How to Set Yourself Up for Your First Crypto Trade

So you want to give it a try and trade Crypto? If you’re new to the topic, then you’ll likely not have the tools you’ll need for it, nor will you likely have any Bitcoin or Litecoin, Ether, or other coins yet. Setting yourself up for your first Crypto trade is, in fact, an easy one. In this article, you’ll learn why it’s easy and how it’s done.

Most people who are not into Crypto yet do not hold any Crypto coins or are not trading Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether, Dash, Dogecoin, or any other of the thousands of available Crypto coins because they may think it is difficult or maybe unsafe, or maybe simply inconvenient to do.

This is not so. In fact, these steps are a lot easier than setting up an online-trading account for stocks, forex, commodities or anything else with an online brokerage (let alone conventional brick-and-mortar brokers or banks).

In this day and age, it should be safe to assume that you have some, or a lot of,  internet user experience already. If you’re like most people, you will likely have used Facebook at some point in time, or you may be using — and have earlier set  up — a Yahoo Mail or Gmail account. Now, what would you say if someone told you that setting up some first Crypto trading tools is pretty similar to signing up for a Gmail account?

However, there is two ways of doing it: Joe Sixpack’s way (that is often unsafe, is not adequate, and may result in losses that ultimately will re-enforce that ignorant belief out there that it’s unsafe or risky or full of criminals and similar) and the more educated approach. Be aware the latter is better. There isn’t much use to do it the stupid way.

So, here’s how you can do it the right way — quickly and easily, and without learning the hard way first but taking advice that’s tested and proven. This way, you’ll be able to take the shortcut to doing it correctly.

  1. Instead of just going online, breaking out your credit card, and buying some coins on Coinbase or Binance in order to also store them there, here’s what you want to do instead:
  2. go to the appropriate website(s) of the open-source project maintaining the coin(s) you want
  3. download the wallet(s) for the coin(s) you want, e g Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, Dogecoin or other coins (if you have worked out already which ones are your favorites)
  4. install your wallet (or each coin’s right wallet)
  5. open your wallet program and click the receive button
  6. click and copy the “receiving address” or public key or scan the accompanying QR code; this is how you can later get your coins into your OWN computer at home or perhaps mobile device you use (desktop is best)

This, in rough strokes and simple steps, is how you can do it. We will look into the individual steps along with more links you can simply click and all directions you need in more detail next. So stay tuned for the next module of this introduction!

Financial Crisis: Lessons from Cyprus Relevant for Everyone

Although officially “solved”, the Cyprus crisis is of significance to investors, savers and actually every private household in many countries. Seen as a “small scale” model scenario for a “real” crisis in the euro or, in fact, any paper currency worldwide, the handling of the Cyprus crisis offered very interesting reading and insight into how bureaucrats handle — or intend to handle in the future — any kind of lack-of-trust problem in the economy.

Said former German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble: “Touching personal savings always is a very sensitive area, and we need to be very careful when doing so. In order to prevent a bank run, this should always be undertaken over a weekend.” He went on to demand procedures and policies for enacting “special rules” allowing to push through currency controls and ceasing of assets between Fridays and Mondays so there would be “no further need for extended bank holidays” as seen in Cyprus in March.

With this kind of thinking exposed, it is obvious what will happen in many additional places beyond Cyprus if there is any problem — which in light of the publicly known financial state of many countries, including core-European economies and the U. S., is not too far fetched at all.

U. K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, MEP, who due to his role in Brussels has significant additional insight into the inner workings of that bureaucracy and those bureaucrats’ irresponsible way of thinking, has already warned everyone having any exposure to the PIIG countries and even the rest of the EMU area to “get out your money while you can”.

The question to be answered, then, would be where to move those funds to. With all paper currencies effectively in the line of fire in the event of a euro, let alone dollar, collapse, there is little use even considering classical safe-heaven investments such as U. S. bonds (of all investments!), cash U. S. dollars themselves, or even Swiss francs and similar. The obvious answer would be moving into tangible assets like real estate or precious metals (the latter also being suitable for smaller quantities than your average minimum property price). Also, some “alternative” investments might be suitable, particularly if they offer regular returns (cash flow) and not just a chance of capital appreciation (which may or may not happen at some uncertain point in the future).

