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Year: 2022

Where to farm Stablecoins?

Posted on by careyourpresent

Stablecoins definitely are the cornerstones of any Crypto investors.

(Image Credit: Anchor Protocol)

These are coins where you can take profits and wait for chances. Where do you farm stablecoins?

I prefer to keep it simple and like to get the Stablecoins itself as rewards from the stablecoins that you have put in – meaning you put in stablecoin X and you will get X rather some some other reward coins of the protocol as the price may be very volatile. Even at high APR, you can also lose your precious capital.

With the point above, you can easily guess that it will be Anchor Protocol at 19.5% (currently the min rate is 15% after the recent new adjustment). Of course recently there are many questions on the reserve yields and the sustainability of the protocol. In my opinion after some calculations, around 6-8% should be sustainable (still higher than stock yields!).

For people who like you explore other options, you may wish to consider the followings:

Of course you can also park in CEX (centralised exchange), Celsius, Blockfolio etc.

Did you realise that I put the twitter site instead of the link to the direct protocol? Do you know why? This is because investor should always read the protocol, twitter, telegram, discord, documentation etc before putting their hard earn money in it. Do your due dilligence!

Please also remember stablecoins are not totally risk free. Centralized stable coin like USDC / USDT are under the mercy of governments. These coins are backed by USD, hence can crash if USD crash.

Algorithmic stable coins like UST can de peg too if its underlying coin(s) crash.

Web 3.0 vs 2.0

Posted on by careyourpresent

This will be a very short post. There are people asking me what are the differences between Web 3.0 and 2.0.

Let me share a very simple definition of the difference between the both!

(1) Web 2.0 is the current version of the internet with which we are all familiar with, while Web 3.0 represents its next phase, which will be decentralized, open, and of greater utility – Crypto!

(2) Web 2.0 is controlled by your big companies such as Google whereas Web 3.0 is decentralized, built on the same concept of Blockchain technology, where the data is decentralized and runs on a token-based economy. This simply means, data is not controlled or saved in a central server but by various inter-connected servers unlike Web 2.0.

In short, decentralized, higher utility for all normal users would be the future – CRYPTO!

Guide to useful site (Coingecko)

Posted on by careyourpresent

There are literally thousands of Cryptocurrencies in this world, more are being minted every single day, or even hours etc. This very confusing for people who have just started in Cryptocurrency, let me introduce a good site for you to start with:
https://www.coingecko.com/

Most of the coins are listed in this site (with exception of the new coins that are recently created, it may take sometime to be tracked by them). In this site, you can do various things

  1. Find the type of coins that you are interested to learn via filter/category.
  2. Find out the various metric of the coins, example, Market Cap, Website, Explorers, Community, chart etc.
  3. Learn where to buy and sell specific coins.
  4. Find out which blockchains that coins is/are in/using.
  5. Create an account and add your favorite coins. Set price alert.

1. Find the type of coins that you are interested to learn via filter/category.

For example, you wish to learn about Stablecoins. Click “All Categories”, then search for “Stable”. After which, click “Stablecoins”. You will be able to see all the Stablecoins that are listed.

2. Find out the various metric of the coins, example, Market Cap, Website, Explorers, Community, chart etc.

For example you want to learn about Bitcoin. Just click “Bitcoin” in the main page. You will be able to see everything that you wish to know.

3. Learn where to buy and sell specific coins.

This is slightly trickier. First find the coin you want to trade -> click the coin and you will be direct to the page that show more information about the coin -> scroll all the way to the bottom and you should see something like the picture below. Under the “Pair” column, these are the common pairs which you can trade and at which place to trade -> click the pair that you wish to find out more, example “BTC/USDT” at Binance, you will be directed to the respective sites to trade.

4. Find out which blockchains that coins is/are in/using.

For example, you may have heard of Luna and want to find out which blockchain this ocin is using.

First find the coin you want to trade -> click the coin (example luna) and you will be direct to the page that show more information about the coin -> scroll all the way to the right and you should see something like the picture below. Under the “Explorer” column, it will show you “Terra”. Hence, Luna is in Terra blockchain.

(For those who are slightly more advance, you can click and go to Terra explorer, input your wallet address and you can see all your transactions. Everything in blockchains are recorded!)

5. Create an account and add your favorite coins. Set price alert.

This is the most straightforward. Click the “Signup” at top right of the page and create account. You can also download the app and set your price alerts for your favorite coins!

Risks and managing risks in DeFi

Posted on by careyourpresent

Cryptocurrencies are starting to attract lots of attention around the world from all sorts of people. Similarly, it always attract people to exploit and gain from from your losses.

Risks in crypto are real. Let me share some risk management tactics with you.

