Caveate Emptor

Let the buyer beware.

The old Latin warning carries through the ages.
Every asset comes with risk.

Gold tempts common criminals to snatch and run. It even tempts governments (as the US Government did in 1933) to make it illegal to own.
Land is subject to countless threats, beginning with poor governance, pollution, taxation, zoning regulations and its innate characteristic that you cannot take it with you or sell it to anyone outside of the silo it is in.
Art and jewels? You’d better know what you’re doing.
Shares? Good luck. Bitcoin has had a stellar record. It has demonstrated gut-swooping falls and miraculous recoveries. Its future looks bright. Other Cryptos are all speculations. Do your homework. Stablecoins? Versions of the dollar–USDT, USDC, BUSD, etc. are all ostensibly parity dollar-linked in price, but none are sanctioned by the governments of the token whose name they use. They are risks. We are cautious about USDT and more confident with USDC and BUSD (if you’re not familiar with these acronyms, read a good book on the topic–we recommend one linked below.

NYK, NYC

Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins.

That’s a mantra you need to repeat over and over to yourself. “Your Keys” means your self-custodial wallet. It means never handing your tokens over to anyone else–not to an exchange or company promising to give you yield… interest. The moment that happens, you no longer hold the keys, they do. Those are no longer your coins and getting them back is not guaranteed–as investors into FTX, Celsius and other abominations of 2022 found out to their expensive detriment.

Safely holding your coins in your own wallet takes a little bit of study. The short path is to purchase a hardware wallet–like a Ledger or Trezor (search them by name). You can also download accredited wallets on your phone’s app store — just ensure you pick one with a maximum review score.

​Contrary to public perception, common sense legislation will be the best thing that ever happened to crypto and its price. When we get legislation, we will get the full force of major institutional buy in. Of course, bad legislation is always a looming threat. Join a crypto group in social media or elsewhere and stay abreast of news. Subscribe to our news letter and we’ll do much of this for your — alerting you to threats and opportunities.

Tribilization of Crypto

Another double-edged sword is politics entering Crypto. If you’re hoping for a quick-buck, this is one factor that is going to slow things down into the near future.
On the one hand it’s going to retard the adoption of Crypto, slowing its progress. On the other hand it gives us all time to buy this asset at deeply discounted prices; for which we must be grateful. Politically partisanship is the issue. The problem began with highly polarized American politics. If the leftwing had hit on Crypto as the solution and legitimate, the rightwing would, on impulse, have refused to look any further than just rejecting it out of hand. But it went the other way. The right have got behind it (or some of them, other than the grumpy old men). Now nobody on the left will touch it with a barge-pole. This is absurd. Crypto is not a political tool, it’s an engineering solution to a demonstrable problem. Alas, the average sheep will just blunder after their shepherd. You’re not a sheep. You understand that investing as markets drop means big wins when they rebound.