As part of my deep dive into NFTs, I also started to look into NFTs that are specifically used for gaming, as well as crypto-powered games in general.

Here are a few links to get you started. I’ll be fleshing out the article as I progress with my research and investing.

Games

This is just a list of games I came across, there are many others that may be better or have more profit potential as investments.

• Star Atlas
• NEO Tokyo
• Big Time
• Kart Racing League
• Eva Verse
• Sipher
• CryoWars
• Phantom Galaxy
• MonkeyBall
• Syndicate
• Mines of Dalarnia

Crypto Gaming Launchpads

Launchpads are where you can participate in the seed rounds as an investor in upcoming games.

• Seedify Fund
• EnjinStarter
• Vulcan Forged

People to Follow

These are the people to follow in order to learn more about this space and where things are going.

• Elliotrades
• Alex Becker

Have you invested in crypto games? Let me know what you’re up to below! I’ll continue diving deep into this topic over the coming weeks and updating this post.

Buy Solana & Ethereum

Solana was one of the big movers in the crypto space this year, and has been dubbed the Ethereum killer. I don’t necessarily think the Solana founding team think of it in those terms, but it’s certainly a competitor.

Before we begin, I think it’s a good idea to buy Ethereum as well as buy Solana, as they are both top 5 players in crypto. Both have a lot of backing and I don’t see them fading away anytime soon.

Let’s take an unbiased view of how they compare.

Throughput – Solana Wins

Solana can process 50,000 transactions per second versus Ethereum’s 15 TPS. Traditional finance player VISA can do 24,000 TPS.

However, ETH 2.o is on the horizon, promising up to 100,000 TPS, not to mention that there are various layer 2 solutions already in operation, so we will probably see the scenario change in the near future.

Solana uses its own innovative solution to the consensus mechanism – Proof of History. The idea for Proof of History was what drove Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko to actually create Solana. Compared to Proof of Stake and Proof of Work it requires less computational power, contributing to the increased throughput capabilities of Solana.

Read more: Should you invest in Solana?

Scalability – Solana Wins

Solana was built with scalabity as a high priority, so it’s no wonder that right now Solana wins this contest. In fact, Solana was built with the idea that it would be able to replace the traditional financial services industry. Right now, it is the only chain that has the theoretical capability of doing so.

The caveat is that Ethereum should also become much more scalable once ETH 2.0 comes along, so it’s not a definite win for Solana yet.

Network Effects – Ethereum Wins

No other project except Bitcoin can count on Ethereum’s network effects, and there are far more developers actively building things on Ethereum than there are on Bitcoin.

Thanks to DeFi and NFTs, Ethereum is now very well positioned with retail investors as well. And the fact that so many other projects have ERC-20 tokens lends even more clout to Ethereum. These facts make me very confident that Ethereum will be around for many years to come.

On the other hand, Solana is the new kid on the block, and while things like NFTs and associated platforms are rapidly being built on Solana, it remains to be seen whether it will make sense to have a fragmented NFT scene across different blockchains, or whether Ethereum will be the one that dominates the space. As an NFT buyer, although ETH fees are insane at the moment, I still want all my NFTs sitting on Ethereum and will not touch others that launch on Solana or other chains, as I want my NFTs to be available to me far into the future, and only Ethereum can guarantee that as of today.

Solana might have the development language aspect going for it, since it is more accessible to programmers who are familiar with programming languages that have been in use for many years, and thus there is a bigger pool of developers who can switch to building on Solana with minimal friction, compared to Ethereum.

Read more: Should you invest in Ethereum?

Transaction Fees – Tie

On the surface of it, Solana should win this contest hands down, since it is infinitely cheaper to transact on Solana compared to Ethereum.

Ethereum is already taking a hit due to the high fees, as projects launch on other chains out of necessity, as they know they wouldn’t thrive within a high-fee ecosystem. However, Ethereum is backing on the idea that this is just a temporary bottleneck that will be solved once ETH 2.o rolls around.

