Track your wealth with Kubera

Up until recently and even to quite some extent today, the asset portfolio of many retail investors will prevalently consist of a standard range of assets. This would often include property, vehicles, company stocks and bonds, retirement accounts and insurance, term deposits and bank accounts. These portfolios are, more often than not, partly backed by loans from a local legacy bank.

Over the past decade or so, with the onset of P2P lending and domain flipping in synch with the rise of blockchain technology and the evolving space of crypto (including DeFi, DAOs and NFTs), the menu available to retail investors has been growing exponentially. Not only that – this new era has unwrapped a whole raft of opportunities for new investors who are just making their debut, regardless of their walk of life and net worth.

Apart from the traditional investments I mentioned above, as a retail investor, you will concurrently have your fingers in several cryptos on different exchanges, some of which are staked and others stored across a couple of e-wallets. Your interests could perhaps be also vested in a few P2P lending platforms. Moreover, if you haven’t already taken the leap, chances are you will soon start to throw in a couple of NFTs in the mix.

And with this ever-expanding array of investment opportunities, it is inevitably becoming increasingly complex to systematically keep track of one’s scattered investments, not to mention their current market value. Keeping a manual track via a spreadsheet might cut it for some time, but the longer the list of investments, the harder this will become.

Moreover, in the absence of an up-to-date snapshot of your investments, you will not only find it hard to determine the extent of your profits (hopefully more than your losses), but also find yourself scratching your head when trying to budget your way forward.

Enter Kubera – The Modern-Day Holistic Portfolio Tracker

Kubera is the brainchild of 3 friends who had earlier founded Webyog (database tools) and Newton (a popular email app), after which they had moved on along separate paths, only to come back together to develop this new platform.

In developing Kubera, Rohit Nadhani, Manoj Marathayil and Umesh Gopinath took off from the basic spreadsheets which they used to track their own personal investment portfolios and by combining cutting-edge tech with sensible design, transformed them into a modern portfolio tracking platform, which they named Kubera – the lord of wealth, according to Indian mythology.

The team worked towards ensuring Kubera achieved the following utilities:

• Listing your assets, traditional and non-traditional, in simple spreadsheet form.
• Fetching your current asset values automatically whenever possible.
• Supporting multiple currencies (foreign investments) and crypto.
• Allowing you to store important docs in a document vault.
• Purpose-built sharing controls – ensuring the safe transfer of critical info to the person you designate, in case you become incapacitated.
• Being ad-free under a clean subscription model. In this regard, Kubera stresses that it does not spy on you or sell your data.
• Being a simple and lightweight platform.

As at the time of writing, the aggregate amount of assets tracked with Kubera amount to $13.5 billion dollars.

How Does Kubera Work?

1. Connect your bank and brokerage accounts – Connect your accounts to get real-time values of your bank accounts, credit cards, loans, retirement accounts and holdings automatically through Kubera’s multiple aggregators providing connectivity to over 20,000 banks and fintechs around the world. If your brokerage didn’t connect you can simply do a lookup for the stock ticker symbols and add them. Kubera supports all major stock exchanges in the US, Canada, UK, Europe, Asia, Australia and NZ.
2. Connect crypto wallets and exchanges to get your latest values and holdings. You can otherwise do it manually by looking up your crypto token symbols and adding them. Kubera supports DeFi assets on multiple chains like Ethereum, Polygon, Terra, Avalanche, Solana & Cosmos. With Kubera, you can now also track the value of your NFTs from their respective latest prices.
3. Enter any currency from around the world in the value field and it will convert to your portfolio currency using the latest exchange rates.
4. Enter the address of your real estate or the Zillow URL to get the latest estimated market price of your property (US Only). For non-US, just insert a new row and enter the value manually which you can obtain from the architect of your choice.
5. Enter the VIN number to get the latest estimated market price of your vehicles (US & Canada Only). For non-US/Canada just insert a new row and enter the estimated value manually.
6. Enter your internet domains to get their latest estimated market value.
   
