Cardano

To all those who are currently trading Shitcoins in the short termI'm slowly getting weak. I should actually be following my strategy, but the gains are too juicy.

My plan is actually to let the Shitcoins run for a bit over the WE at max. lev (3x for me) to take the retailer FOMO with me and conservatively tighten the stops - max. until Monday US opening. And then to run small spot hedges at least for Mon/Thu, depending on the strength, and then to extend longs again.

How do you do it? my trades: $MKR (+0,03%)
$MATIC (+0,81%)
$UNI (-0,16%)
$TAO (-0%)
$ADA (+0,5%)
$LINK (+1,33%)
$SHIB (+0,37%)
$DOGE (-0,64%)
$AVAX (-1,01%)

Staking explained simply: passive income with cryptocurrencies

The world of cryptocurrencies offers numerous opportunities to generate income - from traditional trading and lending to an increasingly popular method: Staking. Unlike speculative trading, where you hope for price gains, staking allows you to make your cryptocurrencies work for the network and earn regular rewards. But how exactly does it work and what should you look out for if you want to start staking?

In this article, we go into detail about what staking is, how it works and the opportunities and risks involved.

What is staking?

Staking is a concept that is closely associated with blockchains based on the so-called proof-of-stake (PoS)-consensus mechanism. These blockchains do not require energy-intensive miners, as is the case with the Bitcoin network, but rely on participants "locking" their coins to secure the network and validate transactions.

Basically, staking works like a kind of digital savings account. You deposit your coins in a wallet or platform, and these coins are used to ensure the security and functionality of the network. You receive new coins as a reward. The amount of your rewards depends on the amount of coins staked, the duration and the specific rules of the network.

A simple example: If you stake 100 coins on a network like Cardano ($ADA (+0,5%) ) and the annual return is 5%, you will receive 5 additional ADA as a reward after one year.

Why staking?

Many crypto investors hold their coins for longer periods of time anyway, whether out of conviction in the project or as part of their long-term strategy. Staking offers an opportunity to actively use this time and generate additional returns.

Staking also has a technical dimension: by participating, you help to keep the network secure and efficient. In contrast to proof-of-work systems, which require enormous amounts of energy, proof-of-stake is much more resource-efficient and therefore more sustainable.

But staking is not just a win-win situation. There are also risks that should be well thought out in advance.

How does staking work in practice?

The staking process starts with choosing a suitable network and a cryptocurrency that you want to stake. Well-known blockchains that support staking include Ethereum (since the switch to proof-of-stake), Cardano, Solana, Polkadot and Cosmos. Each of these blockchains has slightly different requirements, reward models and rules.

Let's take an example: You want Cardano ($ADA (+0,5%)
) staking. To do this, you first need a wallet that supports staking, such as Daedalus or Yoroi. Once your ADA coins are in your wallet, you can delegate them to a validator - a special node in the network. Validators are responsible for verifying transactions and creating new blocks. In return, they share the rewards they receive from the network with you.

A big advantage of Cardano and similar networks is that you retain full control over your coins. You only delegate your voting rights, but the coins remain in your wallet.

How high are the returns?

The returns on staking can vary greatly. They depend not only on the specific blockchain, but also on the total amount of coins staked, the network's inflation rate and other factors.

Ethereum, the largest network with proof-of-stake, currently offers annual returns of around 4-7%. Cardano is at 4-5%, while Polkadot offers significantly higher rewards at 12-15%. However, these figures are subject to change as they depend directly on the dynamics of the network.

It is important to note that higher rewards often come with higher risks. Networks with new or less proven technologies could be more susceptible to errors or attacks.

What are the risks?

As with any investment opportunity, there are risks associated with staking that should not be ignored.

The most obvious risk is the volatility of the crypto market. Even if you get an attractive return of 10% per year, sharp falls in the price of staked coins can quickly wipe out these gains.

Another risk is the so-called slashingwhich occurs on some networks. Validators who misbehave or have downtime can lose some of the staked coins - and as a delegator, you share this risk.

Some networks also have a blocking period. If you decide to stake your coins, you cannot sell or transfer them during this period. In the case of Ethereum, this period is currently several months, while networks such as Cardano or Polkadot offer more flexible models.

Staking via wallets vs. exchanges

There are two main ways to participate in staking: via decentralized wallets or centralized exchanges.

Decentralized wallets such as Ledger, MetaMask or Daedalus offer you full control over your coins. This means more security, as your coins are not stored on a platform that could be hacked. However, this method requires a little more technical know-how.