On the other hand, fees contribute to the longevity of a blockchain and its security, so from that aspect, I’m happy to pay higher fees because I trust that Ethereum is here to stay and the right economic incentives for miners are in place.

Decentralization – Ethereum Wins

The flipside of Solana’s high throughput and speed is that it is fairly centralized. On the other hand, the defense to this argument is that Solana is still very new and will become more decentralized over time.

In my opinion, neither Ethereum nor Solana have quite nailed the blockchain trilemma yet, but both are gunning for that sweet spot between decentralization, security and scalability.

Conclusion

From my analysis, it is quite evident that it is too early to make definite predictions on how Solana and Ethereum will do in comparison to each other. I’m pretty sure about Ethereum being a top player for years to come, while I also have a lot of conviction on Solana, and my hope is that they end up finding different use cases and not actually competing with each other.

I am invested in both Ethereum and Solana. I think that if you’re looking for lowering your risk, you should definitely have more money invested in Ethereum than Solana, whereas if you’re looking for more potential upside, you could do 50/50 or give SOL a higher weighting in your portfolio compared to ETH.

Buy SOL & ETH on Binance

Bitcoin mining is a great way to approach investing in Bitcoin from a different angle. There are several ways that you can get involved with Bitcoin mining for profit.

In this post, I’ll take a look at how you can get exposure to Bitcoin mining in various ways, and some considerations to keep in mind.

Let’s start with the considerations, and then I’ll give you a summary of the Bitcoin mining options available.

Should you invest in Bitcoin Mining? – Questions to ask yourself

There are many ways to get exposure to crypto or even Bitcoin specifically, without ever touching mining. It is by no means essential to be involved with mining, and I still consider it to be a niche thing within the Bitcoin community at large. Some other things you could do and that I’ve written about on this blog are:

• buying and holding Bitcoin
• buying a Bitcoin ETF
• trading Bitcoin
• Buying Bitcoin futures
• lending Bitcoin for interest

However, if you are drawn to mining, I would think about the following questions next:

• How much time and money do I need to invest to make this worthwhile?
  Setting up your own mining rig requires deep technical expertise, many hours and a big upfront expense. Buying mining stocks, on the other hand, is hands-off and requires a much smaller monetary investment.
• How does the Bitcoin price, hashrate, miner price and electricity price affect my mining profitability?
  It’s best to draw up hypothetical scenarios on a spreadsheet that take into consideration all these variables. This exercise is especially important if you’re thinking about option 1 described below.
• Will I rely on third-party providers? How reliable are they?
  The Bitcoin mining space has a shady reputation, thanks to many quasi-scams that happened in the past. In general, most Bitcoin mining pool websites have tended to oversell the benefits of mining, leading to many investors being burned.
• Do I know any other people in the space that can help out if needed?
  I always like to sound out my ideas with expert friends who can help me avoid any unaccounted for pitfalls, or join me on the journey. It takes time to build such networks but they are invaluable especially if you’re putting in a lot of money.
• What are the legal aspects of mining?
  There are countries that have outright banned Bitcoin mining, China being one of them. You obviously don’t want to set up a mining rig in those countries.
• How would my mining rewards be taxed?
  Depending on how you enter the mining space, your revenue might be taxed differently. For example, in many countries, profits from mining at home are taxed at a higher rate than dividends or sales proceed from a mining stock.

If you get positive answers to those questions, then you should go ahead and consider Bitcoin mining. Here are some options that I’ve researched.

Option 1 – Investing in Mining Companies

Difficulty level: easy

This has been my favorite way to get exposure to Bitcoin mining so far. There are several public companies that specialize in Bitcoin mining, and you can buy their stock from stockbrokers like eToro and DEGIRO if you’re European or eToro USA if you’re from the states.