When there is nothing to be found offering such return, the point for “dumb” precious metals just sitting in one’s vault is even stronger: for precious metals offer the safest protection against economic turmoil even if they do not usually provide cash flow like dividends.

The Right Kind of Mix: What True Diversification Should Be Like

Diversification always needs to be across different Asset Classes. Only buying stocks from different industry sectors is usually considered “good diversification” these days — but actually is not diversification at all. (All are in the same asset class, namely stocks, a paper investment.)

Finally, some people appear to awake to more prudent measures. In light of Bitcoin and other Crypto coins, which may well be an emerging new asset class of their own, there is an easy rule of thumb, “Bitcoin for Transactions, Phyzz for Storing Value/Asset Protection”!

Actually, I would even go A BIT (pun intended), as in a few percent, more in favor of Crypto — even for “storing value” although that’s not really what Crypto coins are particularly good at (relying on external factors for STAYING valuable, that is — even if we expect, or hope, for electricity and computing to ALWAYS be ubiquitously available)…

The “mix”, from an Asset Management (or Protection) point of view is, therefore, a matter of personal choice. We need to update Swiss bankers’ 33-33-33 diversification advice of the 1980s to also include today’s “new asset class” though.

Why Data Encryption Continues to Be Secure

The New Yorker, of all ‘specialist’ tech magazines out there, has an article on “How the NSA Cracked the Web”!

What a surprise.

For starters, as the web isn’t encrypted in the first place, it cannot be ‘cracked’. Further down into the article — and after some extensive sorting out all the mis-understandings of its obviously computer-illiterate author — the reader is finally let in on that ‘cracking success’ of the NSA: it turns out to be pretty lame and, in fact, limited mostly to compromising Microsoft’s and some other commercial software vendors’ master keys.

This got nothing to do with real decryption or with ‘cracking’ or  any ‘code breaking’ whatsoever.

What’s noteworthy, though, is that it is admitted between the lines that all the “real” encryption technologies are as safe as always assumed (with e g 2048-bit keys still unbreakable). Therefore, applying these coupled with a few simple steps of protecting and securely hosting any content one might have out on the public internet continues to be the way to go.

At the end of the day, the so-called ‘spectacular success’ of the NSA does nothing more than illustrate why:

  • Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Server software) is insecure (a fact widely known since 10+ years),
  • Windows in particular (and to a lesser extent Apple OS X) contains government backdoors and is less secure than peer-reviewed Open Source operating systems,
  • wLAN setups can never be fully secured (a fact known throughout the IT Security industry since wLANs exist and now re-enforced),
  • mobile communications as well as wLAN technologies are never secure (nor healthy for the user, both facts are known but usually disputed by the industry in order to sell their stuff)
  • common sense is still superior to “intelligence” (as in military etc)
  • all industrial-strength and professional encryption and IT security measures are effective

From the last bullet point it is obvious that encryption tachnologies, in fact, are so effective the NSA and U. S. federal government have stupid media outlets publish their rubbish in order to “win back territory” by means of psychological warfare instead of embarking on the — next to impossible — journey of cracking Phil Zimmerman’s PGP encryption or any of the derivative technologies like GPG (GnuPG) or openPGP. (Read our upcoming separate article on how to obtain these open source tools, for FREE, and what basic measures to take in order to make illegal government surveillance as well as data theft as hard as possible.)

Bitcoin Has Official Seal of Approval in Europe

Back in 2013, the European Banking Authority (EBA) issued a statement warning consumers of certain dangers in using Bitcoin and similar cryptographic payment systems (so-called Crypto Coins or even Currencies). Apparently prompted by significant price increases of predominantly Bitcoin but also Litecoin, Ether, Dash and other Crypto coins, the sudden increase in virtual currency trading, and the fact that virtual currencies are constantly in the mainstream media headlines, the regulators are quoted as saying:

“Consumers should be aware that exchange platforms tend to be unregulated and are not banks that hold their virtual currency as a deposit. Currently, no specific regulatory protections exist in the EU that would protect consumers from financial losses if a platform that exchanges or holds virtual currencies fails or goes out of business,” the EBA bureaucrats said in a statement.