Exchanges such as Binance, Kraken or Coinbase make the process much easier, but carry the risk of entrusting your coins to the platform. If the exchange becomes insolvent or is the victim of an attack, you could lose your assets.

Is staking right for you?

Staking is particularly suitable for long-term investors who plan to hold their cryptocurrencies for a longer period of time anyway. It offers the opportunity to generate additional income while actively supporting the functioning of the network.

Before you start staking, however, you should take a close look at the specific conditions of the blockchain and assess your risk appetite. For beginners, it is advisable to start with smaller amounts and gain experience before staking larger sums.

Conclusion

Staking is a fascinating way to utilize cryptocurrencies beyond their pure value appreciation. It combines technological innovation with financial benefits and can be an important part of a diversified investment strategy.

However, as with any investment, do your research, weigh up the risks and only commit capital that you are prepared to tie up for the longer term. With the right strategy, staking can be a rewarding and exciting addition to your crypto portfolio.

$ADA (+0,5%) Nice performance in the shadow of Bitcoin 🤌

Dear Community,

I need your opinion on my portfolio again.

I am trying to build a core-satellite portfolio - consisting of dividend stocks and aristocrats.

I invest €400 per month in the $VWRL (+1,02%) and since November 2024, 200€ in the $ISPA (+0,45%) (knowing that a lot of positions overlap but to push my dividend yield).

I also invest all money gifts (birthday, Christmas etc) in gold & silver.

I also have an investment plan with Ageeon where I have already achieved my ROI and paid out the money. From this I now receive 0.000358 $BTC (+0,14%) which is partly paid out and partly reinvested. (Yes, risky but as they say - I already have my investment back in the cold wallet).

Just like $ADA (+0,5%) in which I see a lot of potential. This is saved using "Mining Rewards" (Arkreen, Dimo, Helium). (approx. 10€ per week)

The building savings contract was a gift from my parents in my name, but is financed by them with €100 per month. (They did not want to support an ETF)

Now I would like to hear your honest opinion on my portfolio.

Aja - I am employed and self-employed, and rent out a property (the original plan was to invest the rental income in $O (+0,55%) but for personal reasons I had to take out a loan which will be repaid with the rental income.

Lg and thanks

My "What if?" portfolio

Would have, would have, bicycle chain

Do you know this? You're sitting around like this, you're unemployed, you're 6 months behind with the rent, your landlord has given notice and your girlfriend is now with @Testo-Investor because he's a real doer. And while you get up because the bailiff is taking away the last armchair you were sitting on 5 minutes ago, you think to yourself "At least I don't have to organize a move anymore. But if I had invested in $BTC (+0,14%) then none of this would have happened".

We mourn missed opportunities. Opportunities that we didn't know about ("Bit... what?"), opportunities that we didn't believe in ("Somehow the old job is more comfortable, I don't need that bit more money and promotion opportunities") and opportunities that we screwed up ourselves ("lol, they're actually offering 100 euros for my $NVDA (-2,33%) shares. Take my stock, you fools"). But is it really that bad?

In 2022, I wrote my post "Why it makes sense to sell bad buys at a loss" https://app.getquin.com/activity/JMQwETSOoS . Back then, there wasn't even formatting for posts on getquin. We had to use shoddy tricks, which is why the umlauts in headlines looked so funny. But I digress. Anyway, I was busy selling positions and was in the middle of finding my strategy, which was still changing or at least concretizing over the last few years. As I continuously pushed ahead with my change in strategy, I sold some positions. Not primarily because I no longer believed in the positions, but because they no longer fitted into my strategy of a leaner and less expensive portfolio.

For example, a few weeks ago I sold $HBAR (+0,28%) with a loss of over 60%. Since then, the coin has risen by around 180%. I also sold Nvidia in January 2022 for EUR 26.315 (split-adjusted) - at least at a profit. The list goes on and on.

Do I regret the sales? Of course it hurts to see how much return has fallen by the wayside. But I stand behind my overriding goal of adjusting my strategy, so I have absolutely no regrets.

But sometimes I still ask myself: what if? And that's why I created my "What if?" portfolio on getquin. All my sales are listed there as purchases with the selling price at the time and the corresponding quantity. In other words, it tracks the price development since the sale. And with this portfolio feedback I give you an exclusive insight - including absolute values.

What do I learn from it?