I’m invested in some of the following Bitcoin mining companies, and they’ve all performed incredibly well for me. I’ll probably diversify across all the major Bitcoin mining companies over time.

• Marathon Digital Holdings ($MARA)
• Bitfarms ($BITF)
• Hut 8 Mining ($HUT)
• Riot Blockchain ($RIOT)
• Canaan ($CAN)
• Bit Digital ($BTBT)
• BIT Mining ($BTCM)
• Galaxy Digital ($GLXY)

Marathon Digital Holdings

Marathon Digital Holdings is a digital asset technology company engaged in the mining of cryptocurrencies. Its primary focus is on the blockchain and the generation of digital assets and is one of the largest bitcoin miners in North America.

Riot Blockchain

Riot Blockchain, Inc. is a Bitcoin mining company, supporting the Bitcoin blockchain through rapidly expanding large-scale mining in the United States. They are focused on expanding operations by increasing their Bitcoin mining hash rate and infrastructure capacity. Riot believes the future of Bitcoin mining will benefit from American operations and endeavors to be the driver of that future.

Hut 8 Mining

Hut 8 Mining is a Canada-based bitcoin mining company. The company uses specialized equipment in order to solve computational problems to validate transactions on the bitcoin blockchain. They are the number one holder of self-mined bitcoin in North America.

Bitfarms

Bitfarms is a Canada-based cryptocurrency mining company. In addition to mining operations, it offers onsite technical repair, data analytics, and electrical engineering and installation services. It operates one of the largest crypto mining operations in North America.

HIVE

HIVE Blockchain Technologies is the first publicly traded crypto miner, listing on the Toronto Venture Exchange in 2017, under the ticker symbol HIVE. The company uses 100% green energy to mine both Bitcoin and Ethereum, with a committed ESG strategy since day one. HIVE strives to create long-term shareholder value with its unique HODL strategy, bridging the blockchain and cryptocurrencies to traditional capital markets.

Canaan

Canaan is a China-based provider of high-performance computing solutions. The company is focused on application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) high-performance computing chip design, chip research and development, computing equipment production, and software services. It also expanded into mining operations apart from the manufacturing of machines.

Bit Digital

Bit Digital is a bitcoin mining company. The company’s mining facilities and mining platform are used to generate and accumulate bitcoins, which are then sold for fiat currency at certain times depending on market conditions. This company has a strong focus on going green and they are working towards 100% sustainable power. They are also the largest bitcoin miner on the NASDAQ based on miner fleet.

Bit Mining

BIT Mining is a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency mining company. Its business operations span cryptocurrency mining, data center, and a mining pool. The company also owns the blockchain browser BTC.com.

Galaxy Digital

While Galaxy Digital has many business lines, mining is one of their main ones, so if you want a more diversified investment in crypto that goes beyond mining, this is a good option. Founder and CEO Mike Novogratz is a very well-known person in the crypto space and has loads of experience in finance.

Buy Bitcoin mining stocks on eToro

Option 2 – Blockstream Mining Note STO

Difficulty level: intermediate

STOs are tokens issued on a blockchain that represent your stake in an underlying company or venture. The Blockstream Mining Note on STOKR is very well structured to provide good returns on your investment via mining, and is a perfect way to obtain returns on your Bitcoin instead of just holding. I classify them as more difficult than buying stocks of mining companies, simply because STOs are pretty new as a concept, and most investors are much more familiar with the stock market and buying and trading via their favorite stock broker.

What is STOKR?

STOKR is the EU’s pioneering digital investment marketplace for alternative assets, where smart investors connect with and fund innovative businesses. STOKR liberates access to high-profile investment opportunities from the inner circle of traditional venture capital.

Through EU-compliant security token offerings (STOs), STOKR empowers professional and retail investors alike to directly engage with young and growing ventures in a simplified and risk-reduced environment, without the need for middlemen such as custodians or brokers. Operating out of Luxembourg (read about the legal basics of tokenization here), STOKR fosters a community of educated investors who participate in the future success of a diverse range of ventures through profit- or revenue-sharing rights.

