Interesting Investments (Pt 3)

"Blink.......little red circle......what are you dong there little red circle.......blink.......hey, you, little red circle! Why should I click on you? Why!?!. But little red circle, you know I can't leave you there. I have to click on you. But, but, but......"

That little red circle was my gateway drug. The lure of the little red circle is irresistible. You know you don't need to push it. It holds no value for you, but you can't leave it alone.

That little red circle was the notification on the E-Toro app on my new iPhone. But I had left the E-toro platform. What did it want?!?

So I clicked. It was a notification about a cryptocurrency Ripple ($XRP) that was being sued by the SEC in America. Why on Earth would I care about that?

As I read more I became intrigued by cryptocurrency. Having spent 10 years with IBM, I had a summary understanding of what crypto was, but not really how blockchain worked.

This was about to change in a big way!

The more I read, the more I wanted to know. I chased down Youtube videos and everyone was talking about crypto. I jumped on my phone and went to download an app and lo and behold, some years ago I had actually signed up for Coinspot - an Aussie crypto exchange. (The regret was instant that I didn't invest a few bucks at this stage!)

Into The Ether

Our family is kind of funny in that my parents, and Sarahs parents are divorced. That means Christmas day is alternated between the four parents. To cater for everyone, we often do Christmas before the 25th December. This year it was the 23rd at my sister Jac's house.

As usual, Christmas lunch was big, delicious, and accompanied with a few(!) drinks.

I was talking with my brother in law John and in the course of time investing came up. This was followed shortly by the topic of cryptocurrency. This had to be a sign, right? He was putting significant time, energy and finance into the block chain, and while Bitcoin was the main player, John told me all about Etherium.

I had gone from smoking a joint behind the shelter shed to dropping acid with Jim Morrison!

By this stage I had a much better understanding, decided to put some $200 into Etherium ($ETH) to see what would happen. At that stage the price of one $ETH token cost $841.6930756. I was the proud owner of 0.23526367 of a token! I was stoked!

Tweet Tweet Tweet

It seemed that most of the information and action was happening on Twitter, so I brushed the dust off, re-downloaded the app to my phone and reset my password. Talk about a stream of consciousness! There was a hell of a lot to digest so I started writing notes and in short time I had a hit list of coins that I thought I should invest in so I got to work.

Within a short time I had a small portfolio that included: Stellar ($XLM) Litecoin ($LTC) Cadarno ($ADA) Polkadot($DOT)

I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself. I was watching, waiting, hoping and praying for something to happen.....

And Then Came The Bull!

People often refer to trading being somewhat like being on a roller coaster, but the bull run at then end of 2020 felt much more like a tidal wave. I know of bull and bear markets from equities and paper trading, but the strength of the bull market for BTC and crypto was just intense! You can almost feel the crescendo of emotions held in millions of people as Bitcoin ($BTC) rose, a behemoth, seemingly unstoppable! For a new investor dabbling in cryptocurrency, this was a pretty indescribable, surreal experience. On one hand, knowing that you had some investment in this bull run, and the fact that you were currently making money hand over fist while drinking a cold beer and eating bbq food, you felt like the king of the world. You were unstoppable and, at this rate, you would definitely be retiring next year and travelling the world in your own private jet just like the rappers on TV! On the other hand, why didn't you put more in you goose!?!? The FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) was in full effect and all you want to do is pour your hard earned cash into this money making behemoth. Market cap had passed $1 trillion USD. Wow - that is a big number

Enter Youtube commentators...the good, the bad, and the....whatever This video is by one of my favourite commentators on Crypto Currency Jason Pizzino. I came across hime through the ASX Investor Youtube Channel and was immediately impressed by the down-to-Earth, "nopium, approach to investing.

Now while Jason wasn't offering lambos and luxury, he was offering some really sound approaches (NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR!) to investing based on the only signal we have - technical analysis and it really appealed to the LEAN Six Sigma Business Analyst side of me. I've been studying charts for 15 years in my day job - I just needed to switch gears to the markets.

And now we are here. We are into 2021 and I've started blogging (again!) I've got a small portfolio in the ASX, NASDAQ and CRYPTO and I'm currently ahead.

