Hi. My name is Dylan. I’ve been getting deep into crypto since about January, and I’m writing to explain how I’ve managed to route all of my expenses except a few basics into appreciating and interest-bearing assets on various blockchains. The main benefit for me is that my checking account now earns interest and is held in assets which periodically and sometimes dramatically increase in value. This means I have more money to spend.
In the past two weeks, my portfolio is up about 50%, so I have a substantial amount more money to spend.
This time, blockchain is here to stay—technology has finally managed to make it practical. This article will be a long one, and in it I will explain my reasoning behind the conclusion that certain tokens are an outstanding investment as well as the way in which I am able to sell a token, then spend the money at the store using Apple Pay less than an hour later.
Part 1: The BSN
The BSN (Blockchain-based Service Network) is a China-backed service network which aims to make blockchain technology more user-friendly for developers and end users around the world. In August, a major event is coming up for the BSN: it will integrate six public blockchains. These six are Ethereum, Chainlink, Cosmos, Tezos, NEO, and EOS. Chainlink is not like the others. Described as an oracle network, Chainlink (LINK) is an Ethereum-based blockchain which aims to provide trust in off-network interactions. Applicable to smart contracts, LINK is growing rapidly in terms of market cap as use cases skyrocket.
The other five blockchains all offer their own benefits. I see it as a system in which Etherum (ETH) becomes a sort of new internet, a universal language with a network and computing power. The remaining for chains, Tezos (XTZ), Cosmos (ATOM), Neo (NEO), and Eos (EOS), are all like popular programming languages. They offer their own benefits and LINK attaches these services to ETH, the main network.
The BSN will presumably start the party by onboarding these six chains as quickly as possible, and then roll out tools to enable developers to build practical dapps (decentralized applications) on the ETH blockchain or one of the adjunct blockchains. Tezos (XTZ) offers free and secure transactions, while Cosmos (ATOM) offers low fees and lightning-quick turnaround. These contrast with Ethereum’s (ETH) model by speeding up transactions, beefing up security, and dropping fees—but Ethereum’s (ETH) user adoption is unparalleled and frankly the development team is about the best in the business.
So the BSN will make blockchain applications commonplace by providing essentially a new set of play-nice integrations enabling developers to build decentralized applications about the way they currently build cloud-based apps for our phones. Neat.
Part 2: Investing in cryptocurrencies
Investing in crypto is easy. The market is trending a specific direction that is relatively easy to read once you see it, and price prediction is essentially the same thing as volume prediction this early on—so just try to guess where volume is going to increase most and you will be able to purchase tokens that will outperform the others fairly reliably for now.
My top 3 long picks at the moment are Ethereum (ETH), Cosmos (ATOM), and Chainlink (LINK). I think LINK will do well—indeed, already is doing well—because it offers something nobody else really seems to be able to offer. Ethereum will outperform for a similar reason, and I like ATOM of the remaining four contenders because it pays the most interest and is resistant to whimsical price dips because staked tokens remain locked for 21 days after unstaking.
You can invest how you will, or not, but watch your tokens’ price and maybe the relevant news. You’ll probably do fine if you decide to—it’s a bull market right now. COINBASE Pro allows free ACH transfers from banks, so what I do is pull the money over that way. It’s free and easy, but it takes 6-7 business days so I always bite my nails a bit in the interim.
Once I have funds in my crypto account, my current gameplan is to put them into Tezos and send the whole sum (free) to my Atomic Wallet. This keeps fees under a few bucks most of the time, as I’m only paying one transaction fee to Coinbase for the Tezos purchase. Once my money is in Atomic Wallet, I transfer from Tezos to whichever token I intended to buy initially.
This does incur a second transaction fee, but I stake Atomic Wallet Coin (AWC) through Atomic Wallet, and they provide me with cash back in AWC (a low market cap token which is doing well recently). AWC offers staking rewards of up to 23% annual interest, so this seems like an excellent investment at the moment—though there is a hangup, which is that, since I live in Texas, I cannot access any of the exchanges where AWC is traded. So I can’t sell them yet.
Part 3: Cashing out cryptocurrency to buy groceries with BlockCard and Apple Pay
I’ll move money from one token to the next if there’s a fluctuation in price, and there are several places I put it where I can’t get it back right away, so I have to be very careful not to get excited at a price bounce and buy a bunch of AWC. Always be careful when investing! You could lose your money if you’re not! Aside from that, however, it more or less sits in the Atomic Wallet until I’m ready to go to the store.
When I want to spend my crypto, I have to make sure I'm shopping at a store where they accept Apple Pay or Visa, if you want to use the physical card. Most grocery stores do by now, but best be sure because you don't want to end up in the checkout line unable to pay.
Then, about thirty minutes before, I make a transfer. I sometimes have to trade for a coin accepted by Ternio, but this is easy enough because they accept a lot of them. I’ll decide how much money I need, then I copy the relevant wallet address from the BlockCard site and paste it into the Send form in Atomic Wallet.
After I send the money, it is converted into Ternio (TERN) and becomes available to spend in my wallet. From this point, I just go to the store and check out. I have 145,000 TERN staked, so my purchases earn me 6% cashback in TERN. The TERN price fluctuates a little bit, but oddly I’ve learned to try to time my purchases to coincide with the highest TERN price, which results in more savings. Ternio is also offering bank accounts now, so one day soon I’ll be able to post a new article and explain how I use cryptocurrency to pay my car payment.
Conclusions, predictions
I think it’s safe to say that cryptocurrency is going to be mainstream within the next year or two. Volume is skyrocketing and DeFi is taking off, but more importantly, the factors driving these metrics are extremely sound. Companies like Coca Cola have come up with use-cases for blockchain that will continue to drive volume, and developers are about to be able to open the floodgates to dapps with a new set of tools designed to make it easy to use Ethereum as a server to run them.
If the decentralization trend continues, every grandmother in the world might soon be capable of using a decentralized exchange to trade tokens in a way that generates value and buying things such as groceries with cryptocurrency. Social media may be replaced by a dapp protocol enabling users to build unique and immersive profiles. Libraries may be entirely uploaded to the blockchain, available to users worldwide for little or no cost. Voting could be entirely secure, with real-time results tallying.
Originally published at Cent: https://beta.cent.co/+e5fa2j
Affiliate Links To Relevant Services:
Coinbase: https://www.coinbase.com/join/daniel_scc
Atomic Wallet: https://atomicwallet.io/
Ternio BlockCard: https://dashboard.getblockcard.com/i/O29FaEK2
Contact the Author:
Thomas Dylan Daniel is an existential philosopher, professional ethicist, author, and biophysicist. Connect via his website or Facebook, or have a look at his books.