Obviously meant to primarily be a “warning against” using Bitcoin, this statement is, upon closer scrutiny, a great gift in disguise for the worldwide Crypto coin community. The statement reveals the official view of European officials to, quite surprisingly, give a nod of approval to Crypto payment systems like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Monero and all the other similar payment systems.

The EBA statement has a similar effect as some — initially wrongly reported — statement by China that banned Chinese commercial banks from using Bitcoin but, at the same time, defined use for private individual as perfectly legal in the country and stating an official hands-off approach to Bitcoin by the Chinese government.

In admitting that all Crypto coin-related businesses and services like exchanges or merchant service providers and similar are “unregulated”, that they are “not banks”, and that “no specific regulatory protections” existed for them in EU countries, the EBA gave de-facto blessing to that unregulated status quo. This gives all sorts of Bitcoin businesses worldwide a strong incentive to move their operations to Bitcoin-friendly countries within Europe, some of which — like Sweden, Germany, Austria, the U. K. and, to a lesser extent, even expensive Norway — are particularly suitable due to their individual regulatory situations, property prices, and/or overall features of their local legal systems, business culture and similar aspects.

On the back of the above announcement, it is time for any Bitcoin business seeking more certainty for their operations to cease the new opportunity and extensively go Forum Shopping in Europe now.

Retirements to Be Seized by EU and Other Countries

Just as savers in Cyprus have been fleeced by their government a few years back, and made to pay for the incapability and mistakes by bureaucrats and economic mis-allocation beyond the control the individual. Even though, it is individuals throughout the country who were footing the bill.

Cyprus is seen as a “model” for “solving” crises like that. And crises there are. Not only throughout all of Europe — including “rich” countries in the north and Britain having their very own demographic train wrecks coming up — but also in the U. S., Russia, and many other parts of the world. Ageing populations are not the problem, but limitless spending and business-as-usual in light of well-known facts while ignoring them is. Politicians want to get or keep their jobs by making even more outrageous promises while not caring about what happens when their terms end. Politicians are the ones to blame, not senior citizens or other recipients in systems that were designed by politicians (and not the elderly).

One of the politicians formerly responsible, German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, even went as far as openly saying that Cyprus-style “bank holidays” needed to be scheduled on weekends to give bureaucrats a head start of two additional days, thereby openly admitting that “bail-ins” like in Cyprus will happen elsewhere.

Russia confiscated pension plans to convert funds to government bonds of dubious value only two months ago.

In the U. S., dictator Obama made it clear during his latest State-of-the-Union address in January that he always does what he wants without regard for any rules, other people or the constitution. He added that if he’d think it fit to add yet another Obamacare-style program he would do so by presidential decree and without even bothering to ask congress or follow some similarly “bothersome” constitutional rules. He also has a track record to not care about the overall economic consequences of his actions either.

The ongoing discussion about retirement funds, the alleged safety of pension plans, as well as recent events in the banking as well as retirement sectors themselves make it more than clear that confiscation of life savings is the new name of the game — be it in pension funds, plundering of savings, or other seizure of valuables such as real estate or similar.

Surprisingly, the game is still on, and nothing has really (visibly) blown up yet. Even the SBV and Credit-Suisse pre-quakes have been swepped under the carpet (so far). It’s only a matter of time, but it will happen sooner or later.

In light of these developments, it is not only obvious that “Savers Are Losers” but that everyone needs to re-think all pecuniary and financial matters before greedy governments are taking it all.

Why Amazon Might Be Dangerous to Your Health

Amazon.com has been all the rage for many years. Notorious for burning through investor money and venture capital for a period of over ten years, Amazon.com dominates most every consumer market there is, and it has increasingly established itself as The Top Address for online shopping.

That this has been achieved largely by killing off any kind of “competition” — and also at a high cost to Main Street, to the overall employment situation, and to small business in general — is not meant to be a matter of concern in this article. Though regrettable, it could also be argued that this is “a normal development” in the market (at least, and unlike Obama’s “achievements” through TARP and all the QE-s, it has been done without government money or similar subsidies) and it even comes with some limited amount of advantages for average buyers: the not-to-be-underestimated convenience of shopping from home and saving the time and gas expense for a trip to the local mall or garden center. Killing off only slightly-frequented but still area-consuming unsuccessful and unprofitable branches of certain big-box stores may also seem advantageous both from an efficiency and environmental point of view. Let us some day re-forest these extra acres and make our urban and even rural surroundings a bit greener again!

