Successful in business, Block Witcher is a specialist consultant and cryptocurrency expert by day and a City Matters columnist by night. Each month, Block Witcher will be your guide in the labyrinth that is cryptocurrency.
In the cryptocurrency world you are said to have ‘laser eyes’ if you think a single Bitcoin is going to be worth $100,000 quickly. Having ‘laser eyes’ signifies you are overly confident on that one Bitcoin.
Like most things with Bitcoin, the devil is in the detail, and, in this case, the detail is the timescale. If you’re talking in terms of the next decade, $100,000 isn’t all that controversial and would simply mean that Bitcoin had appreciated like houses once did.
Thinking Bitcoin is simply going to rise like house prices used to hardly sound like rebel talk, but, in the world of crypto, you need to be realistic and not get carried away. Try thinking of cryptocurrency as a cultural phenomenon rather than an investment opportunity.
As a cultural phenomenon, Bitcoin investors and their stories are often extreme, occasionally dismal and, sometimes, a little funny. What’s not to love about the true story of a guy who lost access to his crypto fortune and hired a hypnotist on a monk’s mountain retreat to try to recover the password from the depths of his subconscious? Or the guy who sold his house, put it all into Bitcoin, made several hundred million dollars, and then lost it playing online poker?
You see, you don’t have to own crypto to enjoy crypto culture. But, if you’ve made it this far you’re probably at least crypto curious. However, don’t expect this column to teach you how to buy crypto, or even give you advice on which coins to buy. And don’t expect this column to answer questions like ‘What will happen in the crypto markets this week?’ That’s what they make tarot cards for.
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Cryptocurrency isn’t just an older generation thing. Millennials and Gen Z have less trust in financial establishments and less trust in political establishments. So ask yourself: ‘How invested are those people in the survival of traditional currency?’
Remember old hedge mazes? The fun was to find your way to the middle, not to escape. And so it is with the Crypto Matters: you’re entering a cultural labyrinth from the outside ‘normal’ world and you want to get to the middle ground of understanding. So, I hope you enjoy my column and grasp a better understanding of crypto and Bitcoin moving forward. My guess is you’ll want to stay.
How cold is your wallet?
When I used to have an office, I kept a fridge in the corner of the room labeled ‘cold storage’. It was an insider crypto joke where the term referred to storing cryptocurrency safely offline. In reality I did not keep my crypto savings in a fridge but on an inexpensive piece of specialist hardware about the size of a USB thumb drive known as a hardware wallet.
In those days people were nervous about entrusting their valuable crypto to an online exchange, several of which had already been hacked. But there is another reason which particularly applies to novice crypto owners: moving crypto off the exchange where you bought it and onto an external hardware wallet makes it harder to panic trade.
The easiest way to lose money in crypto is to buy or sell while swept up in the emotions of the market. This single risk is why so many amateurs end up buying at the top and selling at the bottom, handing their profits over to professionals with more skill, greater experience, and who are able to suppress their emotions during market swings.
So, for a crypto novice, moving your crypto savings onto a hardware ‘cold’ wallet can be a good way of putting it out of your own reach. In reality it only takes a short time to move the assets back to an exchange for trading, but that delay might just be enough cooling off time for the adrenaline to die down and for rationality to return.
Disclaimer: The information within this article is for educational purposes only and is not investment or financial advice. Please do your own research before making any investment decisions.
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