• It's amazing that you've made it this far. I really tend to beat around the bush. And you almost seem to be in love with me, the way you're glued to my lips.
• In retrospect, some sales were really annoying, e.g. Nvidia
• Despite high returns recently, I'm not at all annoyed about the sales of $ADA (+0,5%), $HBAR (+0,28%) and $IOTA (-0,43%). Overall, the difference is only a few hundred euros and therefore peanuts in the portfolio. Moreover, the positions would still have been very far from the entry price
• Other positions performed rather mediocre to poorly, for example . $YOU (+0,38%), $MPW (+0,24%) or $BAYN (+1,36%). Here the sale definitely made sense
• Overall, I have sold relatively little of my portfolio. The sales currently only make up a fraction of my overall portfolio
• Of course, it should not be forgotten that I have reallocated the proceeds from my sales to my existing portfolio (crypto to crypto, shares and ETF to ETF) and a return was also generated here
• My "what if" portfolio achieved a TTWROR of under 20%, while my aggregated portfolio generated a TTWROR of over 30% in the same period
• It's damn difficult to time the market. I can't do it. So I don't even try

Looking back, I did everything right. But even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have any regrets. So don't fret about missed opportunities, stay true to yourself and focus on the future.

Is it worth getting started in $ADA (+0,5%) ?

My crypto exit strategy after almost a decade of crypto experience:

Before I go into my crypto strategy specifically, I would like to make it clear that crypto lives strongly on faith (momentum: it rises because it rises). That's why I think you should only invest money here that you can write off/lose immediately. A predefined strategy like the following can help you to act rationally and leave emotions aside.

Reading time: felt like an hour

Total risk of loss:

Choosing to run self-custody (own wallet) has many advantages, but the massive disadvantage that if you lose your private keys, you can't call BTC customer service and suffer a total loss. Also, there will be no new Bitcoin. It takes exactly one minute to create such a "new Bitcoin" and doesn't cost a single euro. What's more, it will be teeming with scams and ICOs - so only trust the marketcap! 99.99% of all projects will die in the long term. The higher the market cap, the more likely it is to survive, but this is never guaranteed - even BTC could go to 0 from one day to the next.

The same goes for yield on your cryptos. In principle, creating a decentralized market is a good idea, and the yields often look very attractive. But often the coins you get as rewards are massively inflated. In addition, the risk of bugs in the code is often underestimated. The latter can also lead to total losses. Impermanent loss must also be considered here, but that would be a topic for a separate post. Returns always have something to do with risk and information arbitrage: stay in the game > outperform the game.

Trading:

For 99%, it's probably smarter to take a HODL (i.e. buy-and-hold) approach with DCA/savings plan if necessary to build a position. However, this should not be done during hype phases, but when nobody is interested in crypto anymore. Trading may seem very attractive and cool, but the majority will underperform compared to the B&H strategy. Apart from the gray hair and fun in life with much more important things than charts that you save yourself.

My assessment:

In general, I think the market and performance have changed, especially due to ETFs and the infrastructure that has emerged in recent years. As a result, I think that initially this cycle could be strongly driven by institutional investors - not because the number is so high, but because they are simply very well capitalized and even a small exposure brings in a lot of capital.

I think that the psychological characteristics will remain the same: First rises $BTC (+0,14%) then the "better" Shitcoins, until in the end everything that hasn't gone up yet goes up. When I write Shitcoins, please don't feel offended - I'll explain later why I'm doing this. I hold some myself. Just a brief definition of how I differentiate between less qualitative Shitcoins and qualitative ones:

• Is there a medallion figure who is good at telling stories or talking? (Example: Charles Hoskinson at Cardano $ADA (+0,5%) similar with Ripple $XRP (-1,38%) I would say)
• Is the technology really decentralized?
• How are tokenomics designed? (This is why I always look at the market cap and not the price).
• Does it bring added value beyond the buzzword blockchain?
• How is coin distribution divided up (whale wallets)?

Cycle within a cycle:

I also think that we have already gone through this mini cycle once in the current cycle, but that it will repeat itself throughout the momentum cycle and the price swings will increase in favor of shitcoins. My theory behind this is that when BTC has risen, the excess return is sought, and that when the returns attract the new people, they often have no idea. The "stupid money" then flows increasingly into shitcoins without substance (without wishing to offend anyone, this is how I have come to use the term). That's why I also want to use the Shitcoin performance as an exit indicator.

Exit strategy:

I will sell off a maximum of 50% of my crypto holdings, as for me the performance expectation is around 50% of my investment and 50% BTC is a kind of risk hedge against the centralized financial system. I will carry out the sale in tranches of 25% each. I will use a grid bot for this. I will start as soon as the crypto share exceeds 25% of my total portfolio. I will not invest new capital in crypto for the time being, but will only expand my Shitcoin position by using a slight leverage on my margin account depending on the phase. When I talk about leverage, I don't mean 25x, but rather 1.5x - as the additional return is worth less to me in favor of my security. My motto is always: stay in the game > outperform the game.

