300% profit......not bad for a couple of weeks!
I'm wallowing in regret......

Hodling and trading are totally different investing strategies, each with its own merits.
Trading can lock in instant profits and give you the cashflow to continuous trade.
It's a numbers game......whether you are comfortable with guaranteed smaller profits many times (but might miss out on bull runs), or a potentially (but unconfirmed) larger profit over a longer period.
Personally, I hold some for long term, but I also trade some for the short term.

Damn, this always happens to me...!
Going to receive my bonus by end of April, was originally thinking to put them into ETH, and whaddya know, the ETH prices surge past USD50 now.

Next bull run being when?
Around end May?

It's a terrible feeling, when I'm all out of bullets and cannot do anything except watch on the sidelines......

I think India is just being jealous and sour because they know they screwed up big time with the demonetisation exercise.
Their original intention was probably right, but the execution was not well thought out.
The unique feature with bitcoin (or let's say cryptocurrencies in general) is that it is, for practical purposes, untraceable. More so with zero knowledge features like with Monero.
However, many people forget that the world's most widespread and most untraceable currency has always been available and has been in use for thousands of years, and that is physical CASH, be it gold, silver, coins or notes.
Cryptocurrency is no different from cash, it just brings it into the digital world.

You have to separate between regulated and traceable. Having bitcoin regulated is mostly accepted by the public, when it comes to buying, selling, trading, KYC, how exchanges work, etc. but traceability is not acceptable (and anyway goes against the whole design and decentralised nature of the bitcoin protocol itself)
It might not mean very much when you first think about it, but consider that anonymity in cryptocurrency affects not just the user, but also each and every person he has ever transacted with, and by extension, each and every other person that they have transacted with, ad infinitum.
At some point, this reaches outwards in an all-encompassing web that will include each and every bitcoin user.
Add to this scenario the fact that the blockchain includes each and every transaction ever performed from Day One, working backwards, and you have the entire financial history and economic standing of each and every bitcoin user.
Then, consider the fact that this can potentially be extrapolated to link to your real-world identity, and the identities of every other person.
Bear in mind that in a traceable scenario, you have absolutely no say in this......you are just traceable and identifiable, your entire history......there is no privacy.
This is what the cryptocurrency community is against.
Privacy is not secrecy.
Even if you have nothing to hide, I am sure you don't want your private affairs to be broadcast on a permanently public ledger.

Well, basically that's the debate and point of contention between two factions of cryptocurrency users......those that advocate anonymity and those that are in favour of traceability.
I personally don't have a solution to this. Traceability comes with a price, and that price is the loss of privacy. It's not easy to strike a balance here because the system is pretty much designed to be all or nothing.

At the moment, Malaysia does not have any tax law or legislation on cryptocurrency. Since it is not recognised as legal tender nor a property asset (yet), it does not fall into any taxable categories.
Though the laws may change in the near future, when use of cryptocurrency becomes more widespread.
All eyes are on Japan at the moment, to see how they will deal with the taxation laws since Japan recently recognised bitcoin as legal tender.

You know what......I was looking at some of the historical charts, and noticed a strange recurring phenomena.
Many of these coins, including ETH, and especially those that are constantly pushing the price limits these days, all seemed to have experienced a sudden burst in trading volume and price increases at around the same time, around mid-March 2017.

After thinking it over, the only reason I can think of is that the bitcoin price increase from 2016 has finally piqued the interest of the general population, with many people starting to invest in it, and then the rejection of the bitcoin ETF created a bit of a sell down where people started moving their money away from BTC and into the various altcoins.
Any other thoughts?
Or did something else happen in mid March that I wasn't aware of?

This post has been edited by wengherng: Apr 14 2017, 04:03 PM

You definitely made the right decision to spread your investments into so many different altcoins right before they all started going all crazy-frenzy.
In hindsight, I wished I did the same.
But......no time for regrets!
There's money to be made yet!

I believe XMR has its role to play as a cryptocurrency, and that it has long-term potential.
I bought when it was lower, but I only bought once and never topped up.
XRP and DCR are really causing me some heartache...... I am actually losing money with these two.

Going to call it a day today......damn tired looking at the screen the whole afternoon.
Cashed out part of my profits in LTC to fund my purchases in some other alts.
I see an overall upwards trend in alts, so I think I'll just hang on to them for a while and see how it goes.

Yes......unbelievably ridiculous, but true.
Just close your eyes and buy a bit of each altcoin on Poloniex......I think you'll probably still win on average due to the ridiculous triple digit gains.
Not really sure how long this phenomena will continue though.

The problem is that I am undecided whether to keep the coins long term in the hopes of future appreciation, or just trade them short term and cash in the immediate profits, since it is pretty easy to get 10 - 20% profits with the current volatility.
Yeah I agree, I am pretty comfortable using Poloniex now.
Bittrex has so many more coins, but also due to that, the liquidity for each coin is lower when compared with Poloniex (or at least that was what I observed).

