What should a crypto investor look for?
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I don’t often sing the praises of specific stocks or cryptos because I prefer to talk about macro trends. This is because any fool can make money if they pick the direction correctly and it takes a genius to make profits when the general market is running against their specific position. As we all experienced, even total novices can make a lot of money long in a raging bull and few of us have been covering ourselves in glory being long in the bear market of the Federal Reserve tightening environment.
If you want to be long-only then the are only a few things you can do in a bear market:
1) Stay away.
2) Dollar cost average through the bear in anticipation for sunnier days ahead.
3) Be incredibly selective, bordering on option 1.
4) Invest in special situations you are completely comfortable getting embroiled in.
With this in mind I am buying a crypto with numbers 2, 3 and perhaps 4.
So let’s start with the macro position.
For me this is the set up:
1) The U.S. is going to try and shutter crypto by using the techniques of “Operation Choke Point.” This amounts to making crypto business impossible in the format that has brought it success. You can wiki the original Choke Point and you will see the very obvious similarities. It is going to be close whether the U.S. follows China’s lead and pulls off crippling crypto V1.
2) Crypto cannot be un-invented and in any event will morph. V1 leads to V2, etc.
3) The digital world will have digital currency and it will be crypto, be it public or private sector.
4) There will be wave after wave of crypto-enabled products that will become extremely valuable.
5) Investing in crypto-enabled projects is high risk but extremely high reward.
6) Project picking is key to investment success.
As for us, number 6 is the one that is important. There is no point in being Nostradamus if you don’t lay your money down.
First let me state, investing is NOT trading. Riding a pump and dump or a mania is not investing. Picking the next moon is not investing. Buying bitcoinbitcoin and hodling is investing, but buying and selling dogecoindogecoin on the back of tweets is not.
So what should a crypto investor look for?
1) A product that exists.
2) A product that has a great business model.
3) An established product that is seasoned with use and has thus demonstrated its security.
4) A product that is getting an audience that uses it.
5) A product with an established team.
6) A project with limited risk of token dilution.
7) A project with a non-stratospheric “real world” valuation.
8) A project you use and appreciate.
This is where my crypto tip comes in. The following crypto project fits those criteria: Presearch (PRE).
I am slowly buying Presearch tokens. It is a crypto Adwords-style system. It ticks for me all the above boxes.
1) A product that exists.
a. It exists and is operational: www.presearch.com.
2) A product that has a great business model.
a. It’s a crypto GoogleGOOG AdWords clone. Google + crypto.
3) An established product that is seasoned with use and has thus demonstrated its security.
a. It’s been out there for a long time.
4) A product that is getting an audience that uses it.
a. It’s hard to trust PR numbers, but you can see a good cohort of “advertisers.”
5) A product with an established team.
a. They have been going for years.
6) A project with limited risk of token dilution.
a. 400 million of a total 500 million tokens are out there.
7) A project with a non-stratospheric ‘real world’ valuation.
a. $34 million is chump change in the scheme of things.
8) A project you use and appreciate.
a. I use the search engine that pays me a bit of money and advertises staking the project’s tokens, currently for free, but would happily pay for clicks like millions do with Google.
Paying searchers is clearly a massive draw in due course (I’ve made $3), which amounts to probably $100 a year and I use the search engine instead of Google because it is generally good enough and $100 is $100!
On the other side of the equation, it is not charging for clicks yet in Presearch tokens but it surely will and I’d happily pay as I have already got clicks to my sites worth probably $100 and I do not see its clicks being any less worthy than Google’s click fraud-mired traffic.
Now considering this is a working Google clone that pays searchers and will soon enter a business that Google makes the best part of $200 billion a year and has a market cap of $1.3 trillion (or as I like to think of it $1.3 million, million) then Presearch’s market cap may as well be $0 in comparison.
I’m not suggesting this project will surpass Google or even put a dent in it. I’m not suggesting it will succeed even. However, this is exactly the sort of project that will have a crack at the big time in the way that the survivors of the 2000 dotcom crash winter had a chance to became titans.
So while the U.S. plays wack-a-mole with cryptocurrencies, this is where I’ll be looking, because ultimately it is “use-cases” that will determine the long-term success of crypto.
Disclosure: I own presearch tokens.
