Town Star – Results Update

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Town Star is a play-to-earn farming game from Gala Games, similar in style to Farmville. You can check out our full guide on it here.

Whilst things started off promisingly with this game, sadly the inherent weakness of the in-game economy we identified in earlier updates has had the impact we predicted. 

In essence the problem is that you have an economy where lots of people are earning significant amounts of the the in-game currency (Town Coin) and then want to sell it to cash in those earnings. However, on the other end there are very few buyers for that Town Coin.

The reason being is that there is very little reason to own the coin, other than to hold it in your wallet – which allows you to…earn more Town Coin!

Leaving aside the fact you can also achieve the same effect by holding Gala Tokens in your wallet instead, you can probably see the issue here. There is little incentive to buy Town Coin other than enabling you to earn more Town Coin (which is itself dilutive of course), meaning the value of the token is bound to drop in these circumstances. And drop it has – all the way from over $2 to $0.09 at the time of writing. 

Fundamentally, as we described in previous updates, there needs to be utility for Town Coin. Whether this is in using it to build items in the game, enhance your trading capabilities with other towns or some other use, there has to be a reason for people to want to buy the token and not just sell it.

Until this issue is addressed we don’t see a bottom for Town Coin and it could easily go to zero (or close to zero). In these circumstances there doesn’t seem much point putting in the many hours necessary to play the game when the earnings are virtually zero.

So we will leave this review in abeyance until these issues are addressed and we start to see some actual utility and value for Town Coin.

It seems this issue of in-game “tokenomics” as they are called is not limited to Town Star but is something all play-to-earn games are experiencing. Perhaps if one game developer figures it out then others can follow, but for the time being it is a space we will monitor rather than participate in.

 

 

 

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Town Star – Results Update

10th February 2022

Town Star is a play-to-earn farming game from Gala Games, similar in style to Farmville. You can check out our full guide on it here.

In order to earn tokens in Town Star, you need to own NFTs. These are the farming items that you use in the game like grain storage, water fountains, shops and so on. 

We purchased four NFTs and have been playing the game for a few months now.

Each day you can earn the game’s native token, Town Coin (TOWN), by completing a daily challenge. It’s not too difficult at the moment and takes a few hours at the start of the month to build up your town and then around an hour per day to complete. 

Since our last update we have earned another 734 Town Coin, which means we have now earned 1734 Town Coin in total.

The problem is that Town Coin has absolutely plummeted in price since our last update. It was $0.56 per coin but is now just $0.18 per coin at the time of writing.

So our net earnings are only worth $312, which is pretty disappointing to be honest considering the cost of the NFTs and the work put in.

As we said last time, for the token to have value they really need to integrate it into the game. Whilst they said last Autumn they plan to do so, we have not heard anything since about what their plans are or when they may do so.

In the meantime we will keep working away to earn Town Coin in the hope that it goes up in value at some point.

 

 

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Town Star – Results Update

6th January 2022

If you’ve been following us recently you’ll know we’ve been delving into the world of play-to-earn games. Whilst our focus here is mainly on betting and trading systems, we are always interested in alternative ways to make some extra income and the play-to-earn space looks set to explode this year.

Our first foray in this area was Sorare, which if you’ve been tracking our journey you’ll have seen we’ve been doing very well with over $20,000 in prizes won last year. 

Our next venture into this space is with an interesting little game called Town Star from Gala Games. 

This is a fun game that is a lot like Farmville if you ever played that game. You can read our full guide on Town Star here.

In order to be able to earn in the game, you have to first purchase some NFTs. These are the farming items that you use in the game like grain storage, water fountains, shops and so on. 

We purchased four NFTs:-

  • Alfa Fountain (OK)
  • Rare Sugarcane storage
  • Water Tower
  • Sugarcane storage

We also received a free Express Depot for becoming a gold Gala member.

Each one of these NFTs pays out a certain number of Town Coin per day if you complete a Daily Challenge, which you can then exchange for other cryptocurrency and then fiat money. 

However, unfortunately at the moment we are not able to use all our NFTs. This is because you need to have a certain amount of what is called “Gala Power.” There is a full article explaining it here, but in essence you need a certain amount of Gala tokens and/or Town Coin in your wallet.

At current prices this means spending thousands of dollars to move up the Gala Power levels and use your NFTs, which is far from ideal.

Gala Games say they will allow renting out of NFTs in future (no date confirmed though) and they may adjust the terms of the Power levels to take account of things like account age, number of NFTs etc, but for the time being we are stuck with this situation. The simple advice is it’s better to buy one big NFT than lots of small ones – you only need one Gala token in your wallet to use one NFT. 

Anyway, putting that issue aside how has it been going on Town Star? 

We have managed to earn Town Coin pretty much every day (apart from the odd day like Christmas Day, for obvious reasons) and so far have earned just over 1,000 Town Coin. 

At today’s prices of $0.56 per Town Coin, that equals just over $560. 

That’s not bad for a few weeks work and the NFTs we bought have gone up a lot in value. In particular the Rare Sugarcane Storage cost us around $1,200 when we bought it and is now selling for around $3,000. 

In this game you are hostage to the price of Town Coin, which has fluctuated quite a lot since we joined the game, from around $0.30 all the way up to over $2. 

We imagine when they actually integrate the token into the game itself – which they have said in two blog posts they plan to do – its value could appreciate, although that rests on them bringing lots of new players to the game too. 

In any event, the bottom line is our earnings have been pretty good so far even with the price of Town Coin having fallen a lot over the past month. It’s also a fun game to play so we would say we are cautiously optimistic about this one. There is still a lot of work for them to do to bring it to the mainstream but the early signs are encouraging. 

 

 

 

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Town Star – New Review

25th November 2021

If you’ve been following us recently you’ll know we’ve started to get involved in the play-to-earn gaming revolution. 

Whilst this isn’t strictly in the “betting category,” we do occasionally like to venture into other fields like forex, crypto and passive income. Anything really that can make an extra bit of income on the side! 

So our first foray in the play-to-earn field was Sorare, the fantasy football game that runs on the blockchain. If you’ve been following our journey you’ll have seen it’s been going very well with lots of rewards won. 

Our next sortie into the realm of play-to-earn games then is a fun little simulation game called Town Star from Gala Games.

We’ve written a full guide here on what Town Star is all about and how you can earn from it, but basically it’s a lot like Farmville. You run a small town and have to build it up from scratch by farming goods and then selling them. 

In order to earn tokens on it (which you can then sell on exchanges like Coinbase), you have to buy NFTs – or non-fungible tokens. These are the farming/industrial items like wheat storage, water fountains, solar panels and so on. Then you have to complete a daily challenge in the game to earn your tokens.

Another way to earn Town Coin is to finish high up on the leaderboard, although that is very tough so for most people the focus will be on earning the daily Town Coin. 

We’ve recently joined the game and will be documenting our journey here, just as we have been doing with Sorare.

So far we have one NFT placed in the game, earning 14 of the game’s tokens, called Town Coin, per day.

At today’s prices of $1.23 per Town Coin, that’s $17 per day in earnings, for just a small amount of time playing the game each day. Some people are already earning over $100 per day from the game. 

There is also the potential to move up the levels and be able to place more NFTs in the game, thus earning more Town Coin. 

Plus of course the value of Town Coin could go up as well – although it could also go down so you do have to accept the fluctuations in the price of the token and not expect it will necessarily go up. 

If more people join the game though, in theory it should drive more adoption of the token. 

Just to note that the cheapest NFTs that pay out Town Coin are currently priced at around $730. So at current prices it would take approximately 54 days to earn back the cost of the NFT. 

That presumes Town Coin stays at its current price of course, but it gives you a ball park idea of the payback time anyway. You also will own the NFT and they are generally going up in price all the time.

Please note there are a very limited supply of the NFTs though and they are selling out fast. All of the NFT info is covered in our guide so we recommend you read that first before buying any of them. 

In any event, given the potential here and the fact it’s quite a fun game to play, we are looking forward to running this review and will update our progress here as usual.

In the meantime you can open a Gala Games account and start playing Town Star for free here.

 

 

bitclub network pic

BitClub Network – Final Review

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We have been invested in the BitClub Network for over 18 months now and to be frank the writing is on the wall: it looks highly unlikely we will make our money back here so it’s time to wrap up the review.

We originally invested $500 in the scheme back in November 2017 and at the time Bitcoin was rocketing in value and cryptocurrency schemes like this were receiving massive hype.

Just to recap, the BitClub Network is a Bitcoin mining scheme where you can buy shares in their mining operation and receive a portion of the profits as a daily payout. 

In the early days it seemed to produce decent daily payouts but over time those payouts have become smaller and smaller. As we have discussed elsewhere, this is primarily due to the fact that as more people enter the mining game, the slice of the cake each one receives gets smaller. And unfortunately a huge number of new operators entered the mining game when cryptocurrency prices took off, leaving a very small slice of the pie for each one. 

So all we have to show for our investment so far is 0.00469 BTC, which at today’s prices is worth about $37.

We have received more than that in mining earnings –  0.02146 BTC (or $171) to be precise – but plowed a large portion of that back into buying more mining shares.

In hindsight that was clearly a mistake and we would have been better served just receiving the earnings and then withdrawing them rather than reinvesting.

Our current daily payout is around $0.05, so with 477 days left on our original contract, we can expect to earn around $24 at today’s prices.

Whichever way you look at it then we are due to suffer a substantial loss from this investment, probably a loss of around $450 from our original $500 investment.

If we hadn’t reinvested in more mining shares then the loss would be around $300, but either way it has been extremely disappointing to say the least. 

So there isn’t much left to say other than that this receives a big FAILED rating from us and is certainly not a scheme we could recommend (nor any other bitcoin mining scheme for that matter). 

 

 

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – Results Update

20th August 2018

Not much change for our BitClub Network investment, with just 0.01745 Bitcoin earned so far in total, which equals around $112 at current prices.

That means we have earned 0.00207 Bitcoin since our last update six weeks ago, which is the equivalent of around $13.

We are now earning less than $1 per day, which is a little disappointing really.

Also slightly worrying is the fact that we have set our account to use our mining earnings to buy more shares, but we haven’t actually repurchased any shares since January as we haven’t made enough to meet the threshold.

So we are kind of stuck in no-man’s land not able to earn enough to increase our mining earnings and not earning enough as it is to make a profit (or it will be a long time anyway until we make a profit).

The only thing left to hope for then is a big rise in the price of Bitcoin, but that seems a remote prospect at the moment. 