7. Enter the metals you’ve invested in as Kubera tracks the gold, silver, platinum and palladium spot prices.
8. Enter all the assets that can’t be ‘connected’ as manual entries. If possible, enter the cost of your assets as well. If you only know the cost, enter it as the value.

Once you’ve populated all your investments in the given spreadsheet format, Kubera will let you rename or rearrange the sheets and create sections within them.

Kubera will also provide you charts with analytics showing you how your net worth and investments changed over time. Every update to your asset value is kept in history to go back in time to see how you fared. It also allows you to keep an eye on the asset allocation and statistics indicating which asset experienced the highest appreciation or depreciation.

Kubera also calculates accurate rate of returns (IRR) for all your investments based on the multiple contributions & withdrawals and the time invested. It also benchmarks the IRR with the returns from popular indices and tickers (S&P 500, Dow Jones, AAPL, BTC etc.).

Another handy feature of Kubera is the possibility to store important financial or asset documents on the platform.

Through Kubera you will also be able to share a read-only link of your portfolio with others, for example, your Investment Advisor, CPA, or Estate Planner (when applying for loans) or with your household.

In addition, with Kubera’s “Life Beat” feature you can allow portfolio and document access to your beneficiary of choice, however only after extended periods of inactivity. Before Kubera allows automatic access to your beneficiary, you’ll receive multiple prompts to which you can respond with just a click to reset the timer. This feature also comes with a fallback plan – in fact, in addition to your primary beneficiary, you can set a contingent beneficiary (or “Trusted Angel”) who will receive access only in the event that your main beneficiary isn’t able to access your account data.

How Safe is Kubera?

When you think of online security the first thing that comes to your mind is encryption. You may have also heard of ‘end-to-end encryption’ as the gold standard for security. End-to-end encryption makes the data encrypted or unreadable by the very service or the app you used to create it, because the app simply doesn’t hold the keys to decrypt it. It’s only readable by the user who holds the key to decrypt it and no one else.

Given the nature of Kubera’s service, your data in Kubera is not end-to-end encrypted, because it will otherwise not allow the platform to deliver several fundamental features of its service, e.g. background syncing, ensuring safe transfer of your data to your beneficiary as simple Excel and Zip files and many more. Nevertheless, your data in Kubera is indeed encrypted at-rest and in-transit.

At-rest encryption: All Kubera’s databases and files are stored in Amazon (AWS) servers and have their content encrypted while sitting idle and when they’re backed up. This protects against unauthorized copying, transfer or retrieval of user data from the servers. This means that even if someone was somehow able to get hold of a backup of the database, it would be useless, because they wouldn’t have the key to decrypt it.

In-transit encryption: Your data when in transit from Kubera’s servers to your browser requires HTTPS on all pages, and uses HSTS to ensure browsers only ever connect to Kubera over a secure connection.

From a read through Kubera’s website, it seems that sensitivity of its customers data is top of mind and in this respect, Kubera ensures it has Bank Grade security in place to protect this data. Kubera also stresses that it doesn’t sell your data to show ads, nor do they peek at it to offer you financial products.

A further layer of security is Google ID sign-ins which incorporates Two-factor authentication.

Subscription Fees

Kubera never sells your data and in fact is only funded by your subscription fee. The tariff scheme is pretty straightforward, with a $150 per annum fee for personal accounts and bespoke tariffs for customers who manage a pool of portfolios for other private clients. While this may seem a little expensive, I believe that given the valuable utility of Kubera’s service in terms of serving as a one-stop-shop for wealth management, the said fee is a reasonable one.

Customer Support

Kubera offers personalized customer support via email. Their website also contains a help center with an extensive FAQ section. The platform is available both in desktop and app mode (both Apple and Android).

What I found particularly good is the blog on Kubera’s website which is regularly updated with relevant articles relating to investments. To me this indicates that Kubera is not only keen on being there for its users but is also proactive at educating their investment decisions.