I’ve interviewed the founder of STOKR, Arnab Naskar, on my podcast Mastermind.fm and found him to be very knowledgeable. I think that investing in STOKR projects is a very interesting alternative to the typical P2P lending and crowdfunding platforms available to European investors.

Blockstream is one of the top companies in the Bitcoin space, founded by the legendary Adam Back, the creator of Hashcash, the algorithm that is used by Bitcoin for mining. He is quoted in the whitepaper and has been a significant player since Bitcoin’s early days. I can’t imagine anyone better than him to trust my money with if I were investing in Bitcoin mining.

When you buy the STO, you will get the tokens that represent your investment in the mining setup. At the end of a three year period, you will be eligible to redeem your invested Bitcoin in exchange for your STOs, and you will also get any accrued profits in the form of Bitcoin.

Note that this investment is only available to Europeans at the moment. The minimum investment is €200,000.

Invest with Blockstream via STOKR

Option 3 – Mining Bitcoin Yourself

Difficulty level: Hard

The first way is to directly mine Bitcoin and set up your own mining rigs. This is not something I would recommend to the majority of people, because it has high barriers of entry and requires deep technical knowledge. It is most profitable when done from locations with low electricity costs (and favorable legislation), so if you’re not based in one of those locations you’re out of luck.

Here’s a video of a significant setup in Iceland to give you an idea of how things look when you mine Bitcoin professionally.

Compass Mining offers you a guide to at-home mining which is a great way to learn more about how you can start mining at home. This would entail joining their pool, else it will be next to impossible to earn any rewards as you’ll be competing against huge players.

If you’re interested in doing this but don’t want to litter your home with miners, however, this company also offers some interesting intermediate options.

Compass Mining also allows you to buy Bitcoin mining hardware and then leave the rest in their hands to handle the technical stuff, while you reap the rewards. There is a significant upfront cost as you purchase the hardware and hope for good conditions in the next couple of years to be able to recoup the cost and start making profits. However, the technical difficulty and other associated risks are taken care of by Compass.

Read more: Should you run a Bitcoin node?

Compass has also introduced a marketplace facility where you can sell your hardware to others, offering a new and convenient way to get liquidity on your hardware. During 2021, they’ve been very active in promoting their services, and apart from sponsoring the What Bitcoin Did podcast (check out this episode about Compass and also the Bitcoin Mining 101 episode), I’ve seen some big names get started with Bitcoin mining through them. Lyn Alden is one of them, and I highly recommend her Risk and Reward Analysis article.

Alternatives to Bitcoin Mining

If you’re looking for alternatives to Bitcoin mining, you might be interested in staking, which is the mining mechanism used by Ethereum and other proof-of-stake blockchains like Solana and Polkadot. The returns vary but I would argue that it’s an easier way to get started with mining for profits than Bitcoin Mining. Read my guide about staking Ethereum for more information.

Are you into Bitcoin mining? What are your favorite strategies?

Let’s start off the article by making sure everyone is on the same page. It’s time to define this mysterious term and explain what DCA means.

DCA (or Dollar Cost Averaging) is a technique that’s used to average your buying price or is used as the “Martingale technique”, which you use when a position is in a deep loss.

The assumption is that a crypto price will rise eventually, so if you keep doubling your investment, your average buy price will be lower, and you will make a profit sooner when the price rises again. You do need deep pockets for this technique, as you will need to keep doubling down on your investment.

Beginners can also use DCA to invest over a longer period gradually. E.g., you invest $1,000 every 30 days for five months. If prices at the end of each month were $100, $90, $80, $70, and $95, your average asset price would be $85.5. If you invested the full amount initially, you would’ve paid $100 per coin.

Why Dollar Cost Average?