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – Results Update

5th July 2018

The BitClub Network is a scheme where you can buy shares in a Bitcoin mining operation and receive daily payouts in Bitcoin in return.

We invested $500 in the scheme back in November last year and so far we have earned 0.01538 Bitcoin, which is equivalent to around $102 at the time of writing.

Since our last update over two months ago we have earned 0.00485 Bitcoin, which is the equivalent of around $32.

So at the current rate of earning about $16 per month, it would take us another two years to make our money back. 

That all depends of course on the price of Bitcoin, which hopefully will start increasing at some point after a rotten first half to the year.

At the moment then this isn’t looking like a great investment but things can all change quickly in the world of cryptocurrencies. 

 

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – Results Update

23rd April 2018

Our investment in the BitClub Network continues to chug along without much fanfare. Since our last update a month ago we have mined another 0.00229 Bitcoin, which is currently the equivalent of about $21. 

That means we have now mined 0.01053 Bitcoin in total, which is the equivalent of around $94 at the time of writing.

That is from a $500 investment back in November. So it is going to take quite a while at the current rate to make back our original investment. Even though we are reinvesting our earnings into more mining shares, things still aren’t really taking off yet. 

Good to see that the price of Bitcoin has picked up over the last week or so though, which of course makes a big difference to the value of our mining earnings. Hopefully the price will continue to rise back up towards the highs we saw before Xmas of $20,000. 

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – Results Update

22nd March 2018

The BitClub Network is a scheme where you can invest in shares in their Bitcoin mining operation and then receive daily payouts in Bitcoin in return.

We invested $500 in the scheme back in November last year and so far we have earned 0.00824 Bitcoin, which is equivalent to around $72 at the time of writing.

We have reinvested those earnings back into more mining shares, to increase our return over the long term.

It remains to be seen however how long it will take to recoup our initial investment, which may rest to a large extent on what happens to the Bitcoin price over the coming months and years. We will just have to wait and see on that front. 

 

 

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – Results Update

22nd February 2018

Our BitClub Network investment continues to move along slowly and steadily.

Just to recap, the BitClub Network is a Bitcoin mining scheme where you can buy shares in their mining operation and receive a portion of the profits. 

Since our last update we have earned another 0.00282 Bitcoin from our mining contract, meaning we have now earned 0.00704 Bitcoin in total, which is the equivalent of around $71 at the time of writing. That is from an investment of $500 back in November.

We have reinvested all of our earnings back into new mining shares, although as stated previously that is a slow process because you have to wait 30 days for your new shares to start mining.

Eventually we hope this investment will make some profit, it may take a year or so but with reinvestment it could become quite lucrative in the long term, particularly if the Bitcoin price started increasing again. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – Results Update

23rd January 2018

Our mining earnings from the BitClub Network continue to move along fairly slowly, with a further 0.00274 in Bitcoin mined since our last update.

That means we have now mined 0.00422 Bitcoin in total, which equates to about $43 at the time of writing. That is from an initial investment of $500 worth of mining shares on 14th November 2017. 

So in over two months we have earned less than 10% of our investment back, which is pretty slow going if we’re honest.

Unfortunately the BitClub Network have stopped showing the daily updates for how much we’ve mined, so we can’t do an update to our results spreadsheet.

In terms of our efforts to grow our earnings, so far we have made two reinvestments in further mining shares, equivalent to around 5% each of a full share. Just like the main purchases however, you don’t start earning anything from those shares until 30 days has elapsed.

So the whole thing is rather slow going. Hopefully though over time these reinvestments will start piling up and our mining earnings will increase.

Plus of course the Bitcoin price might start moving upwards again and we are still waiting to hear if the BitClub Network are going to be increasing their mining power.

For the time being though, our earnings from the BitClub Network have been pretty unspectacular.

 

 

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – Results Update

27th December 2017

There has been a bit of a delay in updating the results for the BitClub Network, a Bitcoin mining scheme.

This is because after you purchase a share in one of their mining pools, you have to wait 30 days for them to set up the mining equipment before you start earning any Bitcoin.

So after purchasing a share for $500 on 14th November, nothing happened on our account until 15th December.

We therefore only have 12 days of earnings to report. 

For those 12 days, we have earned 0.00148 bitcoin, which equates to around $24 at the time of writing.

You can view full results here.

Please note that the amount of Bitcoin we have earned is double that on the spreadsheet, as half of our earnings have been reinvested in more mining shares.

At current rates, we would end up with about $750 worth of Bitcoin after a year of mining if we just withdrew all our earnings. Obviously it would be better to just buy Bitcoin and hold it in that scenario.

The $500 of Bitcoin we invested on 14th November would already be worth $1230 if we had just held it rather than investing in the BitClub Network.

That would be more than we will have earned in a year though mining at current rates, so on that basis you could say the BitClub Network hasn’t been a great investment so far.

However, where it can really pay off is if you reinvest all of your earnings for an extended period and allow your mining shares to build up. This can enable your earnings to grow exponentially over time, so that is what we will do.

We have also heard that the BitClub Network will be increasing their mining power and have some other exciting developments planned for 2018, so hopefully we will see things pick up in the near future and some improved earnings.

 

 

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – Re-Review

14th November 2017

We reported a few months ago that we were discontinuing our review of the BitClub Network as we were concerned it could be a scam.

That was based primarily on a post from 99 Bitcoins which raised certain concerns about the scheme.

So we felt it wasn’t worth risking our money or you potentially following us in.

However, some significant developments have occurred at the BitClub Network recently that have made us reconsider our position. 

These are basically as follows:

– Firstly, there is independent verification that the BitClub Network does indeed own significant Bitcoin mining operations. That can be seen at the blockchain website and is represented in the pie chart below

BitClub Network

As you can see, the BitClub Network owns 2.8% of the Bitcoin mining power available (hashrate), so we know the mining is real and given the exceptional growth in Bitcoin’s value, this mining should be very profitable.

– Secondly, we have seen interviews and footage of the BitClub CEO Russ Medlin, so that adds a degree of assurance when the owner of the scheme is prepared to show their face in public.

– Thirdly, they have made adjustments to the mining pool options so that you can now reinvest as much, or as little, as you want. This provides greater flexibility to the investment proposition offered by the BitClub Network, which is welcomed.

– Fourthly, they are making significant investment in upgrading their hashing power over the next few months, which will mean greater profits from the mining pools (although if more people join the mining pools then this could dilute the earnings somewhat).

All in all then it is looking like a much more credible, flexible and potentially profitable venture than it did previously so we will be making an investment here and doing a full in-depth review of the BitClub Network.

The other concern we had previously was that the returns we had seen from investors didn’t look that much better than if they had just bought Bitcoin and held it.

However, Bitcoin has enjoyed incredible growth over the last couple of years and we are not sure that will be maintained over the next couple of years. We may be wrong of course, but we would expect growth rates to be a little more gradual and not quite so exponential as they have been going forward.

That would make an investment in the BitClub Network more attractive if it turned out to be the case vis-a-vis just buying Bitcoin and holding it. 

We shall see, but either way it seems worth testing out to see how it gets on. So we will run a live trial and will update our results here regularly.

In the meantime you can check out the BitClub Network here. 

 

 

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – Update

3rd August 2017

We are discontinuing our review of BitClub Network, a service that offers to mine Bitcoin for you and share in the proceeds.

The reason for discontinuing the review is that we have been contacted by people warning this could be a scam.

After investigating a little ourselves, we are not sure either way, but there is enough of a risk that it could be a scam to warrant ending our interest in it.

There is a very good post here on a website called 99 Bitcoins outlining the red flags about the scheme and the possibility that it could be a Ponzi scheme.

Now you may ask why we don’t continue our review to discover if it is a scam or not. 

Well, as pointed out in the post on 99 Bitcoin, the problem with it is that if it is a scam (and again we are not saying it is or it isn’t) then the whole thing could break down very suddenly, with all investors losing their money.

That is what happens with Ponzi schemes – they can keep going for quite a long time as long as money is coming in from new investors to pay off current investors. But if the influx of new investors stops, you can have a problem if there isn’t enough money being generated from the investment scheme itself.

Websites involving Bitcoin have been known to shut down suddenly without warning and with money invested being lost – and obviously with something like this it is not regulated by the FCA or any body like that, so you have no chance of getting your money back. 

So we could run a review for six months, a year, longer even and everything could be running fine, with revenues being generated. At that point we would have to give it a positive rating based on the performance.

But then if things did suddenly collapse and it went bust, it would be too late. It would be no good us turning round and saying “sorry it’s a scam” because your monies would be gone.

So all we can say is have a good look at the post on 99 Bitcoins and see what you think. 

For us, a point that sticks out is that the kind of returns people are reporting in the comments section of that article could have been achieved just by purchasing some Bitcoin and holding it – without needing to be involved with the Bitclub Network and their mining operation.

That for us makes us wonder what the point in being involved with it is and moreover is a little suspicious. 

In any event, as we say either way we cannot be sure if it is a scam. But we feel there are enough doubts raised to make us sound a warning to you so you can make your own mind up.

 

 

 

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BitClub Network – New Review

18th July 2017

Over the last few years we have heard a lot about Bitcoin and have often wondered “what the dickens is it all about?”  

There seem to be never-ending news stories about how this “cryptocurrency” is changing the world and all sorts of strange things happening around it.

Like many things when they are new and groundbreaking in the way Bitcoin is, there is also often a lot of confusion about what they actually are.

So we recently decided to do some digging and find out what all the fuss is about.

 

What is Bitcoin?

Well, first up, let’s start with what it is.

Bitcoin is a digital currency that allows people to conduct a transaction directly between themselves without a third party like a bank, Paypal or Western Union.

This has the advantage of meaning the transaction doesn’t have any fees and is direct. 

It also allows people in some parts of the world who don’t have bank accounts but do have the internet to potentially trade. 

There is a fixed amount of Bitcoin that will be created in a fixed timeframe, which gives it a stable base.

It is also not controlled by any bank, government or corporation. 

 

Why So Much Excitement?

There has been a great deal of excitement around Bitcoin and you may be wondering why. 

Well, in addition to the advantages mentioned above about reducing fees for financial transactions and purchases as well as decentralising currency, Bitcoin has been generating excitement for another reason.

That reason has been it’s skyrocketing value!

Just this year, Bitcoin has gone from being worth $997 at the start of January to $2373 at the time of writing. 

But that’s nothing compared to its rise since May last year, when it was valued at $237 – so that’s a 1000% increase.