A quick scan through Reviews.io relays a wide consensus that Kubera’s service is going down exceptionally well with its clientbase. Common traits that I picked from the comments related to the platform’s user-friendliness and vast integration. On the other hand some users indicated that they found the annual fee a bit pricey.

Kubera’s Edge Over Traditional Wealth-Tracking Platforms

A modern portfolio tracker that’s able to keep up with all of your financial accounts is key to successful wealth management. It will go a step further by enabling you to integrate your various digital assets stored across different wallets and exchanges and automating conversions so you can view the value of such investments in real-time.

As such, Kubera will empower you to work with up-to-the-moment financial data from all of your accounts to generate effective reports, forecasts, and plans for moving your financial goals forward.

This is where Kubera has an edge. It’s not that all of the big portfolio trackers and dashboards on the market are inherently bad. The problem is that most of them have a fatal flaw — or a combination of several — that makes them ill-prepared for the digital asset reality toward which most modern investors are moving.

Some of the main flaws which traditional big portfolio trackers carry include:

a) Poor crypto integration capabilities – The problem with many of the popular portfolio trackers today is that they typically only partner with one or maybe two financial app aggregators. These aggregators are typically built to work in certain countries with specific currencies and financial institutions. That is why the more aggregators a portfolio tracker works with, the more diverse account and asset types the tracker will be able to help you monitor and manage.

b) Inability to view crypto and other digital assets as part of your net worth (or in your preferred currency) – It is pretty hard to keep track of the value of crypto at any given time if you’re using technology that was developed well before the idea of digital currency. And as a result, it’s also hard for these more traditional tools to display the real-time value of your crypto investment in your preferred currency.

c) Outdated security measures – crypto has been set up in a way to promote more democratic and failure-proof usage compared to traditional currency and other assets. However, it also means crypto transactions are almost impossible to stop once they are actioned. Hence, financial management apps need to make sure their security is up to par to protect users who are after integrating their crypto accounts. In addition to security measures such as encryption and two-factor authentication, the same aforementioned third-party aggregators that Kubera works with are helpful for preventing hacks by processing user credentials, rather than Kubera itself accessing and storing these credentials.

Concluding Thoughts

Kubera helps you to organize all your wealth in one place and keep regular track of your net worth in a very simple intuitive way. Security-wise it also ensures safe transfer of this information to your chosen beneficiary.

Through its user-friendly dashboard Kubera will empower you to work with real time financial data from all of your accounts to generate effective reports, forecasts, and plans for moving your financial goals forward.

In the meantime the team at Kubera remain up-to-date so as to keep their platform as comprehensive as possible in terms of swiftly incorporating any up and coming alternative assets.

From a number of customer reviews, Kubera seems to be a good bet, which albeit comes at a somewhat above-par subscription of $150 per year, lives up to the claim of being the modern-day holistic portfolio tracker.

Track your wealth with Kubera

 

Invest With Nexo

When faced with the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies, investors have an ongoing dilemma – exit the position or ‘HODL’. Those investors in it for the long run, will simply look to hold on to their cryptocurrencies with the hope that in the not too distant future they will appreciate and be worth significantly more.

Until then, the coins would typically remain idle in a private wallet – resulting in opportunity costs along the way. After all – and much like gold, Bitcoin and many other cryptos do not yield any income.

With this in mind, Nexo has created an online platform that allows you to earn interest by depositing your digital currencies. In turn, this will then be loaned out to those that wish to engage with crypto-loans.  Today, the company presents itself as a crypto-fiat finance service that offers a variety of distinct features to meet the needs of both investors and borrowers.

In my Nexo review, I explore the ins and outs of how the platform works. This will include a breakdown of the interest-yielding service and an analysis of a number of other key features found on the platform.