Still, there are huge drawbacks even for the supposedly better-off buyer when it comes to using Amazon.com.

In an attempt to grow their business even further, Amazon.com has discovered third-party sales and that opening their platform to small and large outsiders means more money for Amazon.com. While this is a good thing from a selection point of view and combines lots of eBay-style attractions with hassle-free Amazon.com fulfillment, it also means eBay-style dishonesty and all sorts of scams have now long entered the apparently controlled Amazon.com environment.

Just as eBay used to be notorious for stolen goods or scrap of no value hyped up and presented as the latest must-have at some “bargain price”, Amazon.com’s marketplace is also heavily contaminated with forgeries, low-quality copies and pirated brand items of all sorts.

At least eBay has improved measurably over the last years, and the platform can be seen as some sort of a useful product finder for the internet again.

Amazon.com cannot, or does not want to, do anything to effectively police the situation in order to protect their unsuspecting customers. This is particularly despicable when it comes to food, nutritional, and general health items that can pose significant dangers of bodily harm to victims of these less-than-wonderful “marketplace” sellers. A court case is now pending in the U. S. where certified organic foods (originally) meticulously checked for heavy-metal contamination and other toxins and then sold under a trusted label (if test passed and if authentic), have been commercially re-produced by a New Jersey pirate outfit and are sold via Amazon Marketplace under a forged label of that widely-respected organic brand. The pirated items are diluted down using cheap glucose syrup fillers instead of the actual wild berries intended and paid for by the customer; or they are made of cheap imported raw materials from China, highly contaminated with cadmium and other heavy metals, instead of the laboratory-checked ones the buyer is willing to pay extra for.

As Amazon.com, obviously keen to not touch their commission-generating business model, stipulates that these forged items are not illegal by themselves (because there are, curiously, no established USDA or FDA limits for heavy metals in those particular types of food indeed), it is apparent that Amazon.com does not really care about item quality the way any good merchant should.

There are also  other examples in different areas of the Marketplace platform where it has become equally and painfully clear that Amazon.com does not care about what you and I might take for granted, but only look at their self-interest and revenue stream instead.

Therefore, Amazon.com should not even be considered for sourcing certain goods, particularly “important” ones or something you are going to put in your body, and that the company might well be in the process of ruining their own revenue model after all, albeit in a different way.

This all means that it still pays to not blindly click through Amazon.com for “other items” after ordering that book or computer parts, but use a trusted and proven smaller vendor instead.

The Ever-Accelerating Discussion on AI

Talking about AI is a “trending topic” these days. That’s because anything-AI is currently hyped up and, as a result, sells like hot cake. With AI having been made the latest flavor of the day, it’s easy to churn out books on the subject too. Throw in a few claims of “how great” AI would be “for us”, and with that slightly different-sounding angle you have a fairly good shot at selling a good number of copies.

That does not mean that we can, let alone should, believe anything written in books like these when it comes to potential “benefits” of AI for all of us. Especially not as that claim is easily debunked by simple technical facts.

The overall consensus in Computer Science is that AI is an enslaving technology — whereas ENCRYPTION methods are tools for freedom and for protecting liberties. (Fact number one apparently neglected in this discussion.)

What’s more though is that AI does not even have any trace of “intelligence” in it (no matter what the mainstream calls it), but it is merely a (slightly) more complex way of connecting list entries, database tables, and networked/distributed information. So ultimately merely a “phoebook-lookup” type of “knowledge”, nothing particularly noteworthy actually.

And it gets worse when you know how this alleged AI is doing its “learning”: initially by interviewing mediocre contemporaries (who already are severely deficient in knowledge, reason, and even real-life skills) not as to FACT but as to THEIR OPINION about how something is, for instance, spelled or pronounced in their own language (let alone a foreign one!) with — unsurprisingly — dismal results. This is not science but merely poll-taking, and from an unsuitably selected base of participants at that.

