WHAT?: #1 - Tools and Discounts
Exchanges, earning interest, staking, lending, IRA accounts and must have research tools
Read “Crypto: Case for Crypto - Once in a Generation Wealth Creation Opportunity, Don't Miss Out!” before this if you aren’t sold on why you should invest in crypto NOW!
Now that you gained knowledge on Why you should invest and leaned how (strategies), you need tools like these to execute your strategy!
We are in early adoption phase as of 2021. That means, there is a lot of friction in terms of acquiring coins/tokens. That is why many people are not yet investing; hence, low cost and high profitability.
Invest in the right tools to save your precious time and subscribe to good sources of information. Moreover, you can tax deduct these expenses to offset your gains.
You need many tools and trading accounts to be able to buy coins/tokens. So, it is important to understand these well and take advantage of discounts through referral programs that benefit both the referral and referee.
Let’s say you decided to buy a coin, you need to find out which exchange offers that coin at coinmarketcap.com or app.
Then open an account on those exchanges, aggregate those using other tools, understand how to store and get interest rate on those coins and stay ahead of taxation.
With any account you open, don’t forget to enable non-SMS 2 factor authentication. SMS is hackable. Use Authy or Google Authenticator. And backup your 2FA codes and avoid major pain!!!!
* Good to have. ** Must have. *** Can’t live without it
Exchanges
Centralize exchanges create private/public keys for you when you buy a coin. You can transfer coins to other addresses (or exchanges) on the same blockchain. You never have to deal with address and etc. KISS - Keep it sweet and simple.
Early Investor
Why?: Choose this when you want to buy large cap to mid cap (top 20 coins with market cap in 100+ Billions). You can simply buy BTC, ETH, LINK, FIL and many more and store securely. Low risk, medium reward - 3x potential.
Coinbase** or Coinbase Pro - Most trusted and secure exchange. Coinbase is easy to use for most common coins. They create your public/private key to hold your coins on your behalf. You can buy coins/tokens and leave it there, move to cold storage, move to your own offline or hardware wallet. You can also earn interest in Coinbase (not Pro) on some coins through staking (Ex: 5% on Algo coin). Coinbase Pro is a complex trading only tool. Coinbase Pro has lower fees when you are trading more than 25k/month. It has same login for both site. You can always move funds between coinbase and pro for FREE. Offers free instance deposits up to $100k/day based on KYC. However, fees are higher than Binance.
Intermediary Investor
Why?: Choose this when you want to buy mid to low cap (top 20-100 coins with market cap in Billions) coins that are not available on Coinbase. Medium risk, medium reward - 5x potential.
Binance.US* (for US Residents - Referral code - 53464414 - 20% discount on trading) - #1 exchange in the world; however, it is still a centralized, less trustworthy than Coinbase. More coins are available than Coinbase. Lowest fees when you buy a BNB coin and use that to pay for trading.
Binance.com (non-US Residents only) - This exchange offer the max selection of tokens available and lowest fees, Use the referal link when signing up to get discount on trading fees up to 20%.
Advanced Investor
Why?: Choose this when you want to buy mid to low cap (top 20-100 coins with market cap in Billions) coins like DOT, ADA, and etc. More risk and more reward - 10x potential.
Crypto.com*** - This is App only. Very easy to use. I am very much impressed by how many coins they are offering and adding. They have my favorites - VET, AUDIUS, ASX, RUNE, Terra LUNA and etc. We both get $25 with referral code.
BTW - I got the CRO debit card and staked (earning 8% interest rate) some tokens to get FREE Netflix and Spotify subscriptions. There are multiple levels, choose lowest 2 options based on your needs :-)
Kraken - 2nd best US based exchange. The most complicated user interface. But it offers many coins and offers good staking rewards (interest rate on coins that you bought - Ex: 7% on Polkadot)
KuCoin* - Non-US based centralized exchange. This has largest selection of small cap coins. You have to report on FINRA and etc. Use the referral link to get discount on trading.
Coinlist.co* - This is for initial coin offering. A very attractive gains if you can get in ICO. This is not only for new micro-cap coins, but also for mid-cap coins raising funds in subsequent sales. Ex: SOL was offered at $0.22 cents when price was $14 for max investment of $100.
Check icodrops.com for your favorite coins.
Super Advanced Investor
Why?: Choose this when you want to buy small/micro cap coins like AUDIO and etc. High risk and high reward - 20x potential. Also, there are many options for staking on different Defi. I don’t recommend staking small cap tokens as you may want to sell those when alt-coin season is over.