Or go back five years and it was worth just $10 – so that’s a 23,000% increase to today!

Or in other words, if you had bought $1,000 worth five years ago it would be worth $230,000 now.

Here are the gains in chart format:

Bitcoin Value Chart

Chart courtesy of Coindesk.com

It’s pretty insane and in one sense, you might think that getting in now would mean you’ve “missed the boat” so to speak.

But there are some analysts who say the Bitcoin revolution has only just begun and still has plenty of miles to run, claiming that it could be worth many times its current value in ten or fifteen years’ time.

Obviously no-one can say for sure where the value of Bitcoin is ultimately going to end up, but there are opportunities to be part of the revolution around it whatever happens to its value in the long run. 

 

What is BitClub Network?

One such opportunity we heard about recently around the Bitcoin phenomenon piqued our interest. 

This is something called the BitClub Network.

As the name suggests, it is a club that is involved with taking advantage of the Bitcoin revolution.

Basically they say that as a member there are a number of advantages: 

You can receive a share of the benefits of their “mining” of Bitcoin (mining is the backbone that allows Bitcoin to function. New Bitcoins are created as a reward for miners who secure & verify payments in the blockchain).

So by receiving a share of the Bitcoin they mine, you should receive considerably more Bitcoin overall then if you just bought some Bitcoin and held on to it.

Secondly, they are starting to mine other cryptocurrencies that you can take advantage of.

And finally they say they are creating their own currency which members will get the benefits of.

It looks like an interesting enough opportunity to test out, so we are going to join and run a trial of this and see how much we make from it.

The beauty of it is that it’s a completely passive investment so once you have joined and paid up you don’t need to do anything.

It costs $99 to become a member and then you have the choice of investing in shares of their mining pool, starting at $500 and going up to $2000.

Anyway, we will update this page periodically during the trial on how things are going.

In the meantime, you can check out the BitClub Network here.

 

 

 

genesis mining

Genesis Mining – Final Review

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It is now a year since we signed up to a contract to mine the cryptocurrency Monero with Genesis Mining and so it’s time to wrap up our review.

Basically Genesis Mining is a company that allows you to “mine” cryptocurrency – or in other words participate in verifying transactions on the blockchain and receive rewards for it. You receive a daily payout and can then transfer the proceeds from your Genesis account to another wallet and convert it to fiat currency (real money). 

You can choose to mine a variety of cryptocurrencies but at the time we signed up Monero was the best available so that was the one we chose to mine. 

The overall results are as follows:

  • Amount Invested: $819
  • Returns to Date: 1.83 Monero (current value = $82)

We still have a year left to run on our contract but even with that we are looking at a substantial loss here. Suffice to say this has been a disaster and one of the worst investments we have ever made.

The main problem in reality has been the crash in the cryptocurrency market that has affected the price of Monero (and just about all other cryptocurrencies).

At one stage, Monero was worth over $400 and at those prices we would have just about recouped our investment by now. 

But alas it is currently worth just $45 and the returns have therefore been pitiful. 

In terms of the mining itself, it has also been disappointing in that we were projected to receive 6 Monero per year at the start of our contract but have in fact received less than 2 so far. 

This is in large part down to increases in the “difficulty” of mining – or in other words more people participating in mining thus reducing the slice of the pie that each person gets. 

So there isn’t much left to say other than that this receives an epic FAILED rating from us and is not something we could recommend to anyone. 

Looking at the bigger picture, cryptocurrency had an astonishing run last year and those who got in early enough would have made a lot of money, but in reality it is a highly speculative market with most coins having no underlying value and many having no purpose.

It has also been a magnet for scammers and spammers of all kinds which has further tarnished cryptocurrency’s reputation and damaged its long-term prospects. 

Will the current slide in the market continue or will cryptocurrency someday recover its lustre?

Who knows, it is anyone’s guess really. But the wild ride experienced over the last couple of years should be a salutary lesson to everyone involved about the risks of participating in an unregulated investment and just how much markets can be driven by hype and hyperbole rather than fundamental value. 

No doubt someone will write a book about the whole thing at some point, but for the time being we are definitely out of the crypto markets and anything related to them. 

 

 

 

 

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Genesis Mining – Results Update

6th April 2018

It’s been a while since we updated our ill-fated investment in the cryptocurrency scheme Genesis Mining so we thought high time for an update.

The main news is that we have now mined one Monero in total, which is the equivalent of around $121 at the time of writing. That is from an initial investment of $819. 

Last time we reported that Genesis would no longer be able to mine Monero and would be mining other coins instead and converting them to Monero for those of us holding Monero contracts.

Well that all seems to have worked reasonably well, with payouts having resumed and actually increased over the last few days to around 0.006 Monero per day, which is the equivalent of around 2 Monero per year.

However, that is still well below the initial payouts we were receiving when our contract started and nowhere near enough to pay back our initial investment, unless Monero skyrockets in price at some point.

In that case though we would still have been better to just hold Monero originally rather than invest in mining, so either way this is looking like a dead duck and perhaps one of the worst investments we have ever made.

You live and learn as they say. 

 

 

 

 

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Genesis Mining – Results Update

6th April 2018

Well our investment in Genesis Mining has descended into farce since our last update.

Firstly, they have set a minimum payout level of 0.4 Monero, in what seems to us a completely arbitrary and unnecessary move. They don’t even show how much Monero we have mined, so we can’t even update our figures here.

Secondly, Monero is undergoing a fork and will switch to a new algorithm, meaning Genesis won’t even be able to mine it anymore. They say it’s ok, they will switch to “mining the best coins available and converting them to Monero for you.” But forgive us if we are a little sceptical.

Finally, the returns from mining have crashed so badly it’s probably all irrelevant anyway. 

So the bottom line here is that it looks like we would have been better just buying some Monero at the outset and holding it rather than investing in mining.

We certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to invest in cryptocurrency mining from Genesis or anybody else for the time being, unless things radically change. The bubble has well and truly burst. 

 

 

 

 

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Genesis Mining – Results Update

24th February 2018

We have earned another 0.08 Monero with Genesis Mining since our last update, which means we have now mined 0.81 Monero in total.

Unfortunately they have had problems with recording the payments so we aren’t able to update the daily results.

But the current situation is that we are earning around 0.004 Monero per day, compared to around 0.016 at the outset, so a massive drop. 

This is due to the mining difficulty increasing, which is indicative of more and more people entering the mining game, so the mining rewards are shared among a greater number of people. 

It’s not surprising really when you have something that’s so profitable and the barriers to entry are as low that every man and his dog wants a piece of the action.

The reality is that if the difficulty keeps increasing then we will end up mining pretty much zero Monero and it will be pointless.

At the moment it is looking like it probably would have been better to just buy six Monero with our $800 at the outset rather than buy a mining contract, because it looks very unlikely we are going to end up with more than six Monero. That is just how the cookie crumbles sometimes though, at the time it looked like a very profitable endeavour.

Anyway, we will keep on monitoring things and see if there is any way to improve our returns going forward. 

 

 

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Genesis Mining – Results Update

5th February 2018

We have earned another 0.23 Monero from our Genesis Mining contract, which means we have now mined 0.73 Monero in total since our contract started in November.

You can view full results here.

For some reason on our Genesis Mining account there are a few days missing, which means the total on our spreadsheet is less than we have actually mined. We have contacted Genesis Mining to ask them why that is the case.

Anyway, the 0.73 Monero we have mined so far would be quite good, apart from the fact that the recent cryptocurrency market crash has meant the price of Monero is back down to just $193 whereas it was over $400 a month ago!

Whilst that is disappointing, at the same time prices may well bounce back over the next few months, so unless you are wanting to cash out your earnings then it shouldn’t really be a problem.

 

 

 

 

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Genesis Mining – Results Update

3rd January 2018

We have now mined just over 0.5 Monero since our contract with Genesis Mining started around six weeks ago.

With Monero priced at $400 at the time of writing, that means we have made just over $200 worth of Monero in six weeks, which is pretty good.

You can view full results here.

Just a reminder that our original investment was $819, so we are nearly a quarter of the way to recouping our investment already.

As you can see from the results, the amount of Monero we are mining each day has dropped quite a lot since the start of the contract (by about half), but that is just a reflection of the price of Monero having more than doubled in that time, so the difficulty of the mining has increased and the two things pretty much cancel each other out.

Anyway, we are quite pleased with this as a passive income stream and once we have earned enough Monero, we could consider reinvesting it into more mining power to increase our earnings exponentially.

That time is quite a way off so we will have to wait and see what we do then, but it is a case of so far so good with Genesis Mining.

 

 

 

 

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Genesis Mining – Results Update

3rd December 2017

We are a couple of weeks into our investment with Genesis Mining and so far things have been going well.

We have mined 0.218 Monero so far, which equates to around $45 at the time of writing with Monero priced at $205 per coin. Our investment at the start was $819.

You can view full results here.

If the current rates continued, then we would end up with approximately 11.5 Monero at the end of our 2-year contract, which would be a return of around $2,340.

Things aren’t likely to stay at the same rate in terms of the amount of Monero mined though, because as the price goes up, the mining difficulty also goes up and you end up mining less coin.

Roughly speaking though the two things should even themselves out.

Either way, it’s looking like an excellent passive income investment so far as we haven’t had to do anything – just sit back and watch the Monero roll in. Good stuff.

 

 

 

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Genesis Mining – New Review

19th November 2017

Here at Honest Betting Review we have recently moved into the cryptocurrency space in the hope of landing some of the phenomenal returns that have been generated in it.

As well as buying some Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, we have also participated in ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) of companies like Electroneum and joined lending platforms such as Bitconnect.

Now we are investing in the mining of cryptocurrencies, another way to potentially profit from the crypto world.

We recently started a review of the BitClub Network and will be mining some Bitcoin through that platform.

And today we are starting a new trial of another mining platform called Genesis Mining.

Just in case you aren’t familiar with the idea of mining crytocurrencies, basically what it entails is using considerable computing power to verify transactions made using Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and to ensure their smooth functioning.

For providing these services, miners are provided with a share of the coin that is generated. This can be very lucrative if the coin being mined is valuable, for example with Bitcoin being worth over $7,000 currently.

Genesis Mining has been around for three years and is a reputable and well-known mining company. They apparently have over a million members and are the world’s leading cloud mining platform.

They have a level of transparency often absent from the crypto space, with members able to view their mining farms and there are a number of videos showing their mining operations in action.

By investing in a company like Genesis Mining, you are essentially renting the mining hardware for a fixed period for a given fee.