We all know, or at least should still remember even in today’s day and age, that we cannot pop the question “What’s 2 + 2” to a handful of “diverse” groups and let the result be dictated by Trump supporters, the LGBT fringe group, BLM, the Better-Business Bureau or homeowners association, Amnesty International, labour unions, the National Trust in the UK, nor even a “trusted” school board, a Mensa chapter or Wikipedia volunteers. Any such attempt clearly is dumb and bound to fail. Yet, that’s exactly how the foundations of AI are built.

It is, therefore, fairly safe to say that AI can actually be discounted as a technology altogether, let alone be seen as “overall beneficial”. Anyone alleging this must be severely screwed. AI can be dangerous to our health (and wellbeing) though due to the simple fact that police authorities, governments, tyrants, and other forces in today’s public life are pouring (rather diverting or mis-allocating) large sums (of our tax money) into “policing” something that does not need to be (and legally even MUST NOT be!) policed that starkly — hence threatens our culture, our liberty, and everything that makes life worth living quite similar to the ex-Soviet secret police.

Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk have prominently warned of AI and are trying to halt any further AI research and development until and unless there are reliable rules in place that define what must not be regulated by AI — for precisely the above reasons.

So we’d all be well-advised to be really concerned, and certainly not believe the idiocies of AI being “beneficial”. Not even with AI itself actually isn’t functioning in the first place, better prepare for the worst. Powerful tools of preparation are readily available — more about that in a separate, more in-depth article on Privacy and crypto technologies as methods of re-gaining at least some of our freedom.

The Regular Sunday Read: Friedman, Why Government Is the Problem

In our section where we recommend The Regular Sunday Reads that we come across, we showcase some essential reading for everyone who is Fed Up with the Stupid News.

Today we cover a book by Austrian School of Economics co-founder Milton Freedman. The book can be freely accessed on Sribd. Enjoy and Continue a Great Weekend with a Great Read!

Why Government Is the Problem by Milton Friedman by Hoover Institution

Surfing the Economic Cycles

The precious metals bull market that started around 2000 is still in full swing. Despite a few temporary setbacks which, on closer scrutiny, were all caused by some sort of manipulation (either central bank and cartel intervention or surprise increases or decreases in Comex margin requirements) the overall upward trend continues to be intact. There is a lot more to come in precious metals price increases, both nominal and real. The unsustainable levels of government debt around the world have not decreased a tat and Keynesian world improvers only have one set of tools (or, to borrow from Mr Bernanke over at the Fed, a “technology”), called the printing press. Central planners have no other way than using it to put off a full-blown economic collapse for an additional few years. Even if they do, and even if they succeed, it means just more “kicking the can down the road” and some sort of major correction still needs to come. Until it does, a continued or, in a not-so-good scenario, even abrupt price increase in gold and silver is only natural.

Economic history shows that throughout the millennia the markets have always sought equilibrium (for this is what markets do). With respect to government debt and money supply, this equilibrium would need to be between money supply and real assets as represented by paper currencies on one hand and precious metals (or similarly durable, storable, divisible and fungible assets of any kind — though historically there are few of those).

It is therefore expected, that precious metals will have to have a value equivalent to all other valuables in the market, namely paper currencies, stocks, bonds, derivatives etc. As the latter do not have any intrinsic value and are only worth what the market thinks the should be worth on a sunny day, these can significantly fall in value while assets with intrinsic value just continue on having that intrinsic value. The most likely and easy-to-understand scenario, therefore, would be some sort of zeroing-in between a major stock index and the price of gold. Historically, this is exactly what has happened every time since there are useful data on stocks available (which is back to roughly the 1850s and, thus, includes all the major economic crises during the last century from the 1920s to 1980 on an international and beyond on a more local level).

To get an idea of how long the current precious metals bull market is bound to run, it may be advisable to look at the DJIA and gold per ounce in USD to be equivalent. While there are other factors to be used as a filter to yield a more precise result, current market numbers show that there is still a long way to go before numbers are at that turning point. Holding on to ones precious metals up to that point will provide the best cover against losses from paper currency devaluation and a very good starting point for moving in to the next asset class once its time has come.