Many risks exist - though perhaps the biggest risk is betting against crypto and owning none. It's conceiveable your crypto "investment" will fall close to zero, but it seems equally likely it will go up 5x or 10x if you hold long enough. So I don't see "staying out of crypto altogether" as super low risk. One bull case is that as more "big" (institutional) players invest, it becomes less likely that the US gov't will legislate in a way to penalise holding BTC. And with a steady cadence of chaos and nervousness around the world (US printing money, Argentina/Venezuela inflation, China gov't control), it seems plausible that there be a continued demand for a global, finite, uncancelable resource to store wealth.

Risk of owning BTC or any major cryptocurrency

The single greatest risk to owning bitcoin seems to be that Tether is likely a fraud. About 70% of Bitcoin is bought with USDT. Therefore, if USDT crashes, the demand for bitcoin (and ethereum) will similarly drop precipitously, which would surely cause a free-fall to the price of bitcoin. It's reported that USDT is not actually backed by US Dollars in cash – only about 3% of the reserves exist as cash. Much of the remaining "reserves" are suspicious-looking.

So, if Tether proves to be a fraudulent house of cards that collapses very suddenly, one can see how bitcoin could take a major (80%+) crash.

Dogecoin

No interest. Avoid fully. May as well bet on basketball matches or pigeon races. Par value <$0.01. Buy ETH, $NET or $TWTR instead.

Send me crypto

You can send me BTC, ETH, XRP or LTC at the following address: markmoriarty.crypto

I set that up via Unstoppable Domains.

History / bias

I first bought litecoin in 2013. It hasn't moved up a great deal since.

I first bought bitcoin in August 2017 – when it was around $5,000 per bitcoin.

I first bought ethereum during 2020 – mainly when it was near then all-time-highs of $1200.

2021: Dabbling with tiny (play-amount) holdings of SC (Siacoin), DOT, XLM, XRP.