Then however much coin is mined each day is paid directly to you, which you can withdraw, invest in more mining or convert to another cryptocurrency.

Some of the advantages of Genesis Mining are that:

  • – The mining equipment is already set up so you can start earning straight away
  • – You can mine a range of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash, Monero and Zcash.
  • – You can choose your payouts in different cryptocurrencies from the one mined in
  • – You can start mining with as little as $28
  • – You can pay by credit card so don’t need to go through the complex process of buying a cryptocurrency first

So all in all Genesis Mining looks like a very good offering and one we are looking forward to testing.

Unfortunately at the moment all their Bitcoin mining contracts are sold out, so having done some research we think the next best coin to mine at the moment is Monero.

So we have bought a Monero contract of 1000 H/s for $819.

The H/s is the mining power you are getting – the more powerful, the more coin you will mine.

Using the calculator at cryptocompare it estimates we would receive $825 profit per year, which would work out as a return on investment of over 200% over the 2-year lifetime of the contract.

However, that doesn’t account for the potential increase in the price of Monero over that time, nor for the potential to reinvest some of the earnings into more mining power.

So for example if we mined six Monero coins per year and the price of the coin doubled each year, we would actually receive $4680 worth of Monero and a return on investment of nearly 600%.

Of course, the price of Monero could actually drop and the difficulty of the mining could increase (reducing the amount of coin mined) so these numbers are just rough estimates really, but they give you some guidance as to what is possible anyway.

We will probably look to mine some other coins with Genesis Mining as well. It isn’t clear when Bitcoin will be available again, so we may mine some Ethereum and Litecoin in the meantime.

As we say with all cryptocurrency-related investments, if you are thinking of investing in this please only risk money you can afford to lose. Although Genesis Mining looks about as solid and legitimate as it gets in the crypto world, there is still a risk things could go wrong and you could lose your investment.

Anyway, in terms of th review we will update progress here regularly so you can see how we are doing with our mining.

In the meantime you can check out Genesis Mining and GET A 3% DISCOUNT on any purchase you make by using the Code 0yHBEq here.

 

 

 

 

 

Coinpoker pic

CoinPoker – Millions in FREE Giveaways!

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We reported recently on the CoinPoker ICO – a new poker site that is aiming to bring transparency and trust back to the online poker world through the use of blockchain technology.

Well the ICO closed successfully on 26th January with over 350 million CHP raised. That is the equivalent of around $70 million contributed to the ICO.

The site is already up and running and you can play in live poker tournaments right now by downloading the CoinPoker app.

And to thank the community for their amazing support, Coinpoker are currently giving a portion of the funds raised during the ICO back to the players in massive tournament giveaways.

In fact, they are giving away an astonishing 5 MILLION CHP tokens in tournament giveaways right now.

There are numerous tournaments happening every day with free buy-ins and prizes of 2,000, 2,500 or even 3,000 CHP given away for FREE!

Plus they regularly add in extra CHP tokens to normal buy-in tournaments, so you are constantly getting added value by playing on the CoinPoker platform.

There are also special high-roller events with 10,000 CHP added to the prize pool, although you will need 1,000 CHP to buy in to those special events.

So some great bonuses there, but of course these won’t be around forever, so don’t miss out on all these giveaways.

Take Advantage of the FREE giveaways at CoinPoker now. 

 

 

 

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CoinPoker ICO – Revolutionizing Online Poker

25th January 2018

CoinPoker is a new blockchain-based poker platform that is aiming to revolutionize the way poker is played online.

It is currently having its ICO (Initial Coin Offering) and has raised over $40m so far.

CoinPoker’s aim is to tackle many of the problems of trust and transparency that have dogged the online poker world in recent years.

Here is a video explaining a bit more about CoinPoker and the problems it is trying to solve with its new platform:

 

One of the key problems with modern poker sites is that confidence in the system has been greatly eroded.

This is a result of:

  • – Problems with the deposit and withdrawal process, with delays and issues in players being able to withdraw their funds;
  • – There are increasing KYC (verification) requirements, blocking of transactions and in some cases accounts have been banned and funds frozen or confiscated altogether;
  • – Scandals such as the Ponzi scheme ran by Full Tilt Poker;
  • – Rampant manipulation by bots that prey on recreational players and teams colluding by having more than one player at a table.
  • – Winning accounts are often fueled by rakeback incentives and other loyalty based promotions, further exacerbating their advantage.

Overall, a great deal of trust in the online poker industry has been lost. 

CoinPoker aims to change all this by utilizing blockchain technology to create a fully transparent, secure and accountable system. This will include:

  • – Instant Withdrawals – Coin Poker will have their own coin (CHP) which will be instantly withdrawable via the blockchain, rather than having problems of banks blocking transfers or taking days to process them;
  • – Fair Play – they will employ systems to eliminate bots and provide fair play on their platform;
  • – Shuffle will be Correct– random number generators which are used for card distribution will also be placed on the blockchain, thus providing guarantees that the shuffle is fair;
  • – Security – smart contracts will be used to make sure token holders’ funds are secure and their data is protected.

So all of this should provide players with much greater peace of mind when playing on the CoinPoker platform.

At the same time, they have some massive plans for the platform in terms of prizes and incentives. Already they have given away a Tesla Model S in a competition and much more is planned for when they launch:-

  • – 15% of the total ICO funds will be returned to the community in prize pools, which is likely to be equivalent to over $5m. This has the potential to be the largest giveaway in poker history!
  • – Every month, 25% of the total fees and rake collected will be returned to the players, increasing the value and attractiveness of the games.
  • – Over time, they will develop other types of poker as liquidity builds including 5-Card Omaha, limit games or Open Face Chinese Poker.

All of this should make CoinPoker an attractive place to play poker.

What is really clever though is that there is significant potential for the CoinPoker tokens (CHP) to grow in value over time. 

This is because you will need these tokens to play poker on the platform – they are its currency. But there will be a fixed amount of the tokens. If the site grows, so will the price of the CHP coins, which will result in more utility and use on the platform. 

Here’s a simple example: there are 1,000 coins in the market spread evenly between 20 players with 50 coins each. Statistically if 5% of poker players are winners in online poker, eventually all the coins will end up in one player’s wallet. So the remaining 19 players will have to buy additional tokens in order to play and this demand will increase the value of all tokens.

This is a very clever idea and could result in a steadily increasing value of the CHP tokens if they are able to exetute their plans and grow the site successfully.

So we think this is a very interesting project and have invested some funds in the ICO.

The downside is that the ICO closes tomorrow 26 January at 10am (GMT).

So don’t miss out if you do want to get involved – check out the ICO here!

 

 

 

Disclaimer: we are not financial advisors and the above article should not be taken as financial advice. Please do your own due diligence and research and take professional financial advice before investing. All cryptocurrencies are risky ventures so please only invest money you can afford to lose. Your capital is at risk.

 

 

 

sharpe capital

Get Paid for Your Predictions on Shares!

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We have just come across a new project that enables you to earn income from your predictions on whether shares and cryptocurrencies will go up or down.

The project is called Sharpe Capital and it is currently undergoing an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) where you can buy some of its tokens – called Sharpe Tokens (SHP).

Once you have purchased some tokens, you simply log onto their platform and are given a series of shares with the latest news stories for them, like the one for the company Harley Davidson pictured here:-

Sharpe Capital

You just predict whether you think that share will go up or down over the next week and it will take you onto the next share.

Then at the end of the month you receive a payout based on a combination of:-

  • – How many predictions you made;
  • – How accurate your predictions were; and
  • – How many Sharpe tokens you hold

You can’t lose anything on the platform and you are not risking any funds on it like on a share dealing account (other than obviously having to buy some Sharpe Tokens at the outset). Even if most of your predictions were wrong, you would still get a payout.

But statistically speaking with just random guessing you could well get around 50% right anyway and if you judge things well then could do quite a bit better than that.

They have already paid out the first month’s rewards and the average payout was an amazing $972 per person, although those figures may have been skewed by some big payouts to a few people.

Perhaps more relevantly the average payout per token held was $0.02, reaching up to $0.12 for people who did the most work.

Sharpe Capital Payout

The tokens are currently priced at 1800 SHP per Ethereum, which equates to about $0.55 per token at the time of writing.

So to get a payout of $0.02 – $0.12 per token each month on a token that costs just $0.55 is a fantastic level of return. 

Now obviously the returns can vary based on a number of factors including how many people use the platform, how much work you do and so on.

Sharpe Capital make the payouts from the revenues they generate and at the moment that revenue comes from their own investment funds. They also plan to sell the prediction data to investment houses and hedge funds which could really grow the revenues substantially.

So there is the potential for the payouts to grow quite considerably over time.

And of course if they do, so should the value of the Sharpe Tokens.

We have invested in Sharpe Capital and started making predictions, so are looking forward to next month’s payout already.

Please note the token sale is selling out fast as news of the great payouts spreads, so if you are thinking of participating in the token sale then we advise doing so soon before they sell out.

You can check out the Sharpe Capital Token Sale here.

 

 

 

Disclaimer: we are not financial advisors and the above article should not be taken as financial advice. Please do your own due diligence and research and take professional financial advice before investing. All cryptocurrencies are risky ventures so please only invest money you can afford to lose.

 

 

 

Globitex main pic

Globitex ICO Review

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Today we are going to take a look at a new ICO called Globitex, which is aiming to bring a new and exciting kind of exchange to the world of cryptocurrencies.

Now you may be thinking that the market is already quite saturated with crypto exchanges and there are new ones popping up all the time, not to mention talk of decentralised exchanges, atomic swaps and more.

But Globitex are planning to deliver some elements that no other exchanges offer and to do something that would really add value to the world of Bitcoin. They are thinking BIG.

Basically the major goal for them is to have an exchange where you can trade Bitcoin for real-world commodities like gold, silver, corn and oil.

This will be in addition to the more traditional forms of exchange, with forex, between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies and between different cryptos. Plus they aim to have Bitcoin futures, swaps and options on the platform, so it will be a pretty comprehensive trading experience.

The team behind it looks very strong and that should give them a good chance of succeeding, but we will have a look at that and the ICO in more detail below.

 

What Globitex is All About

As we say, Globitex is an exchange that will allow people to trade Bitcoin for a host of other derivatives.

The exchange is already up and running and you can go and test it here. It is high quality and professional with a clean, crisp look to it that is in contrast to a lot of the existing cryptocurrency exchanges.  This is not just another bog-standard cryptocurrency exchange but an institutional grade Bitcoin exchange. 