[Read more…]

I’m very bullish on the metaverse as an investment class, and I believe that we are still very early and therefore lots of possibilities to build riches are there for the taking. I see the possibility of the metaverse economy being bigger than the real world economy in the near future (say, in around 10 years from now). On the other hand, it is still not clear to me what the winning plays are, so I’ll be working my way down this rabbit hole and trying to understand how I can best invest.

Hanging around other interested people and experts is always key in order to be in early on something, and that is why I will be spending time in the Metaverse Land Club, a metaverse-focused membership club run by Robin Copernicus, who I interviewed on my podcast. Holding assets such as Meebits and being in groups like the MeebitsDAO that are building an open metaverse is also key. Again, you should listen to my interview with Danny Greene, general manager of the Meebits DAO for more information about how they are helping build that open metaverse. Being in top NFT communities like PROOF also helps.

As of right now, if you’re looking to make significant investments, you should be looking at two platforms in particular:

• Decentraland – the top open metaverse
• The Sandbox – the leading commercial metaverse

Apart from land, you can buy the tokens of these metaverses, $MANA and $SAND, both of which are available on some of my favorite exchanges like Kraken.

Buy Metaverse tokens on Kraken

Now one thing we should keep in mind is that the term metaverse has different meanings to many people, and there is not yet any official definition that we all have a consensus about. This reminds me of the early nineties when the internet was still in its commercial infancy, and we always heard about the information superhighway. Now, this information superhighway was supposed to revolutionize our world and bring online shopping, on-demand movies and other things we take for granted on the internet today, but here’s the deal – it was supposed to all happen through our TVs.

Personal computers were deemed to be more suitable for text-based tasks and it was taken for granted that the higher bandwidth (at the time) available through the TV cable network would enable things to happen much faster on our TV sets rather than on our computers. At the time, computer screens were very rudimentary as well compared to TV screens. To cut a long story short, the real internet revolution happened on personal computers and not through television sets, and this paved the way for what we now call the world wide web. Nobody talks about the information superhighway anymore.

If we think about the Metaverse as being a virtual 3D full-immersion world that we access through special goggles and haptic sensor suits, worlds that can render a close-to-real-life experience, then we probably are around a decade early. The idea that we might spend way more time in this kind of metaverse than in “meatspace” is one that is bandied around but might or might not happen.

I personally think of the metaverse as being already something that exists and has existed for a while. We can talk about degrees of enhancement, but go any means of public transport or just any busy areas, and tell me whether all the people glued to their phone screens are already living in a virtual world or not. In my view, the mobile revolution and smartphones brought made this dual-life we lead absolutely real.

Also, think about how humans connect with each other nowadays vs a mere 10-15 years ago. Before, you’d meet someone in real life, then add them on Facebook, or Linkedin. Nowadays, the vast majority of connections are made online first, and in real life later. Sometimes, companies and teams are formed online, develop products and services and only meet in real life for the first time months or years later.

Having said that, there’s a world of potential that lies ahead of us that will also be part of this metaverse experience.

In my opinion, the metaverse in its full form will be a massive equalizer for humanity. Once you’ve got the equipment to experience the metaverse, it will matter less and less where you are in the world physically, and many opportunities that are currently still limited by geographical location will be freed up to everyone who has access to the metaverse. We will see a similar shift as we saw when the internet became ubiquitous, especially through the use of smartphones, which were the real driver of internet penetration in developing nations.

The Metaverse will enhance our sense of meaningful human connection, not only by allowing us to connect with our tribe of people wherever they are in the world, but also by enabling us to stay closer to our family and friends should we so choose. For many at present, this is not an option, as they are forced to move and be closer to work hubs such as the big cities and most developed countries. For many, this, unfortunately, means that husband and wife live far from each other, and kids see less of their parents.

