Bitcoin and Ether Roar As Mid August Rally Intensifies
The leading cryptos up significantly as traders return to crypto markets, buoyed by reports of still high inflation in the US and eurozone, as well as a favorable Senate crypto legislation bill.
Like I said earlier in the year, always a sacrifice before the feast for these financial elites… and it does seem Bitcoin and other cryptos experienced a Faith Shakeout earlier this strange year, rather than any kind of real terminal decline or collapse.
The faithful remained in the pews and waited for the inevitable recovery.
Bitcoin up about 3.4% against the US dollar today, while second place crypto Ether gained about 7.7%.
If you’ll reasonably consider January 2020 the start of the pandemic era, then between the first video accounts of COVID outbreaks and today Bitcoin is up roughly 2.8x, and Ether is up very approximately 11.5x (using January 24 2020 price data compared against today’s data).
Not too shabby, considering some industries have entirely imploded since COVID reared its ugly post-modern head — crypto has prospered overall, even factoring in the pullback of earlier this year.
Some of the big banks big brains may be right that this decline was basically a de-leveraging due to poorly structured crypto lending platforms and miscalculated debt financing, rather than any structural or long term problem with crypto as an asset class.
As this new rally possibly intensifies (we’ll see), I will no doubt get many emails asking which crypto apps / exchanges do I recommend.
Let’s save some time here. I recommend nothing. I’m just a man on the Internet, with a cat and a plan. But don’t trust my plan — trust your instincts and research. Lately, I’m super impressed with the Binance app and site, very easy and fast sign up for US users, just all around slick. Shows the potential of what crypto can be in 2022 for the mainstream user. Makes you excited about that potential, rather than friggin’ scared.
If their web site ever doesn’t work great for you, try the app, they seem to be mostly focused around their app business but again: just very impressed lately. They also have good and fast human email support, which is a relative rarity in the crypto exchange space at the moment.
AS a backup, Gemini is another popular smartphone app and crypto exchange site available to US users.
I recommend trying both, in part so you have a backup if one exchange isn’t functioning properly during a time of intense trading activity. This market feels very… energized.
If you’re getting into crypto in any capacity larger than one’s figurative “lunch money,” spend some time reading up on self-custody wallets… you don’t want to leave a lot on an exchange — even a reputable one — for a long time, as their unexpected failure could mean the loss of your precious crypto.
Crypto pros know that once you’ve bought crypto on an exchange, it’s typically best practice to sweep it to a personal wallet you control. This is, after all, one of the main strengths of peer to peer money: “being your own bank.”
A number of popular and free wallet apps exist for Mac and Windows, and there are also hardware wallets such as the TREZOR which purport to offer a possibly even greater layer of security than a mere software wallet on your computer hard drive alone can provide.
Best of luck, and don’t contact me about my favorite exchanges lol, because now you know. Gemini and Binance are going where Coinbase hasn’t lately, in terms of increasing ease of use and speed of onboarding.
For more info on crypto, check out my books on Amazon.