At the moment it just has the Bitcoin/Euro and Bitcoin Cash/Euro trading pairs, but there are big plans to add a whole range of other pairs in the future.

Here are the items they intend to add to the exchange and when they estimate these will be added:-

  • – Q1 2018 – Launch of other cryptocurrency trading pairs
  • – Q2 2018 – Launch of  additional fiat trading pairs (forex)
  • – Q1 2019 – Bitcoin Settled Commodity Futures
  • – Q2 2019 – Cryptocurrency futures, swaps and vanilla options
  • – Q3 2019 – Bitcoin Priced Commodity Index
  • – Q3 2019 – Physically deliverable precious metals
  • – Q4 2019 – Physically deliverable other commodities

So as you can see, quite an awesome list there in terms of what they plan to add to the trading platform.

The only downside we can see is that some of the more impressive aspects of the roadmap won’t be delivered until 2019, but that is not unusual for an ambitious ICO like this and the main thing is that they deliver it successfully. If they do it will be worth the wait.

Imagine what impact it could have on Bitcoin to have it tradable with physical commodities. It would mean a fundamental economic shift in terms of integrating Bitcoin and other digital currencies into the mainstream financial world. The impact on the cryptocurrency market would be significant and it could act as a real game-changer.

Globitex

Globitex will also have customizable screens and graphs on their exchange, much like you have for stockmarket platforms such as MT4. They will also have a high quality API for algorithmic traders that will be fast and efficient.

Overall this looks like an awesome project and if they can deliver it not only would it be a tremendous success for Globitex but it would be likely to have a significant impact on Bitcoin’s integration into the wider economy.

 

ICO Details

The pre-sale has already been completed and was sold out.

The public token sale begins on 10th February 2018 and the hard cap will be €10m.

The standard token price for Globitex Tokens (GBX) will be €0.10. 

The minimum contribution will be €10 and the maximum will be €3m.

There is a bonus of 10% for the first 5 million Globitex Tokens sold and a bonus of 5% for the next 10 million.

In terms of the token distribution, 65% will be distributed to participants in the token sale whilst 35% will be maintained for the company. 

We understand residents of the USA will not be able to participate in the token sale.

Given the relatively low hard cap and the quality of the project, we expect this token sale to sell out – and possibly fairly quickly.

You can check out the ICO here.

 

Token Purpose

GBX Tokens will be usable to cover commission payments for the trades made on the Globitex platform.

All registered clients of the Globitex exchange will be able to redeem GBX tokens as payment for commissions.

There will be an initial premium on the tokens of at least 20%, such that if for example one GBX = €0.10, then if you use GBX for trades you will receive  GBX 1 = EUR 0.10 + 20%. This bonus is likely to increase over time depending on the project’s success.

You can find more details about the token in the White Paper.

 

The Globitex Team

Globitex Team

As we have said many times, the quality of the team is crucial as to whether a project can be delivered successfully.

Thankfully the Globitex team looks first class and has exactly the kind of skills we would expect to see for this kind of venture.

Here are the some key members of the team:-

  • – Liza Aizupiete, Managing Director – executive roles in Asset Management with MTG Capital Group. Previously worked in research and fund management with one of the leading Swiss microfinance institutions – Symbiotics.
  • – Jon Matonis, Chairman – formerly Executive Director and a Founding Board Member for the Bitcoin Foundation; as well as Managing Director for the Lydia Group; and worked as the CEO and Board Director of Network Inference, and before with Hush Communications.
  • – Arvis Ermins – previously worked for Deloitte & Touche Latvia and the Constitutional Court of Latvia. Was a founding partner of MTG group.
  • – Mark O’Byrne – research director of GoldCore which he founded in 2003. He is a leading international gold expert and a respected speaker on precious metals, investments, markets, geo-politics, finance, fintech and money.

There are twelve team members in total listed on the Globitex website and as you can see from the list above, there is an impressive range of skills listed.

Of particular note is the inclusion of Jon Matonis, a huge figure in the crypto world having been a founding board member of the Bitcoin Foundation. Having his presence at the company is a big plus and should give them a good chance of success, alongside the other range of skills they have.

Perhaps it is not the biggest team we have seen in an ICO, but we have the impression it is the right size for the scale of project they are intending to deliver and they will be able to draw upon additional skills and expertise if required and will have the right connections to do so.

 

Conclusion – An Exchange with a Difference

Global Bitcoin Exchange

When we first heard about Globitex, we thought “oh no, not another exchange!” but actually this is an exchange with a difference to all the cryptocurrency exchanges around at the moment.

They are thinking big and want to deliver something that would be quite revolutionary. If you could trade Bitcoin for actual physically deliverable commodities it would be amazing and would make a significant impact on the adoption of Bitcoin into the wider economy.

They will also have a very broad range of pairs tradable on the exchange, with everything from forex to options, futures and of course crypto-to-crypto.

Plus the Globitex platform is a high-quality, institutional grade platform with the kind of tools you expect from the major stockmarket and FX platforms. That is in contrast to the majority of current crypto exchanges which tend to be quite poor in quality.

The only downside is that it will be quite a while until some of their major developments like the Bitcoin to commodities functionality will be available, but it is not unusual to see a long roadmap for an ambitious ICO like this. 

The key question is whether they can deliver the roadmap and we believe they have the right skills to be able to do that. 

So overall we think this is a really good, professional project and we will be wishing it every success.

You can check out the Globitex ICO here.

 

 

Disclaimer: we are not financial advisors and the above article should not be taken as financial advice. Please do your own due diligence and research and take professional financial advice before investing. All cryptocurrencies are risky ventures so please only invest money you can afford to lose. Your capital is at risk. 

 

 

crpto investing pro

Crypto Investing Pro – Final Review

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We have completed our trial of Crypto Investing Pro and here are our final thoughts.

This is more of a general advice service about crypto rather than a tipping service. You don’t get specific tips to buy particular cryptocurrencies at a certain price. 

What you do get are videos and blog posts on:

  • – Market Update videos of about 20-25 minutes with Alex’s general thoughts on the crypto markets and where they are likely to go
  • – How to get into Bitcoin
  • – The Advantages and disadvantages of investing in Bitcoin
  • – How to choose a winner
  • – How to buy and sell on an exchange
  • – The steps you need to take to keep your coins safe and secure

So whilst these articles and videos are useful, it’s a little difficult to give the service a rating because there are no actual results to report.

What we can say is that the advice is sound and you would have done well by following it.

Of course at the same time, just about everyone involved in the crypto space in the last year has done phenomenally well, so we wouldn’t say this would have given you results markedly different to the market average or just having bought a selection of coins and held them.

Certainly if you are completely new to crypto then there is some useful advice, but you could probably find that advice for free elsewhere on in the internet.

So overall we think a NEUTRAL rating is fair here. It’s a useful guide to the world of cryptocurrencies for beginners but without specific recommendations or tips of coins to buy at a particular price, we are not sure it is worth the ongoing monthly subscription fee.

 

 

 

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Crypto Investing Pro – Results Update

28th November 2017

We have been a member of Crypto Investing Pro for a couple of months now so it is high time for an update on how things have been going.

The main point to note about this service is that it does not provide specific “tips” as such, for example to buy a particular coin at a certain price etc.

It is more of a general advice service where you get Alex’s insights on the market and where he has his own cryptocurrency investments.

This mainly consists of monthly “Market Update” videos where Alex gives his thoughts on where the market is likely to go, in videos of around 20-25 minutes.

Plus there are blog posts and a lot of general advice of how to get into cryptos, store your coins safely, his rules of cryptocurrency investing and so on. 

The advice he gives generally is very good though and it is certainly sensible.

Since we joined the service his main focus has been on Bitcoin and Ethereum and he has not been investing in ICOs or the smaller coins, apart from a very small investment in Zcash.

His focus on the “big two” of Bitcoin and Ethereum has done very well as they have both been on a tear lately.

He did recommend selling Bitcoin Cash in his October video, which in itself would have been a mistake as it has rocketed in value lately by about 300%, but he did recommend using those funds to buy Ethereum and Bitcoin, so you still would have done very well with those.

He also gives some good general money management advice and insights into things like the hard forks, which is useful for those who are not experts in cryptos and want to know more.

Overall we really like Alex’s service, it is good, no-nonsense and sensible advice that is based on his own in-depth knowledge of the sector. You don’t get hype or any pump-and-dump nonsense from him, just sound cryptocurrency advice.

So we will run this review for another month before wrapping up, but so far Crypto Investing Pro is looking good and is something we would recommend if you are looking to get into cryptos or even for the experienced investor who wants some additional insights. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Crypto Investing Pro – New Review

26th September 2017

In recent times we have become very excited by the growth of Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and have been looking at ways to become involved.

The stories of people buying just a few hundreds dollars worth of Bitcoin back in the early days becoming millionaires are just too hard to ignore.

First up then we have purchased some Bitcoin and Ethereum, but we have been eager to learn more and to find out what the best up-and-coming Altcoins (alternative coins) are.

So in that vein we have turned to what looks like a helpful guide from professional investor and entrepeneur Alex Fortin called Crypto Investing Pro.

This is a course of 40+ videos that provides information on everything from:

  • Why Bitcoin may pop another 10x
  • The Advantages and disadvantages of investing in Bitcoin
  • Other cryptos poised to pop
  • How to choose a winner
  • How to buy and sell on an exchange
  • The steps you need to take to keep your coins safe and secure

To be honest, it is the third item on the list we are most interested in – i.e. which cryptos are poised to surge right now – and thankfully membership of Crypto Investing Pro gives you access to a private Facebook group where Alex will apparently update this information regularly.

So all in all this looks like a very interesting course and we are keen to check out if it can help us select the next altcoins that might rocket in value and land us a big win.

So we have signed up and will be running a live trial to see if Alex can deliver.

It should also gives us some useful info on cryptos in general and strengthen our knowledge of the sector.

We will report back soon on how things are going.

In the meantime you can check out Crypto Investing Pro here.

 

 

 

bankera main pic

Bankera ICO Review – Token with Payout!

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Today we are going to take a look at an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) for a new cryptocurrency project called Bankera.

Basically what Bankera are aiming to do is become the “Digital Bank for the Blockchain Era.”

That means everything from payments and debit cards to loans and investments.

Bankera will be set up so that you can use cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, NEM and others for payments and banking, as well as exchange them for traditional fiat currencies.