Now, as I hinted at earlier, I’ve been lucky to experience several shifts in our human experience

• pre and post-PC world (the age where I started dreaming big)
• pre and post-internet (the world’s information at my fingertips)
• pre and post-smartphone (always connected to everyone)

These were huge shifts for me, but the metaverse has the potential to bring something that has been missing so far – a rich human connection. While Zoom meetings have revolutionized the way we communicate and work, it doesn’t really come close to sitting down with someone over lunch or over a few drinks. It is unquestionable that even an office environment (love it or hate it) cannot currently be properly recreated online. The metaverse can make this possible when the right ingredients all gel together.

Ultimately, it will change the way we think about physical location, and create opportunities and connections for people, no matter where they are.

And from an investment standpoint, this means there is huge money to be made and incredible growth to be achieved by the winners of this game. As always, the key will be to bet on the right horses. And that is what I will be exploring over the coming months. Let’s start by discussing the major players I see.

Decentraland

Decentraland is probably the most well-known metaverse platform, and it’s where most events happen. To get exposure to Decentraland, you can either buy land or else buy the token $MANA on all the major crypto exchanges such as Kraken or Binance.

Buy $MANA on Kraken

Decentraland is the OG of the metaverse niche. It was the first successful open metaverse and it has managed to cultivate a very healthy market of land sales. You can buy land and develop on it right away, and we have seen a number of big brands buy up land and build some sort of metaverse headquarters within Decentraland. Some have used it to launch new products, others for concerts and others just as a cost-effective way to get extra attention from the press.

It is fully open-source and is the most decentralized metaverse option. While it places very few limits on what you can build, it is harder for newcomers to build since you actually need to be good with 3D tools like Blender to build the detailed building models that work in Decentraland. Sandbox, on the other hand, is more beginner-friendly on the builder side. I like Decentraland though because it is the most similar to real-life in this sense. And that is one of the main reasons why big companies opt to open their first headquarters in the metaverse on this platform. They have the money to burn and can hire architects to build amazing buildings, showcasing the possibilities of the platform and the metaverse in general.

While Decentraland can be said to be as truly decentralized as the current legal frameworks allow, this also means there is no corporate backing, hence less advertising and media attention.

Decentraland still feels like a lonely place if you visit, there is little activity if you just wander about. There is no compelling content or game element but it is indeed just an open and free world. The main use cases so far remain casinos, festivals and museums, apart from the previously mentioned corporate metaverse headquarters.

There is also no play-to-earn element in Decentraland, and the main way to invest at the moment is to buy land and hope that it appreciates over time. You could also rent it out although I haven’t seen much demand for that so far. Of course, you could also earn money by building stuff for others if you have the technical abilities to do so.

Visit Decentraland

The Sandbox

The Sandbox is another big player in the metaverse space so far. To get exposure to The Sandbox, you can either buy land or else buy the token $SAND on all the major crypto exchanges such as Kraken or Binance.

Buy $SAND on Kraken

Sandbox by comparison is predominantly run by a centralized company out of Hong Kong, is not currently live (has a limited beta going for some lucky landholders) and is more ‘limited’ in the sense that it is more in line with games such as Minecraft or Roblox. It is not open source and you will have to use voxels and any other ‘building blocks’ they give you to build to fit in their ecosystem. This builder is more user-friendly and you will see a consistent theme across the entire space. It’s a leading company that has helped make connections like Adidas, BAYC, etc, and will continue to do so. Not out, visually limited, but more of a ‘game’ that will appeal to several audiences. That being said, both totally have their place and both will be things in the future of this.

Visit The Sandbox

Cryptovoxels

I wasn’t impressed by this world. This might be meaningless to the future of this metaverse, but such lonely metaverses with blocky graphics really make me appreciate the real world more and make me go take a walk outdoors rather than engage me in spending more time on them.

Visit Cryptovoxels

Somnium Space

This is the most realistic crypto metaverse application, and is best experienced in VR with the right VR headset. It is open-source software that is also cross-platform. Users can purchase digital land, build homes and buildings, play hyper-realistic video games, start businesses, offer concerts and live events. Artur Sychov, the founder and CEO of Somnium Space, launched the platform in 2017 and opened it to the public in September 2018.