Over past years, one of my important realizations as an investor was that the best way for me to invest is to find an investment that I believe in, whether in crypto or in the stock market, and make a long-term bet on it. Once I believe in something with a long-term vision, the only remaining question is at what price to get into a position.

This question unfortunately leads many to never actually invest. This is especially the case if an asset goes on an upward trend before they invest. They might then think that they lost their moment, only to look back in a few years’ time and wonder how they didn’t go all-in at whatever price. There are thousands of stories of people who were ready to invest in the early days of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Amazon, Tesla, etc. but did not do so because of a myriad of reasons. Fear of making a bad deal price-wise tends to be a common reason.

And that’s where DCA comes to the rescue. By investing small chunks periodically, you are spreading your price risk over time. You have to be ready to be diligent and continue investing if the price goes up, but on the flip side, you will also be happy if the price goes down, because again you will be investing, but this time you will get a bigger share in exchange for your fiat money.

Once a savings plan has been created, it automatically buys at the set time. You don’t have to think about anymore and can buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc over a longer time period.

Dollar Cost Averaging is not a magical bullet, but it’s a great way to rid yourself of the fear of buying at the wrong price. It is also a great option for those whose monthly income is very predictable e.g. those of you on salaries. By setting up an automatic DCA system, you can set aside part of your monthly income to be invested automatically, removing any temptation to take a break or even forgetting to invest.

Now that we know where and why to use DCA, it’s time to learn which platforms allow us to do this in a convenient manner.

Best Platforms for Dollar Cost Averaging in Crypto

In this section, I’ll be sharing with you my favorite platforms depending on the use case.

Swan Bitcoin – Best for U.S. Residents who want to DCA in Bitcoin

If you’re a resident of the United States and you’re only interested in Bitcoin, Swan Bitcoin is a great service that was expressly built with DCA in mind. I would highly recommend it if you have the option to use it.

DCA with Swan Bitcoin

Bitpanda – Best for Europeans who want to DCA in crypto

Bitpanda is a trusted platform and is very popular in Europe. It also offers an easy-t0-use interface for setting up a DCA strategy. You can DCA into Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.

How to set up a savings plan on Bitpanda:

1. Log in to your account and verify if you haven’t done yet.
2. Click on “Savings plan” and select a wallet of the digital asset you want to buy.
3. Select the currency (EUR, USD, CHF, GBP, TRY) and choose a payment option.
4. Define the amount and frequency for your savings plan, and click on “Go to summary”.
5. Great! After you’ve confirmed the payment at the payment provider, you’re all set.

One thing I love about Bitpanda is that they also have crypto indices set up, so you can actually invest in the entire crypto market completely and in automatic fashion, and therefore build up a diversified crypto portfolio effortlessly.

You can set up a personal savings plan using Visa, MasterCard or SEPA Direct Debit. You don’t have to think about it after your first buy, as the recurring buys will be executed automatically afterwards.

You can set up as many savings plans as you want and for any digital asset supported on Bitpanda. You can even set up multiple savings plans for the same asset.

Of course, Bitpanda also gives you the full flexibility and freedom of temporarily pausing and later resuming your savings plans. This is needed if something unexpected comes up, for example, and you need to channel all your income towards that problem.

I usually like to take big bets on particular cryptos (see my article about my choices if you’re interested), but I also want whole market exposure as a hedge and to also profit from the big moves of other projects that I might not be keeping a close eye on.

In crypto and other sectors that are in the early days, I believe that it is next to impossible to pick all the winners, so it’s a good idea to own a basket of cryptos. Given that we’re so early, there is a good chance that a lot of the projects will go up in fiat terms, although it is also probable that some will fail completely.

DCA with Bitpanda

Kraken – A Great International Option

Kraken is one of my favorite exchanges, famous for its security and for being one of the early players in the crypto space. While Kraken does not offer a DCA mode to its users, you can use a crypto trading bot like 3Commas or TradeSanta to set the DCA system up.