Ethereum Decentralized Exchanges - See the section below. Ethereum platform is like iOS or Android with many apps on it. Ethereum has many apps with their own tokens known as ERC20 tokens. You can trade these on DEXes on Ethereum platform. You need to create your own ETH wallet with private/public key with phrase and securely store them.
All you need to remember is 12 word phrase and the public/private addresses can be recreated by the wallet. If you loose phrase or send coins to wrong addresses, you lose all the money. Try with small amounts first to get a hang of it.
Decentralized Exchanges (DEX)
Metamask*** - You will need to install this Chrome Extension to use on Web 3.0 DEX. This will give you ETH address like 0x8920…... Once you go to any Dex, you can simply click to connect.
You can install Metamask on web and mobile with the same Phase. Password protect your Metamask at all times.
1Inch** (other competitors - Uniswap, Macha) - All ERC20 tokens are available here. Better than Uniswap and others as it gets the cheapest price across multiple Dexes. However, you need to watch out for slippages and exchange rate. Otherwise, you will end up paying 25% more price and higher gas.
THORChain - Muti-blockchain exchange - this is still in beta. This will be my ultimate DEX
Dapp Radar** - FREE - See all the Dapps across all blockchains by rank, market cap, user base and etc.
Defi Pulse** - FREE - DeFi ecosystem overview and value locked in each project.
Aggregation Tools & Bots
All Investors can benefit from these tools. You need to invest in tools as they will simplify tracking. Sometimes, you can even forget the fact that you bought something somewhere or stake. Believe me, it did happen to me. A single token with good returns will cover the cost and you can also tax deduct these expenses.
Coinstats*** - ($49/yr. 20% Promo Code: Welcome_From_Mariam) A very simple tool that tracks and gives analytics on profit/lost for all of your tokens, staking across many exchanges & local Ethereum wallet too.
Promo Instructions: It's activated from our website and your access is synced through all of your devices! After logging in web, just tap on your Profile icon on the top right -> select Become Pro -> click on Promo Code below a subscription plan that suits you most, and input this code to get the discount!
You need to create API keys so that Coinstats can READ transactions. Don’t give permission to WRITE or TRANSFER!
Zerion or Zapper - Free Ethereum ERC20 token holdings, pooling and staking. Sometimes, they offer trading as well based on Uniswap and etc. I usually go to 1Inch and trade there!
3Commas - ($15/month subscription is good for most) A very powerful aggregation and trading tool. I don’t login into my Binance at all as I use this. It also has automatic bots that you can copy from others to get decent gains by betting on many coins.
Taxes
Koinly*** - ($50/yr) - You need to report taxes. Some exchanges offer tax documents and many don’t. You need to treat these tokens as any other capital asset like stocks. Exchanging a token to USD or other token is a taxable event. Short Term tax rate: your regular income tax. Long Term tax rate (hold for > 1yr): 10%, 15%, 20% based on your income.
This tax software connects to many exchanges, your local Eth wallet and calculates taxes based on your transaction history.
News Tools
Crypto Panic*** - FREE - Have you wondered why your coin went up or down and have no clue. This aggregates data from all news sites and shows you hot trending topics and you can search for whats going on with your coin. Stop panicking with this tool!
Market Dynamics Tools
Blockchain Center*** - FREE - Understand the alt season index that is useful to decide when to get and out of Alts and BTC. Technically, >75 move to BTC; <25 move to Alts.
Look Into Bitcoin - FREE - Great charts on market cycles and market entry/exit analytics.
Coin Dance* - FREE - Give you good stats on adoption across the globe and demographies
Bybt - FREE - If you are into futures, options and liquidations, this is the tool for you. You can also see what Greyscale (largest crypto investment fund) is doing - selling or buying and etc. Based on futures, you can time your buys and sells.
Fundamental Analysis Tools
Coin Market Cap*** - FREE - Lists all coins, market cap, ranking, price and what exchanges you can buy on.
Messari** - $29/month - One of the best resources tool with best information. Find full details about coins, tokenomics, VC investors, market cap and most importantly latest news and industry research of that token industry. IT IS WORTH IT!
Glass Node - $349/yr - A very trusted blockchain analytics tool that tells you info on realtime trends on how many new addresses are created, where the tokens are going? Are miners moving to exchanges to sell and etc. NULP score - a score of how many addresses are sitting on profit? Will they be taking a profit and sell ahead to book profit?