In the end, only BTC will remain until the next hype!

My personal shitcoin sector favorites:

I think DeFi will perform strongly as substantially more security could be created in the next 6-12 months due to potential regulatory certainty. In general, however, I suspect that it doesn't really matter which coin you buy, as past experience has shown that towards the end of the cycle people will buy anything that hasn't yet made 10x - regardless of whether there is any fundamental added value.

With regard to L1, I think that $ETH (-0,14%) is currently undervalued. I see reasons for this in the fact that Vitalik Buterin is a miserable salesman (which I actually find positive), and Solana $SOL (-0,15%) can offer much lower fees at the expense of security. The ease of programming allows more dapps to be created. In general, I think that ETH is more in line with the basic idea of crypto than Solana, although it should be mentioned that Solana has gained massive adoption - for me a sign that most people have no idea what they are actually buying.

I think the SUI architecture is promising in principle, but I wouldn't overweight it - but I'm not too deep into the subject either.

L2 makes a lot of sense for ETH, but will only outperform when transaction costs are astronomical again. In general, I see transaction costs as a very good market indicator for timing as well as leverage in the market.

Memecoins:

The probability that Dogecoin $DOGE (-0,64%) continues to rise is high in my opinion. That's why I'm holding a small position. Especially if Elon Musk pushes the coin again, strong price movements could follow in the short term. If that happens, I will also buy less capitalized memecoins in the short term. However, you always have to keep this in mind: It only takes a few minutes and a few hundred dollars on networks like Solana to buy a new $PEPE (-0,84%) , $SHIB (+0,37%) or other meme coin. Such coins are often based purely on hype and momentum

Long-term outlook:

I think we are no longer early in crypto, but early in usability and institutional exposure. Only now is the real value being created as products can be used and regulatory certainty increases. I hope that the volatility of BTC will decrease due to the increasing market capitalization and that in the long run it will reflect modern digital gold rather than a risk-on asset.

In conclusion, I think that the AI theme has run its course and crypto could be the new risk-on draw - at least in the short term, as this is also fundamentally justified by potential regulation. Nevertheless, I think that AI currently offers greater fundamental added value in terms of productivity. Crypto is not really needed as long as the centralized services or fiat currencies work. Also, the majority actually has 0 added value and is only riding the crypto wave to attract capital. 99.9% do not correspond to the basic idea.

If a Blackswan event occurs, everything will be sold off in the short term, especially risk-on assets. That's why I always hold cash (currently even 20%) so that I have liquidity to buy. You should never be so naive as to believe that you are 100% right, but always stay humble, think in terms of probabilities and practice risk management!

To conclude once again:

stay in the game > outperform the game. There will be no new Bitcoin, I dare to promise that haha - everything else is speculative. The term "Shitcoin" should help you to always be aware that it is not driven by fundamental value, but by profit expectations!

Everything here is highly speculative and not investment advice, just my humble assessment after a good 8-9 years in the crypto market. Everyone please do what you think is right and don't judge others. "The only thing I can say with 100% certainty is that I can't say anything with 100% certainty": Did Einstein say that?

Congratulations on making it this far and not having a TikTok attention span. Basically, I wrote the whole thing for myself because it @JJJ inspired me to write down more of my thoughts in order to continue making rational decisions - thank you for that! Thanks also to @stefan_21 for the daily BTC education. If I'm honest: BTC is the real deal 😉

Additionally, it's important to make your investment decisions independently of any Youtube Fin or crypto influencers. For the most part, they are only out to push you into trading, as they earn money when you trade with their affiliate links on any exchanges. In general, this financial and especially crypto influencer scene is very, very lucrative due to the commissions - you should always be aware of that!

It has also helped me enormously to deal with very boring topics in order to draw conclusions about the exciting topics:

Bond market, interest rates, especially liquidity, interest rate spreads, fiscal policy, financial psychology, momentum, leverage, to name a few topics.

Of course, not everyone has the privilege of having the time to deal with these topics, but if you do, I can only recommend it. Not because I want to trade volatility or overweight bonds, but because it provides a very good understanding of the overall market and is a basic building block for risk management.

I don't know if anyone still reads here - never mind. Even if not, it has helped me. I've definitely written down enough thoughts for today, I should call my mom again.