And what is really exciting is that holders of Bankera Tokens will receive 20% of Bankera’s and their partner Spectrocoin’s net transaction revenue on a weekly basis.

This revenue is already up into the millions of Euros!

So not only do you have the possibility of the tokens going up in value, you will also receive weekly income. As we say, already these payouts are looking pretty decent.

But we will go into that further below, as well as take a look at the Bankera ICO in more detail and explain how it will work.

 

What is Bankera All About?

As we say, Bankera is about joining up the world of cryptocurrencies with the traditional banking industry.

The idea is that you will be able to have a bank account with Bankera and hold cryprocurrencies in it, which you can then use to pay bills, make payments using a debit card, get loans, make investments and do everything else you can do with a normal bank account.

Here is a video from Bankera explaining a bit more about how it will all work:

As you can see, it will be a fairly comprehensive banking service. 

The services can be broken down into those that are already available (through Bankera’s partner Spectrocoin) and those that Bankera is aiming to provide in future.

 

Already Available

  • – Payment Card – this a prepaid card that allows you to load your Bitcoin onto it and then spend it in shops and use it at ATMs around the world. You don’t have to worry about converting your Bitcoin to fiat currency ($, £, €, etc) as the card does it automatically.
  •  – Bitcoin Wallet – store, send and receive Bitcoin using the wallet, which you can have on your phone. Dash, Ethereum and other coins are due to be added soon.
  • – Crypto to Fiat Exchange – an exchange where you are able to turn your fiat currency (over 20 currencies already supported) into Bitcoin, Dash, Ethereum and NEM and vice versa.
  • – Ability to issue IBANs – Bankera say they have the IT facilities in place to issue people with bank accounts with IBAN numbers (after they receive their banking licence). 

What is really impressive is that Spectrocoin, which is Bankera’s partner and run by many of the same people, already have over 670,000 clients and have issued over 65,000 cards.

So unlike many ICOs and similar projects in the financial space, Bankera already have working products, a big customer base and revenues being generated. This is a really big plus when looking at an ICO.

 

Products to Come

In addition to the products already available, Bankera are aiming to put in place:

  • – A Banking Licence – this is the key element of Bankera’s plans and is what a large proportion of their ICO funds will be used for. Once they obtain a banking licence, then they will be able to follow on with the other products they have planned. Their aim is to have the licence in place by early 2019.
  • – Payments – this will include payment accounts with personal IBANs, debit cards, interbank foreign exchange rates and payment processing.
  • – Loans and Deposits – Bankera aims to provide loans as traditional banks do, but also have the ability to make cryptocurrency loans. Also people who deposit money with Bankera will receive interest, much like with savings accounts
  • – Investments – they will strive to provide investments such as Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), crypto portolios, roboadvisory solutions and eventually even investment banking.

So quite an impressive list of products there and if Bankera can deliver on these then the potential revenue  generated could be quite substantial.

 

ICO

The Bankera ICO is running at the moment and will continue until the end of February or until the hard cap of €177m is raised.

The tokens are currently priced at €0.019 per Banker token (BNK) but will increase in price as certain thresholds are hit in terms of the number of tokens sold, as you can see in the table below:

Bankera ICO

They have raised more than €70m so far from over 59,000 contributors, which is very impressive and puts them on course to be one of the top 10 ICOs of all time. Clearly the interest in the project has been huge and this gives them a good foundation to start from.

If you want to participate in the ICO and purchase some Banker tokens (BNK), you need to do the following:

  1. 1. First open a Spectrocoin account and deposit some funds into it. You can use Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, as well as other tokens or even fiat currency.
  2. 2. Go to the Bankera website and click on “Get BNK”
  3. 3. Exchange your currency for BNK tokens on the Spectrocoin platform and they will transfer the BNK to you.

As we say, this ICO is proving highly popular so may well sell out.

 

Payouts

Now for the exciting bit – the payouts!

As we mentioned above, each week 20% of Bankera and Spectrocoin’s net transaction revenue will be distributed to holders of Banker tokens (BNK).

Payouts of Bankera ICO

This is great as it means not only could you benefit if the tokens rise in price, but you can also receive income from holding them. It’s completely passive income.

The payouts are made on a proportional basis, so if you hold 1% of the tokens, you will receive 1% of the payout and so on. A nice simple model, which is good to see.

Payments are made in Ether and XEM using smart contracts.

Interestingly, Bankera have already been paying this revenue out for 20 weeks, so we can see exactly what kind of payouts people have been receiving.

Here is a summary of what the payouts have been so far:

 

 Date  Payout Number  Total Net Revenue (€) Payout – i.e. 20% of net revenue (€) Equivalent Annualized return
05.09.17 Payout #1 85,219.66 85,219.66* 4.5%**
12.09.17 Payout #2 77,530.22 15,506.04 3.29%
18.09.17 Payout #3 96,715.71 19,343.14 3.72%
27.09.17 Payout #4 66,179.28 13,235.86 2.4%
03.10.17 Payout #5 53,860.43 10,772.09 1.95%
11.10.17 Payout #6 61,495.27  12,299.05 2.22%
18.10.17 Payout #7 96,517.05 19,303.41 3.5%
24.10.17 Payout #8 95,595.13 19,119.03 3.46%
31.10.17 Payout #9 93,968.91  18,793.78  3.4%
07.11.17 Payout #10 97,881.52 19,576.31 3.54%
14.11.17 Payout #11 146,349.87 29,269.97 5.29%
21.11.17 Payout #12 139,436.53 27,887.31 5.03%
28.11.17 Payout #13 175,175.08 35,035.02 6.36%
04.12.17 Payout #14 191,123.85 38,224.77 6.14%
12.12.17 Payout #15 375,644.21 75,128.84 12.06%
19.12.17 Payout #16 344,529.79  68,905.95 10.5%
27.12.17 Payout #17 572,003.28 114,400.66 17.15%
03.01.18 Payout #18 348,529.41 69,705.88 9.32%
08.01.18 Payout #19 478,558.89 95,711.77 11.7%
17.01.18 Payout #20 384,286.76 76,857.35 7.93%
TOTAL 3,480,606.88 760,282.45
  • *first week payout was 100% of net revenue
  • **annualized return based on pre-ICO price of €0.01 per BNK

As you can see, the payouts are already looking very good.

What is impressive is the pace of growth in transaction revenue. At the start of the payouts back in September, transaction revenue was around €70,000 – €80,000 per week, but that has grown in just a few months to around €400,000 – €500,000 per week.

For people who bought in at the pre-ICO stage, the payouts are already equivalent to around a 10-17% return on an annualized basis.

Also impressive is the growth in Spectrocoin’s user numbers. At the start of September they had around 350,000 members but this has grown to over 670,000 at the time of writing. More members means more transactions and more revenue.

It is also worth noting that Bankera are already on track to surpass their first year targets. In their Whitepaper, they state that Bankera expects €11M in revenue in its first year with stable
growth to 500M EUR within ten years. 

However, they have already generated close to €3.5m in revenue and at current levels would generate over €17m in revenue over the rest of the year – and that’s not allowing for any further growth.

So in essence they are growing faster than expected and that is a good sign for the future.

 

The Team

The Bankera Team

It is always important when assessing an ICO to have a look at the quality of the team involved. No matter how good an idea is, if the team isn’t competent enough to execute the idea successfully then it will be irrelevant.

Well, for Bankera the team looks very impressive and this gives us added confidence in the project.

  • – Vytautas Karalevičius, CEO – currently completing a Ph.D. in Cryptocurrencies at KU Leuven University in Belgium. Prior to that, he received an MPhil degree in Finance from Cambridge University.
  • – Mantas Mockevičius, COO – more than eight years experience in managing operations and compliance for electronic and digital money exchanges. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and master’s degree in Finance.
  • – Craig Grant – experience in the payment processing industry including three years at Skrill (now a part of the Paysafe Group) as a senior business development manager.
  • – Lon Wong, Advisor – President, NEM.io Foundation, CEO, Dragonfly Fintech. A serial entrepreneur with more than 30 years’ experience, Lon is a blockchain thought leader and heads the NEM blockchain project.
  • – Antanas Guoga, Advisor – Member of European Parliament. Also known as TonyG, Antanas is a serial entrepreneur.
  • – Eva Kaili, Advisor – Member of the European Parliament. Chairman of the European Parliament’s scientific foresight unit. 

So a very strong team there, particularly in the advisory department. Having Lon Wong, the President of the NEM foundation, as an advisor is HUGE for the project. He is one of the leading figures in the blockchain space and his experience will be invaluable for taking the Bankera project forward.

Plus they have members of the European Parliament, leading experts in banking, accounting, tax, data, PR and a number of other specialities as advisors. And they have over 40 other team members, so this is no small project.

Overall we are impressed with the team and it looks like they have the relevant skills and experience to make the project a success.

 

Possible Disadvantages

As well as looking at all the positives of the project, it is also always worth looking at potential problems and disadvantages.

The main downside for us is that the banking licence isn’t forecast to be ready until early 2019 and lots of their services rest on getting the banking licence. So there will be quite a wait until we see all the products going live.

However, the good news is that they have existing products already producing revenue and a growing customer base, so it’s not like we have to sit on our hands for a year waiting for something to happen. Having working products and revenue coming in puts them well ahead of other ICOs and blockchain projects.

Disadvantages of Bankera

The other main issue to consider is that of competitors. 

There are already competitors in this space such as TenX and Crypterium and others are popping up all the time. Clearly banking and financial services are industries ripe for disruption from the blockchain.

At the same time though, there is clearly big demand from people to be able to use their cryptocurrencies in the “real world” through the kind of services Bankera is aiming to deliver and this market could be huge in a few years’ time.

So there may well be a big enough market for a number of major players to succeed and the fact that Bankera is already up and running gives it a head start in the field. As far as we aware, there aren’t any crypto banks that already have a banking licence, so Bankera is not behind the competition in that sense.

Of course there are always risks in the cryptocurrency space as it is a very volatile environment and there could be regulatory challenges ahead. 

However, we think the fact Bankera already has working products through Spectrocoin and has complied with regulation so far means it should be well placed to cope with any such challenges.

 

Conclusion – Bankera ICO Review

Bankera ICO

Overall Bankera is an ICO we really like and feel it is worthy of a PASSED rating and 4.5 stars. The project has quite a few things going for it. 