I'm going to try to keep my investments page up to date (when I can find a suitable format) but till then, be sure to check out the links in this page and follow me on Twitter petedeecrypto for all crypto and design related things or petesguitar for everything else

Review: The Teskey Brothers - Half Mile Harvest (Deluxe)

What an amazing album!

"You're just plain mean to me woman..." - What an opening line for one of the most incredible albums I have heard in a long time. This album bounces from meandering feeling tracks like "Crying Shame" right through to dirty, midnight, bourbon soaked blues on "Hard Feeling".

Josh Teskeys voice is strong, confident and full of dust bowl gravel, but can also be soft, tender and warm. The lyrical content is sometimes predictable with stories of love, loss and desperation, but delivered in a way that makes you believe what he's preaching.

In guitar circles, where great technical players are a dime a dozen, true feel players like Sam Teskey are a rare gem. He delivers his message through his divine note selection, space and timing, with sublime patience, a virtue often missing from mainstream guitar players. This restraint is so superbly stated in "Say You'll Do" - it must be 2am and raining somewhere! He also seems to be more than comfortable playing across styles including slide which is such a cool thing to hear in 2021

Brendon Love (bass) and Liam Gough (drums) hold a beautiful, understated role supporting the Teskey front men and they do it with super style that sounds effortless. On tracks like "Shiny Moon" the addition of percussion elements harks back to an Allman Brothers sound.

I really can't express what a revelation the Teskey Brothers have been and I can't wait to buy, and review more of their work.

You can help support more of these reviews by using the link below

The Arcanum

It was in 2011 when I was employed by IBM that I was sent to work in Brisbane, Australia. By all accounts it was a pretty straight forward job helping transform and improve a customer help desk. Possibly not the most exciting job in the world, but it was a nice hotel to live in for a few months and the weather was balmy in October, as it is in Queensland at that time of year.

As luck would have it, I had the opportunity to take my trusty Nikon D5000 and 35mm f1.8 lens (it's been superseded now but was a fantastic camera to learn with). I was very new to photography and gravitated to 'street', or unposed photos and I loved the challenge and raw excitement of adventuring. This was a time before children. I may have even had hair!

My partner in crime in these wandering trips to Brisbane was my good friend and technology savant, Nathan Kelly, who introduced me to Google Plus (Googles now defunct social platform). Now I didn't know much about G+ but signed up for an account and started uploading photos and interacting with photography groups. After a few days I got my first follower and I was hooked!

I continued to upload images from my adventures around Brisbane each evening and made it to about 20 followers. That's the big time right? Hahahaha!

After a fantastic night out eating and drinking and soaking in Brisbane's mide-week night life I went off to sleep on a Tuesday night and woke up to 1000 new followers!

What on Earth was going on?!!

It just so happened that I was fortunate to make it on to a list of up and coming photographers by the sensational (and highly influential) Thomas Hawk leading to a rapid upswell in followers. I ended up with over 11,000 people all connected through G+. It was a fantastic community and I regularly participated in Chrysta Rae's Scavenger Hunts (which looks like it has a new home at https://scavengerhunt.photography/ as Google Plus shut down)

By 2015 I had been on Google Plus for a few years and was really enjoying photography, but was a little frustrated at my lack of progression. Through the G+ platform I was introduce to The Arcanum - A mentorship program for budding photographers with mentors being selected from top tier artists in lens craft. I entered my name into the pool and submitted my portfolio and waited with baited breath to see whether a) I had made the cut and b) who my mentor would be.

And that's when I was introduced to the genius that is Stephan Bollinger

The premise of the Arcanum was quite simple. A small group (cohort) of photographers would be mentored by Stephan through a series of 9 levels. Each level had a certain photography challenge and every few levels there would be a live critique through video chat by Stephan.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the Arcanum and Stephan is a brilliant photographer, musician and comedian! He has a huge library of great photography content and I can highly recommend

I won't go into all of the detail, but here are some of my favourite photos from the Arcanum

Buy the amazing new Nikon D6500 with the link below and help me run the website! It's a win win!