  1. Rush to exit: When something happen to a protocol, e.g. hack, exploit, founder suddenly left, small retailers always find it difficult to escape. Why? The network become congested and gas fee will shoot to sky high. What should you do? Be prepared for this risk, always only put the amount that you can lose for the protocol that is most risky to you. Another alternative is to put in Centralised exchange (CEX), but you will have CEX risks. As saying goes, “not your wallet, not your money”.
  2. Smart Contract Risk: recent Grim Finance exploit. Always do your research. Check Audit/Codes. There are many sites helping you with this (please refer to the useful links in the guide tab).
  3. Founder/Macro Risks: Founder’s sudden death or exit scam. If this really happen, we can’t run from it. Similarly if suddenly world wide macros (wars, trade sanctions etc) change badly, we have to do live with it. Management your risk by advanced portfolio management, e.g. max 10% portfolio into risker protocols.
  4. Stablecoins risks. What if USDT, USDC is not really backed? What if government pass some regulation about stablecoins? UST depegged? Always spread your basket or even change to fiat, gold, silver etc. Good to keep some investment in TradFi, gold, silver etc too.
  5. Wallet risks: Everyone in crypto definitely heard of wallets being hacked.
    • Always use a hardware wallet (e.g Ledger, Trezor) with Metamask.
    • Never type or save your seed phrase online. If any sites ask you for seed phrase, please feel worry and don’t key in.
    • 2FA using Google Authenticator, not SMS.
    • Keep coins off exchange. Yes, exchange can be hacked!
    • Access sites via bookmarks. There are many scam sites around.
    • Use a separate laptop for cryptos.
    • Use more than 1 wallets. Main wallets for HODL coins + active wallet with very little coins inside for things like airdrop, connecting to a new protocol, testing etc.
  6. Greed/Fear risk: When the market keeps going up, always take profit. Don’t keep keeping that it will goes higher and higher. Quite often, it is never a one line journey up. Hence, take some profit off when it 2x (e.g half to take back your capital). Channel the profits into stablecoins or even fiat. Never put in more money than you can afford to lose. Never borrow money to invest.
  7. Always do your own due diligence: Never believe in shilling by those guru youtubers, twitter crypto experts, especially they shout this coin will be 10x, 100x. Quite often they got in much earlier than you and you will become their exit liquidity. Always do own research, check the protocols, tvl, join discord/twitter/medium/website of the DeFi site, see how much the VCs are inside etc.
  8. Airdrop risk/suddenly unknown coins appearing in your wallets: People tend to like free thing but always do your due diligence. You may suddenly find coins appear in your wallets, please check and don’t just try to sell it, there are many cases where your wallets will be drained dry. Hence, always check before connect your wallet to any site. Some airdrops are free after you complete some tasks, but before you claim, they may ask you to pay them first before they give you the free airdrops, please check before paying them.
  9. Always do a test transfer. For people who are used to TradFi, transferring crypto tokens from one address to another address are often very scary. Always test transfer with a small amount that you can afford to lose. After transfer this small amount and it work, then do the full transfer.
  10. Portfolio Management: Lastly, this is the most important point. Most of the time, many people just buy and sell cryptos without understand and managing own risk profile. Plan first before you start anything in crypto. I would suggest to keep majority bluechips and stablecoins with some degen farming in DefI site. Some examples of sample portfolios as below:

Guide to create Metamask wallet

Posted on by careyourpresent

In web 3.0, you may wish to interact with the various DeFi Protocol, but the question is how to start? There are so many wallets around, which one to choose? One of the most common wallet that you may have heard of is Metamask. This guide will show you 3 simple steps to setup Metamask in your Chrome Extension:

Step 1 Go to : https://metamask.io/. Click Download, choose Chrome, then install Metamask for Chrome.

Step 2 Install : https://metamask.io/. Choose “Yes, let’s get set up!” Select “I agree”.

Step 3 Setup your password and secret recovery phrase.

Tadah! You are done. Next is learn how to use Metamask, learn more about DeFi, crypto, blockchain etc.

Newbie starter guide for Cryptocurrency

Posted on by careyourpresent

For most people who heard about cryptocurrency, these are the few things that will come to their mind:

  • It’s scam. Ponzi. So volatile.
  • What is cryptocurrency?
  • How to start? It looks so difficult.
  • How to convert my fiat currency into crytocurrency?
  • What are DeFi? CEX? APR? APY? Staking? Lending? Farming?
  • What are hot/cold wallet?
  • Proof of Stake? Proof of Work?

In this site, I will cover the basics of cryptocurrency in the most concise manner to get everyone onboard of cryptocurrency. Most people won’t be interested in the technical details of crypto. People want to know how to buy Google/Microsoft/Apple shares after reading and learning more about their financial statements, products, vision, etc but not the technicality of what is the programming codes behind their Google Drive/Keep/Gmail etc

This is the first post to cover some some basic of Cryptocurrency:

To put it in the most layman term,

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that can circulate without the need for a central monetary authority such as a government or bank as the middle party – peer to peer transaction.

Individual coin ownership records are stored in a digital ledger which is a computerized database using strong cryptography to secure transaction records, to control the creation of additional coins, and to verify the transfer of coin ownership.

Hence, if you own cryptocurrency, you don’t own anything physical. What you own is a key that allows you to move a record or a unit of measure from one person to another without a trusted third party. This is a common misconception that many people have.

Ok, for those interested in the more technical portion, can just Google and find out online easily. Let’s cut the technical part and go straight to the point. How to buy Cryptocurrency, trade and earn from it?

  1. Open a Centralised exchange (CEX) account, example Gemini, FTX, Crypto.com.
  2. Transfer fiat currency from your bank to CEX.
  3. Do research on what type of coins are available and what coins you want to buy etc.
  4. Buy cryptocurrency using your transferred fiat.
  5. Either keep the cryptocurrency in CEX and earn some extra money by lending, crypto earn, staking etc in CEX or send the cryptocurrency to a digital wallet such as Metamask for farming/staking/lending/trading/collateral etc in various DeFi site.

Some of the terms above are confusing/new to you above. Not to worry. I will slowly cover in my future posts.

Lastly, most Crypto coins are NOT Ponzi. It’s the next new world!