Read my in-depth review of Kraken if you want to learn more about this exchange.

Open an account on Kraken

Binance – Dollar Cost Averaging with Many Cryptos

Due to the number of cryptos that Binance supports, I would consider it one of the best options for those who want to dollar cost average into many different cryptos. Again, since Binance does not offer a DCA interface within the app or website, you will need to pair it with a crypto bot that will actually do the DCA on your behalf.

Read my in-depth review of Kraken if you want to learn more about this exchange.

Open an account on Binance

Wrapping Up

Have you used DCA? Have I missed out on any of your favorite platforms? Let me know in the comments section below.

Keep in mind that while Swan Bitcoin and Bitpanda offer a specific interface for dollar cost averaging, and are thus well suited for beginners who want to sign up to one platform and set it and forget it, there are also other options.

If you already use one of my favorite crypto trading apps, like Kraken, Binance, or eToro, you can still use DCA by using a crypto trading bot.

The crypto space keeps providing a ton of innovation year after year, with corresponding opportunities for huge financial gains for those with the ability to spot the emerging trends and the time and interest to get involved early on.

The first famous DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) was actually called “The DAO”, and it blew up spectacularly due to a hack, which almost spelled the end of Ethereum (in fact it resulted in a hard fork of that chain). The crypto space has matured quite a bit since 2016 though, and it is now the time for a resurgence of the DAO idea.

This post will keep getting updated as I learn more about DAOs and experience being part of them myself.

2021 Resurgence of DAOs

NFTs were probably the hottest topic of 2021, but DAOs probably come in a close second. They are actually quite connected, as several DAOs were formed for the main purpose of group funding the purchase and custody of top NFT pieces.

DAOs are closely connected to programmable blockchains, and as such are a direct result of the emergence of the first successful blockchain of this type – Ethereum. The aim of such organizations is to keep the power and rewards decentralized so that everyone has a say in the future of the organization (governance) as well as reaping the rewards of success (through tokens).

With that basic definition in place, there are several different types of DAOs that we should be aware of.

If you want to understand at a deeper level how DAOs operate and what tools they use, read this post about DAO tooling. Here’s another good DAO Tech Stack 101 article.

Social Tokens and Web3

DAOs are part of Web3, and social tokens are an essential part of Web3 as well. In fact we can define some DAOs as social DAOs. This is probably the type I’m most interested in at the moment, together with holding DAOs like NounsDAO, HeadDAO, Fingerprints DAO and Flamingo DAO which exist for the main purpose of collecting NFT art. of DAO I might branch this into a separate post, but for now, here’s what you need to know. Social tokens are a great tool to coordinate contributors’ work, more than to incentivize them.

With social tokens, you can easily:

• Set up governance power & allow only certain people to vote on proposals(Snapshot)
• Token-gate channels at scale without having to update it or do it manually
• Use software such as Collab.Land or Guild.xyz to send tips
• Pay your contributors easily with Coordinape
• Create liquidity mining programs & leverage the power of vesting schedule

Here’s the general idea comparing Web1 with Web2 and now Web3. DAOs and social tokens belong to Web3:

Here are a few social DAOs that I follow and that have been really successful so far:

• FWB
• Bankless
• SeedClub

Further Reading

• DAOlicious – DAO Directory
• The Eightfold Path to DAOism
• A Prehistory of DAOs
• The DAO Canon
• Cryptonetwork Governance As Capital
• DAOs, DACs, DAs and More: An Incomplete Terminology Guide
• Governance Tokens – The Good, the Bad, The Ugly
• DAOs and the Promise of Utopia
• Notboring – The DAO of DAOs, Power to the person, The Great Online Game, The Cooperation Economy
• Bankless – State of the DAOs
• The Legal Basis of DAOs
• DAO Dos and Dont’s
• What I wish I knew before talking to lawyers about DAOs