On the positive side we have:-

  • – Working products with a payment card, exchange and wallet already up and running
  • – Significant revenues in the millions of Euros already being generated
  • – Token holders receive 20% of net transaction revenues, with payouts of 10-15% annualized already being received and the potential for growth
  • – Customer base growing very fast and up to over 670,000
  • – Over €70m already raised in ICO from close to 60,000 participants – shows strong community support
  • – Big demand for people to be able to use their cryptocurrency in the real world
  • – Good team with wide range of skills and experience
  • – Lon Wong as Advisor, one of the biggest names in the blockchain space

There are competitors in the space but Bankera looks like it has the tools to be one of the leaders in this emerging field and is quite developed with its project.

So taking all this into account we are really excited about this project and have invested some funds into the ICO ourselves.

If the customer base keeps growing and therefore the transaction revenue, the payouts could become quite significant, which would be great. Plus of course if that happens then the coin may well surge in value as well. That is what we are hoping anyway. 

Either way though it looks like an exciting project and is one to keep an eye on.

You can check out the Bankera ICO here. 

 

 

Disclaimer: we are not financial advisors and the above article should not be taken as financial advice. Please do your own due diligence and research and take professional financial advice before investing. All cryptocurrencies are risky ventures so please only invest money you can afford to lose. Your capital is at risk. 

 

 

 

Bitconnect homepage

Bitconnect – Final Review

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The party is over. 

Yes folks, as of yesterday Bitconnect is finished. They have closed the lending and exchange platform and have refunded the value of people’s investment in Bitconnect coins.

The only problem with doing things that way though is that the value of Bitconnect coins absolutely plummeted on the news (by around 90%), so what people actually received was only a fraction of their original investments.

Well we had warned repeatedly during the review that was probably a Ponzi scheme or scam and so it proved.

Anything that pays 1% per day is simply unsustainable, particularly when you can reinvest funds and compound the returns.

It was always really just a question of when Bitconnect would fold, not if.

Officially they say the reason for shutting down was due to two Cease and Desist letters, one from the Texas State Securities Board, and one from the North Carolina Secretary of State Securities Division, plus bad press and DDos attacks, but more likely it was the crypto market collapse that meant they could no longer afford paying back the loans.

The site’s business case always required a continually rising Bitcoin price to be able to afford to pay back the loans and the recent drops in Bitcoin’s value would have made payouts increasingly difficult.

Plus of course they had some huge loans to pay back from the likes of Trevon James and Craig Grant (prominent YouTubers) who put in money around six months ago.

In any event, at least Bitconnect paid back something to its members unlike some of the other Ponzi schemes that just cut and run.

In the end I have lost around $500 here which is disappointing, but not the end of the world. 

Weirdly they are still ploughing ahead with plans for their BitconnectX exchange platform, but given what has happened here that must be dead in the water. All the trust is gone and who would want to invest in anything related to Bitconnect now?

Anyway, the only thing left to say is that this is obviously a FAILED rating and another warning to avoid any other HYIP (High Yield Investment Progreamme) like this that promises to pay 1% per day or anything like that.

Quite simply any scheme of that nature is an obvious Ponzi scheme and is guaranteed to collapse at some point.

 

 

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Bitconnect – Results Update

7th January 2018

The profits keep rolling in from Bitconnect, with another $920 made since our last update and $2,173 made overall.

You can view full results here. 

So far we have withdrawn $1,385 from Bitconnect in comparison to total deposits of $2,540, so in just over a month or so we should have recouped our investment and be playing with the house’s money so to speak.

Bitconnect continues to develop their plans for the future, with a detailed roadmap for 2018 and the mysterious pre-launch of BitconnectX, which no-one knows what it is exactly but will be unveiled in a few days.

In any event, this is looking like an intriguing experiment that has lasted longer than a lot of people expected and may still have legs in it for a while yet. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bitconnect – Results Update

8th December 2017

Bitconnect continues to roll along nicely, with a further $488 profit made since our last update and $1253 profit generated overall.

You can view full results here. 

For the first month we were reinvesting our funds so that meant we were increasing the payouts further down the line.

But for the last couple of weeks we have started withdrawing our profits and so far have withdrawn $494 worth. 

We plan to keep withdrawing until we have recouped our initial investment of $2540 and then may reinvest some more to increase the payouts.

That’s presuming of course that Bitconnect sticks around long enough for us to do that, but so far it is looking good and they even recently launched their own debit card, Bitconnect pay, so it looks like they are expanding rather than contracting.

Anyway we will see, but so far has been operating exactly as advertised.

 

 

 

 

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Bitconnect – Results Update

19th November 2017

Bitconnect continues to deliver us excellent profits and we have made another $644 profit since our last update at the end of October.

That means we have now made $765 profit in total from Bitconnect from a combined investment of $2540.

You can view full results here. 

So far this is looking like one of the best investments we have ever made.

However, that does come with a caveat, as mentioned in our previous update.

The caveat is that we are still unsure of the long-term sustainability of Bitconnect. How long can they keep on paying members an average of 1% profit per day?

We don’t know – and frankly neither does anyone else.

Yes they have the incredible appreciation in the value of their own Bitconnect Coins, which are now up a mind-boggling 185,000% since their inception, giving them potentially hundreds of millions, even perhaps billions, with which to pay investors.

But as more and more people join the platform and start withdrawing funds, their payout bill becomes larger and larger.

Anyway, as we say no-one can predict how long Bitconnect will stay around for but for the time being it is paying us fantastic returns and long may that continue.

 

 

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Bitconnect – Results Update

31st October 2017

It has been an excellent start to our trial of Bitconnect, with $121 profit made so far after 10 days.

We have made combined investments of $1530 and are reinvesting any profits we make for the time being to compound our earnings and grow our capital. 

You can view full results here. 

Just to recap, this is a passive income scheme based on Bitcoin. You “lend” money to a trading bot which pays out a daily amount of interest. 

So far this interest rate has averaged around 1% per day, which is obviously very high indeed!

So high in fact that some people have questioned whether this is a Ponzi scheme.

We don’t know either way, but what we can say is they have an exceptionally clever business model that means the value of their own coins (Bitconnect, or BCC, coins) appreciate over time the more demand there is.

Their coins have grown over 140,000% in value since the launch, which is quite incredible and means they should a huge amount of capital with which to pay investors.

Certainly enough to reward some of their top promoters with supercars at an event they held over the weekend! Some lucky sods won Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and Ferraris.

However, at the same time there is still suspicion around the company. They have no registered address nor does anyone know who is behind the scheme. And there is very scant information about how the trading bot works.

So we treat this investment as very high risk. Ultimately the site could go down at any time and we could lose all our money. There would be no recourse to recoup that money given that there aren’t even details of who the company are!

But of all the dubious high-return investment schemes around Bitcoin at the moment, this one appears to have the most credibility and at least some kind of tangible business model that means it isn’t just a pure Ponzi scheme (if it is one at all).

We are betting on the site being around for a little longer, or hopefully long enough to at least recoup our investment and make some profit.

That is all you are doing if you invest in a scheme like this really – betting on the site being around long enough to make you some profit.

We shall see, it will be an interesting experiment in any event…

You can check out Bitconnect here. 

 

 

 

 

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Bitconnect – New Review

21st October 2017

We have recently expanded our repertoire here at Honest Betting Reviews into looking at cryptocurrencies.

This is mainly for a fairly simple reason – because the returns around some cryptocurrencies have been pretty insane!

Here are just a few stats for you:-

  • – IOTA up 56,464%
  • – Ethereum up 82,450%
  • – Spectrecoin up 21,102%
  • – Stratis up 44,293%
  • – Antshares up 17,813%

And let’s not forget Bitcoin itself, up well over 100,000% since its inception. 

People who bought a few dollars worth of Bitcoin back in the early days are now millionaires.

And lots of other people are becoming millionaires all the time off the exciting new coins that are being released these days.

We are eager to check out the potential new opportunities around cryptocurrencies and to see if we can get you and us some of those stunning returns.

So in that vein, the latest opportunity we are checking out is called Bitconnect.

The returns from this look pretty incredible we have to say.

It says on the website you can earn up to 40% in interest per month from being part of Bitconnect.

Yes just to repeat that – 40% interest PER MONTH.

Now let’s compare that to interest rates here in the UK – which currently stand at 0.25% per year. 

In the US, interest rates are around 1%.

So you earn pretty much nothing by holding money in your bank account, where as Bitconnect is offering you the chance to earn 40% per month!

Now that potential 40% per month looks – dare we say it – a little too good to be true. However, having done some research on it and looked at a lot of YouTube videos on Bitconnect, there do appear to be people achieving returns like that.

As with all these things though, the only way to be sure is to try it yourself and see how it turns out.

So that is exactly what we are going to do – today we are starting a live trial of Bitconnect here on the site.

How Does Bitconnect work?

Having registered on the Bitconnect site and taken a look around, it is a little complicated and takes a bit of understanding to work out what it’s all about.

Here is a video from Bitconnect themselves explaining what it is in a nutshell:

So basically to break things down for you, there are a few different options as to what you can do when you join Bitconnect:-

  • – Buy Bitconnect and hold it, hoping the price of the coin will rise
  • – Trade Bitconnect, hoping to make a profit by buying and selling it
  • – Lend Bitconnect out and earn daily interest

It is the third option that interests us the most and is the one we will be pursuing in this review. That seems to be the one that most investors in Bitconnect are doing from what we can gather and looks to be by far the most profitable avenue.

Now it should be made clear that when it says “lend Bitconnect out,” you are not lending out Bitconnect to borrowers, like in a peer-to-peer lending scheme.

What you are doing is “lending” Bitconnect to a trading bot that trades on the volatility of Bitcoin. The more volatile Bitcoin is on a given day, the more interest you make. 

Any regular followers of Bitcoin will know, it tends to be hugely volatile, with swings of hundreds of dollars in price in a day not uncommon. 

So you earn interest on a daily basis from the returns of the trading bot and these can average as high as 1% – or more.

On the Bitconnect platform you can check all the recent interest payouts and at the time of writing, the interest payouts over the last week have averaged just over 0.8% per day, which is pretty amazing.

You can also reinvest some or all of the interest you earn, compounding your returns further.

We have seen a demonstration of how this could allow you to turn $5,000 into $60,000 in six months if interest rates averaged 1% per day!

All in all this looks like quite a compelling investment opportunity, although as we say the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

So we will be begin our trial today and will report back soon on how it’s going.

In the meantime you can check out Bitconnect here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Electroneum

Electroneum Ready for Launch! Exciting Future Ahead

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Great news has just been announced for holders of Electroneum and those interested in the project.

Founder Richard Ells has just revealed via e-mail that Electroneum will launch in the middle of next week and token holders will then get access to their wallets.