I can try to keep adding to the first post, just tell me when your guidelines are done!

The reason for 10 - 20% is because it is very easy, and from the past few weeks' observation, you can easily trade 5 times x 20% profit to get a total of 100% profit in a short period of time (maybe 1 - 2 weeks) instead of waiting for it to shoot to 100% which is more difficult and may take a much longer time to happen (if it happens).
But on the other hand, many of my coins have been going up steadily and in an upward trend so I am also reluctant to sell.
So many coins to choose......so little money to buy them with......

One more thing is that I am actually starting to get a bit concerned with the amount of money I am leaving in Poloniex.
Since I don't have too much in any one coin (except for BTC and ETH), I am currently just leaving them on the exchange......but I am terrified of what would happen if Poloniex suddenly shuts down one fine day, or hacked, or my holdings stolen by the Poloniex administrators, or something drastic like that.
There aren't any hardware wallets that support most of the altcoins, either.


This post has been edited by wengherng: Apr 17 2017, 04:36 PM

You're right about distributing the holdings into different exchanges, which is something that I need to start doing.
But even that doesn't really comfort me.
I think for now, I will just leave them as they are, until I really cannot tahan already, then create paper wallets.

Of course they are tied to bitcoin, since the exchange basis is altcoin/BTC......so, technically speaking, yes, the actual fiat value of the altcoin should go down in the same percentage that BTC went up.
However, this is not a perfect world, and there are far too many trigger-happy traders with shorts and margins that need to protect their positions, hence the panic sell-down every time BTC so much as give a sneeze.
In contrast, look at the more "mainstream" altcoins, the ones with altcoin/USDT exchange.
Their dollar value hardly fluctuates much.
But once BTC price stabilises a little, the same trigger-happy traders will suddenly reverse their positions and start rushing back into the altcoin market, and there you will see a big spike correction again.
Classic herd mentality.



This post has been edited by wengherng: Apr 17 2017, 11:50 PM

All things being perfectly constant, yes that would be the concept.
However, there are too many variables involved.
First, you have to understand that USDT does not equal to USD. USDT is just another cryptocurrency coin like bitcoin, just that they use reserves to peg it as close to the US dollar as possible, but it's not perfectly tied, it usually fluctuates to within 0.3%.
Secondly, markets are all about human sentiments.
A drop in BTC price due to a global hack and theft might create a panic in the cryptocurrency industry as a whole, leading to a cascading sell-off stampede as generally people have even less confidence in altcoins compared to bitcoin. So the altcoin price in this case might depreciate more than bitcoin.
On the other hand, a release of some good news may create euphoria, leading to a surge of buys and causing a sudden spike in altcoin price, even though the bitcoin prices itself is increasing.


This post has been edited by wengherng: Apr 18 2017, 10:18 AM

Brace yourselves......the cryptocurrency world is getting more and more mature, and this translates into faster rebounding times.
Barely hours after the massive dips experienced by most altcoins, many of them are already making a comeback, rebounding back and making up for some of the losses.

On another note, ETH seems to be testing its ATH again.
Damn it, I was hoping to get some at a bargain.

My goodness, look at the bloodbath at the deepest end of the red.
Bargains everywhere!
And damn it, I have no more money to buy!

Ah crap......I had originally thought that these coins would be also available for trading on other exchanges......seems not always the case.
I had seriously considered buying NOBL about two or three weeks ago, and didn't, hence missed the massive rally. In hindsight, I was really lucky.

Yes, I am also very angry at this.
How would we be protected from such sudden delistings in future? I also believe that there would probably be some sort of insider trading, but it would be difficult to prove unless someone in the US files a lawsuit against Poloniex.
The only viable option here would be to totally avoid buying any altcoin that does not have significant trading volumes on the other exchanges.
Other than that, I really do not know what else we can do to protect ourselves.

EDIT: I just did a quick check on Bittrex, and realised that 3 of my altcoins are not trading there. I have not yet checked the other larger volume exchanges like Bitfinex.


This post has been edited by wengherng: Apr 19 2017, 11:24 AM

I might be wrong, but I think the two largest hardware wallet manufacturers at the moment, Ledger and SatoshiLabs, are still private companies, and not trading on the stock exchange.
So far, I have not heard of any cryptocurrency-related companies being listed on the stock exchange.

I have the same thoughts.
Even though at the moment Poloniex is by far the largest exchange by volume, that doesn't mean that other exchanges won't start carrying these de-listed coins at some point.
Would it be too much of a gamble to buy some of these coins at deep discounts, then keep them in paper wallets until some other exchange start carrying them?
I've never done that before, so I don't know how it works.
Is it even possible to create paper wallets for these altcoins?
Some of these coins actually have development teams working behind them, and there are projects ongoing......who knows, they might still have a bright future.