While there is a company behind it, the idea is to decentralize things as much as possible: “By tokenizing Somnium In-Game assets and Land Parcels, we are forever decoupling Somnium Space as a company from owning and operating database of parcels and all in-game items by giving this power to our users”.

I’m not a big fan of this one myself as most of the action I’ve seen is around weird disco parties with a bunch of young users joking around.

Visit Somnium Space

Meta

Mark Zuckerberg delivered quite a surprise in November 2021 when he announced out of the blues that Facebook will change its name to Meta. As a consequence to the announcement, the tokens $MANA and $SAND skyrocketed. This was an extremely good trade for those who anticipated it.

It’s one of those trades that look obvious in hindsight, and I was quite disappointed at not having gotten in on $MANA and $SAND in time for the big pump, especially since I had already been digging deep into the metaverse for a few months before that. But anyway, the metaverse space is so early that there will be undoubtedly many great entry points to $MANA, $SAND and other related tokens going forward.

According to his plan, Meta will become a major player in the metaverse. There is a lot of controversy around Zuck’s plan, as Facebook has not exactly been a much-loved company during its lifetime. Mark Zuckerberg himself is one of the most hated tech founders/CEOs at present, due to his seemingly cold outlook and proven track record of treading on people’s privacy.

However, the fact is that he has been insanely successful, and the Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp trio is one hell of a beast in the Web2 space. Will the company successfully transition to Web3 and become a major player there? Only time will tell, but if you want to take a bet, the best way is to own some Meta stock.

You can buy $FB or other stocks on platforms like Saxo or DEGIRO.

You might also want to listen to this long interview with Mark Zuckerberg on the Lex Fridman Podcast. In it, he shares his vision for the metaverse and comes across as a fairly decent person.

Buy Meta on DEGIRO

Worldwide Webb

Worldwide Webb is an interoperable pixel art MMORPG metaverse game giving utility to popular NFT projects. The game uses NFTs for in-game NFT Avatars, pets, lands, NFT Items, and quests. Deployed with a build-first mentality by a group of crypto-native game developers, artists, coders, and marketers; rapidly pushing out new technologies and applications.

This game has a retro vibe which I like since I grew up playing games with these sorts of 2D graphics. There is a general consensus in the space that this is the number one 2D metaverse environment that all collections want to integrate with, so it makes sense to own some land here. At the time of writing, the apartments are in the hands of more than 60 NFT communities & numerous influential figures.

I like what the team has been putting out, including the amazing apartment builder, with which you can totally customize your own apartment including hanging up pictures of your own NFTs.

The one thing I really dislike is the name, but I’ll have to get used to it I guess. It’s a play on the founder’s surname Webb. He’s quite a character, so I think it makes sense to spend some time familiarising yourself with his ideas and work before you invest in this project. Beyond his outlandish fashion sense, I think he is brilliant and amazingly creative, so I have no problem backing this collection for the long term.

Webb metaverse game

NFT Worlds

My first purchase of virtual land was in NFT Worlds. It was my first immersion into owning and developing land, since I hadn’t played any other similar games like Roblox or Minecraft either.

I had a light bulb moment when I first opened up my purchased square of land and started to explore it, comparable to the feeling I got when I purchased my first NFT. With these kinds of innovations, there is a transition you can only make when you become an owner of the innovation in question.

The main criticism of NFT worlds is that it is just a hosted Minecraft server, but it has seen a very nice price appreciation curve.

NFT Worlds has now been banned from Minecraft, so it faces an uncertain future.

Apart from buying a world, you can also buy the $WRLD token.

NFT Worlds

Metaverse Tools

• WeMeta – Metaverse marketplace
• Parcel – Discover and list virtual real estate across the metaverse
• Landworks – Rent or lend metaverse assets

Further Reading

• The Generalist – Metaverse
• 30000 Feet – Ownership is Everything
• 30000 Feet – Metaverse

What are your thoughts on the metaverse? Let me know in the comments section below.