It also means Android users will be able to download the app and start mining Electroneum coins, although iPhone users will have to wait a little bit longer until the app is available on iOS.

Apparently Hacker One, an outside agency employed by Electroneum to test and improve their online security systems, have finished their testing and found no major problems. 

This is excellent news and is exactly what holders of Electroneum had been waiting to hear.

Now the entire community is just eagerly awaiting the release of the wallets and mobile mining app and then the Electroneum story can really begin!

How might this all unfold though? What do Electroneum have in store and how can they take this truly global and really get it to go mainstream, as is their stated aim?

We will take a look at this in more detail below.

 

Electroneum – An Exciting Future

Richard Ells also announced in his e-mail that they have been:

“Contacting hundreds of potential partners to ensure we have some joint ventures already negotiated for once we are up and running. Hopefully by the time we launch next week, we will have something signed and have our first public partnership(s) in place.”

That is great news and should hopefully allow for the rapid adoption of Electroneum within other platforms and networks.

There has also been talk of Electroneum partnering with an African mobile phone company, which would be massive news for Electroneum and allow it to reach a large, captive audience.

In terms of marketing, we expect that given how impressive they were at marketing during the ICO phase, the Electroneum team should be well capable of creating a good deal of hype and excitement about the project to help it go viral.

We would expect some celebrity endorsements to be forthcoming as well as cross-platform marketing on everything from billboards to newspapers, social media and across the internet.

But we think the most powerful means of spreading the word about Electroneum may well be word of mouth. Already we are hearing people talking about Electroneum who aren’t otherwise interested in cryptocurrencies, other than having heard of Bitcoin of course. That is a really good sign. 

Once people realise that they can mine what is essentially free money on their phone, Electroneum is likely to spread like wildfire. After all, who doesn’t like the idea of free money?

Perhaps the biggest opportunity for this and where Electroneum will have the greatest impact though is the “unbanked” parts of the world such as Africa and parts of Asia and Latin America. 

 

The “Unbanked” and Electroneum’s Potential to Bring Cryptos to the Masses 

Bank in the city

Whilst Electroneum has the potential to take off just about everywhere, clearly it has the greatest potential in places where mining $10-$20 worth of ETN per month would represent a substantial amount of money, such as parts of Africa.

It will also be very useful for the “unbanked” – the over 200 million people who have a smartphone but don’t have access to a bank account.

For these people, Electroneum could be a means of gaining access to goods, services, businesses and a global marketplace they were previously blocked from.

The potential of this to revolutionise trade and more importantly – individual people’s lives – could be immense.

As some have pointed out however, there is also the question of what people will do once they have mined Electroneum. How will they spend or use it?

 

How Can People Spend or Use their Electroneum?

Spending money with Electroneum

This is probably the biggest immediate question facing the Electroneum project. If people can’t spend or use their Electroneum easily then it will lose a good deal of its attraction.

The most obvious and simple answer would be for people to go to an exchange like HitBTC or Bittrex and exchange their Electroneum for another cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum and then convert it to fiat via a site such as Coinbase or Blockchain.info.

However, often exchanges aren’t very user-friendly to say the least, have very little instruction on how to use them, require you to verify your personal details and have virtually no support – or it takes a few days for someone to get back to you typically.

So most people probably aren’t going to go through the hassle of figuring out how to use an exchange and undertake all the other steps involved.

Plus that option is no help to the unbanked as they still wouldn’t be able to send their converted fiat money to their bank account (as they don’t have one!)

No, it seems there will need to be easier options for people to spend their Electroneum. Here we have a look at some potential options:-

  • – Naga Coin – a cryptocurrency currently undergoing its ICO, Naga will offer users a cryptocurrency wallet that will allow them to convert a range of cryptos into fiat currency, which can then be sent to the Naga debit card and used for spending in the real world. The Naga wallet is due to be launched on 1st April 2018.
  • – TenX – similarly, TenX will allow users to convert a range of cryptos into fiat currency and then send that to a debit card that can be used for real world purchases. If you are in Europe you can already get one of these cards. They are currently working on setting up partnerships with card providers for the rest of the world.
  • – Crypterium – also in ICO phase, this will be a “mobile crypto bank” that amongst other things will allow people to pay in cryptos via their phone, using Apple Pay, Samsung Pay or Android Pay at 42 million stores worldwide. It is not clear when this will be available – on their website it just says “soon.”

So essentially it seems that there are no options immediately available for people to spend their Electroneum without needing to use an exchange first, but such facilities should be available soon.

And it should be noted that none of the projects above mention using Electroneum at the current time, although we expect ETN will be added to their platforms given the level of user adoption expected.  

In terms of these projects, it seems to us that Crypterium will be the most useful to the unbanked and those in the non-industrialised world as it will allow payments via your phone and won’t require a debit card.

Of course, it could be that Electroneum will set up their own wallet similar to those we have described above that will allow people to spend their ETN directly using their phone without needing to convert it first via an exchange.

On the other side of the coin, so to speak, will be that merchants could choose to accept payments in Electroneum, much as many thousands of merchants already accept Bitcoin. We understand that there is already a group of businesses on a Telegram channel promising that they will accept ETN as a form of payment, which is good news.

However, for Electroneum to really gain widespread adoption, then in our opinion it needs to be accepted widely as a matter of course rather than just a (relatively) small number of merchants.

For that to happen it needs to be developed from the payments side, so that you can use it to pay as easily as you can with Visa or Mastercard the world over.

 

Final Thoughts – The Future of Electroneum

Electroneum

We expect these issues will be sorted out in time and you will be able to use your ETN for purchases and transactions.

There seems to be a lot of progress in that direction and it is good to see a number of different projects working on the same problem. That means there is a greater chance of seeing crypto payments in the real world coming to fruition soon.

Of course there is more to Electroneum than just payments. They will be aiming to be incorporated within the online gaming (video games) and gambling worlds, which again should be very achievable given the number of Electroneum users expected.

And there could be other projects Richard and the team are working on that we don’t know about currently.

So overall the future of Electroneum looks very bright now that the security issues have been sorted out and we should look forward to exciting developments in the coming weeks and months.

Oh, and did we forget to mention that at the time of writing the price is up more than tenfold from the ICO?

Sit tight everyone, this could be one hell of a ride!

 

 

 

Disclaimer: we are not financial advisors and the above article should not be taken as financial advice. Please do your own due diligence and research and take professional financial advice before investing. All cryptocurrencies are risky ventures so please only invest money you can afford to lose.

 

 

 

 

 

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Update 20th October 2017

Please note the Token Sale for Electroneum has closed early after the hard cap of $40m was raised. 

The mining app for Electroneum is due to launch on 1st November.

 

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Cryptocurrencies are all the rage this year.

Bitcoin, the biggest crypto by far, is up an astonishing 350% in 2017, up over 1000% in the last 12 months and a mind-boggling 23,000% on five years ago.

People who invested just a few hundred dollars in the early days of Bitcoin are now millionaires.

There have been plenty of other cryptos that have gone up 1000% in a matter of days. It’s been a modern-day gold rush for some shrewd investors.

The latest big crypto to launch is called Electroneum and it’s the first British cryptocurrency.

Its USP is that it is super-simple to use and can be managed from a smartphone.

Richard Ells, founder of Electroneum and experienced tech entrepreneur, said:

“I don’t know if you’ve ever tried buying any Bitcoin, but it’s really hard to do! I realized that what the world needs is a cryptocurrency that is genuinely easy to access and use. We’ve developed Electroneum with the ordinary mobile user in mind.”

So Electroneum could become the mobile cryptocurrency of choice, allowing people to buy goods, send money to friends or make international transactions at the touch of a smartphone button and without all the annoying bank fees. And it has a huge potential market of 2.2 billion smartphone users.

Duncan Logan the CEO of Rocketspace who nurtured the likes of Uber, Spotify and Hootsuite has been publicising his support via Twitter and says this is the first ICO he is going to be involved in, out of the hundreds that have happened so far.

Duncan Logan tweet on Electroneum

It is also the first one we have been involved in too as we do like the sound of it.

You can check out Electroneum here.

 

Token Sale Update 17th October 2017 – Breaking Records!

Wow how things have taken off for the ICO!

The Token Sale (which is like an IPO) has been absolutely smashing it – they have now raised a whopping $40m – and counting!

It seems like they have really tapped into something novel here and people are responding.

Electoneum will be the first mobile cryptocurrency that you can manage entirely from an app on your phone.

It will initially target the gaming market, so you will be able to earn tokens while playing games.

Electroneum

But here’s the really clever bit: you will be able to mine it from your phone, meaning you can have it running in the background making you tokens while you sleep! These tokens could then be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or even pounds, euros and dollars!

Now you won’t be making very much to begin with, but if the value of Electroneum increases, so will the value of those tokens you’ve mined.

So the more viral the app goes and the more people that use it, the more the value of Electroneum should increase.

It’s a genius idea really.

And people have been waking up to its potential. Even former Spurs manager Harry Redknapp has been getting involved!

Harry Redknapp backing Electroneum

The number of people joining the ICO has been incredible. It has been smashing all other ICOs to pieces.

Here are the numbers on some of the biggest ICOs happening at the moment in terms of number of people involved:

· LA Token – 17,000 participants
· Cobinhood – 10,000 participants
· Enjiin Coin – 15,000 participants

Those aren’t bad numbers at all, and actually represent some of the biggest ICOs to date in terms of numbers of participants. But Electroneum is absolutely blowing them out of the water.

As we write this update, it currently has over 200,000 participants! We understand that’s a record. 

It’s astonishing, Electroneum is smashing the competition more than ten-fold and still has two weeks to run! And it’s gone up by over 50,000 in just the last day!

Essentially the value of a cryptocurrency is driven by demand – how many people want it. So the signs for Electroneum at this stage are very good indeed.

Once the token sale ends on 31st October, the aim is for Electroneum to be listed on some of the cryptocurrency exchanges (like CEX.io), so at that point you could exchange your Electroneum for other cryptocurrencies or normal currency.

But we personally plan to hold this long term, certainly if it continues going viral like it has been. If it could get just a fraction of Bitcoin’s value it would be worth a significant amount.

Please be aware if you are going to invest that whilst some cryptos have done amazingly well, they are highly speculative and carry a significant element of risk, so only risk money you can afford to lose.

Just a reminder that the token sale closes on 31st October 2017 – so don’t miss out on what is looking like the biggest ICO ever.

You can check out Electroneum here