Technical Analysis Tools
Aurox*** - (FREE for now) Excellent web based technical analysis tool that integrates trading view. Click on +Indicators —> Aurox Indicators —> Aurox Indicator to show you buy/sell signals (green/blue triangles), auto created trend lines (green/red lines) and more.
Trading View*** - ($155/yr for pro) Best web based technical analysis with buy/sell indicators for both crypto and stocks. It has screening and ideas where you can see other people analysis. IT IS WORTH IT!
Sentiment Analysis Tools
Lunar Crush* - FREE - Alt coins investment is very speculative because we don’t know how to value the coins. So, it is mostly based on sentiment. This tool aggregates data from social media and other sites and gives Galaxy Score. You can also see what influencers are talking about and get on a new coin.
Coin Telegraph Pro - $99/month - VOTECS score collects info about how hot a coin is on twitter and trending. This is too expensive and not that useful!
Additional Research Tools
Tools Playlist https://l.avallam.com/cryptotools***
Indexes
Invest in indexes that are focused on trends so that you don’t have to keep reading. Here are some ideas
Indexed Finance* - Has a list of indexes for DeFi, NFT and etc
DPI Index - This is the most trusted DeFi index that invests in latest DeFi innovative projects. Many new projects are coming that are disruption this space and killing the most successful old ones. They keep rotating into new projects. Saves you a lot of time.
Basket Defi Index* - This is classic example of new coming in and disrupting old one. This is the interest earning version of the DPI index.
I am working on strategies to find good way to bet on trends with minimal time effort and also maximize returns at the same time. Will post soon.
IRA Investment
BTC investment returns are astronomical. As “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” says, rich people don’t earn more, they save more by reducing taxes. Roth-IRA allows you to buy crypto with post-taxed savings, i.e, never pay any tax on gains. IRA delays taxes till retirement. Currently, there is no way to buy ETFs yet to invest in crypto. The only way is to invest is through self-directed IRA accounts.
Kingdomtrust - Recommended by Pomp. It has many options for keys - they manage, or custody with fidelity or offline storage. Has low yearly and setup fees.
Digital Real-estate
Unstoppable Domains***: Register .crypto and .zil domains with 1 time payment of around $40. No more renewals. You can configure to have your ETH address or a website.
Staking
You want to earn interest on the tokens while holding them? There are some DeFi platforms that lend your tokens (Ex: for 13 second loans) and give you awesome returns. It is real in Defi - no scam. Large caps tokens like BTC, ETH you can earn 5% and a whopping 12% on USDC or USDT or DAI stable coins. Stable coins don’t lose dollar value, but you have risk of coin backer going out of business or DeFi app being hacked. These have been in a business for a while and the chances are low to medium.
Stakingrewards* is a good research site for coin staking options. Zerion/Zapper also have tons of information.
Think of getting that much return on your Checking account. Less risk and good reward. Now do you realize why I say that 25% of the financial institutions that we know today will be out of business in next 5-10yrs?
This space changes all the time - check out this good video
https://youtu.be/wttbzhrBOBA
Celsius - This CEO has very good credential and reputable to bring Wifi to NY subway and etc. I use Celsius app. It is started by a good founding team with a lot of token staking. It is quite easy and secure enough. Use referral link and earn $20 in BTC with your first transfer of $200 or more! You need to transfer to the tokens to the addresses it provides in the app. Sending to wrong token to wrong address is irrevocable. Remember, it takes 24hrs to withdraw tokens from these wallets.
Blockfi (public company) - More transparency and is backed by VCs. Last time I checked, it has only 5 top coins - BTC, ETH and etc.
Voyager - I applied a while back, but couldn’t even get the invite. It was a highly recommended site.
Gemini is the most reputable company. Most of the smaller companies are owned by same investors and most lend to Gemini. But the rates are going to low.
Nexo - European regulated with 40yrs of experience. Get 12% on regular currency staking as well.
KuCoin - Can get you around 20% on stable coins.
Be cautious and spread your bets on multiple buckets as they may get hacked.
Top coins for staking
Liquidity Pools (LPs), Farming and Yield
This is a vast field. LPs, Farming and Yield varies a lot across platforms and always changing. I don’t care much about these for small caps as I want the option to sell at will when the markets are turning. Crypto markets turn too fast to lock my tokens.
Decentralized Exchanges use Liquidity pools - 2 sided (Uniswap) and single sided (Bancor, Thorchain). 2 sided LPS have a chance of impermanent loss.
Your Input
Latest tools are coming up every day. Please share your favorite tools in the comments and I will be happy to include them in the post. For good suggestions, you may get a free month of premium subscription!