Jean Galea

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The Best Books about Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies

Last updated: November 29, 2021Leave a Comment

I have always stated that it’s essential to educate yourself before making any investment, and this is especially true in emerging markets and technologies such as the crypto space.

Many readers continuously ask me for book recommendations, so here are the top books I’ve read on the subject.

The Internet of Money

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Bitcoin Fundamentals

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Economic Foundations of Bitcoin

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Bitcoin History

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Technical Understanding of Bitcoin

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Investing in Cryptoassets

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Ethereum History

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Technical Understanding of Ethereum

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DeFi and Web3

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Related Topics

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Filed under: Cryptoassets, Money

EXMO Review  – One of the Largest Crypto Exchanges in Europe

Published: May 15, 2021Leave a Comment

EXMO review 2021

Buy crypto on EXMO

EXMO is a UK-based cryptocurrency exchange that has a long-standing reputation among crypto traders. The platform has been around since 2014 and is among one of the largest global crypto markets in terms of volume and liquidity.

EXMO has managed to create a simple yet efficient interface that is intuitive to the needs of its users. With that said, the platform has recently been under scrutiny for its security aspects.

In this review, I elaborate on how EXMO functions as a cryptocurrency exchange and what products are offered on the platform. I will also take a closer look at the provider’s safety features in order to determine whether or not EXMO can be trusted.

[Read more…]

Filed under: Cryptoassets, Money

Bitfinex Review – A Leading Crypto Platform with A Suite of Services

Published: May 13, 2021Leave a Comment

bitfinex review 2021

Trade on Bitfinex

Bitfinex is one of the most established digital asset platforms currently active in the crypto space. It offers a wide spectrum of state-of-the-art services dedicated to cryptocurrency investors and traders alike.

Established in 2012, Bitfinex has been able to accommodate the evolving interest of crypto enthusiasts. Over the years, the platform has cemented its position in the industry as one of the go-to platforms for all your cryptocurrency needs.

In this review, I will walk you through the different aspects of Bitfinex and examine whether it can be a trusted source for your cryptocurrency investments.

Bitfinex – An Overview

Bitfinex was first launched as a peer-to-peer margin lending service. At the time, not so surprisingly, the platform offered support only for Bitcoin. Over the years, it has since added hundreds of other cryptocurrencies and digital tokens to its list of supported markets.

Today, Bitfinex has upgraded itself to become a full-fledged tool for cryptocurrency traders and liquidity providers.

In a nutshell, Bitfinex offers six core products on its trading platform:

  • Exchange trading
  • Margin trading
  • Margin funding
  • Over-The-Counter (OTC) market
  • Derivatives
  • Paper trading

Apart from this, Bitfinex also has an entire section exclusively dedicated to cryptocurrency lenders. This will allow you to gain access to products such as:

  • Staking
  • Lending products
  • Borrowing

Apart from the aforementioned, Bitfinex also has several other interesting features to make your trading and investing easier. For instance, the platform has developed Honey Framework, which you can use to create custom order types and automate your trading strategies.

[Read more…]

Filed under: Cryptoassets, Money

TokenTax Review – A One-Stop Solution For Your Crypto Tax Filings

Published: May 10, 20212 Comments

tokentax review 2021

Cryptocurrencies have evolved to become one of the highest-growth asset classes that can be held in a financial portfolio. With that said, If you invest in or trade cryptocurrencies, it is crucial that you understand what your tax liabilities are.

However, compiling cryptocurrency transactions and figuring out the associated tax implications can be an overwhelming process – even for the most seasoned trader. This is where tools such as TokenTax come into play.

This crypto tax software can help you compile all your cryptocurrency transactions across multiple platforms, giving you an account of your total capital gains and losses.

In this review, I will examine TokenTax to gain a better understanding of how it works and how you can use it to file your cryptocurrency taxes in 2021 and beyond.

Prepare your taxes with TokenTax

TokenTax – An Overview

If you are new to the cryptocurrency markets, you might be still struggling with its many complexities. In its midst, one might end up overlooking the importance of crypto taxes. In simple terms, cryptocurrencies are taxed in the vast majority of jurisdictions if you are able to sell or exchange them at a profit.

This is potentially applicable even if you are spending your digital coins via online purchases. Meaning, you could owe capital gains taxes even if the digital coins you spent have gained in value compared to what you originally paid for them. Cryptocurrency tax software such as TokenTax aims to simplify this process for you.

tokentax review

It will scan the blockchain to identify crypto transfers between the different wallets you own – and provide you with reports of all transactions within a given tax year.TokenTax was first created by Alex Miles in 2017 – as an entry to the Product Hunt Google Global Hackathon. Not so surprisingly, the product ended up winning first place in the competition, and soon, he was joined by Zac MacClure.

Together, the pair was able to use the funding from the contest and build on the product to release it for the tax season of the same year. Given the broader unawareness regarding cryptocurrency taxes at the time, TokenTax was able to quickly garner attention from crypto traders and investors.

In the course of four years, the team behind TokenTax has managed to add several functionalities and tools that cater to the unique needs of cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

Currently, TokenTax offers four different products to assess your tax situation:

  • Crypto Tax Reports
  • Crypto Margin Trading Taxes
  • Tax Loss Harvesting
  • Tax Professional Suite

In fact, TokenTax is one of the few cryptocurrency tax software providers that can handle crypto margin trading and decentralized finance. It is also the only tax firm that offers in-built CPA services for accounting and auditing.

Moreover, TokenTax can be used to generate tax reports for residents across several regions. Whether you are located in the US, UK, Europe, South Africa, or Asia, – you will be able to get access to the full suite of TokenTax products.

How TokenTax Works

Before I take a closer look into the different features of TokenTax, I will explain how this software works. In a nutshell, TokenTax has partnered with several cryptocurrency exchanges in order to make sure that it can extract your cryptocurrency transactions. In fact, you can also find support for DeFi platforms such as yearn.finance, Uniswap, Sushiswap, Synthetic, and more.

You can get started with TokenTax in a few simple steps:

Step 1: Create Your Account on TokenTax

The first step is to set up your user account on TokenTax. Apart from providing your email address and password, the software will also require you to complete your tax profile.

For instance, you will have to fill in your country of residence, your estimated income, your filing status, the method you used for your previous tax filing, and so on. This is to give the tool a better idea of your tax profile.

Step 2: Upload your Cryptocurrency Transactions

TokenTax allows you to integrate your crypto wallets directly through an API. This way, transactions will be synchronized on both platforms. As I mentioned earlier, TokenTax works with a multitude of cryptocurrency exchanges – ensuring that the uploading process will be as smooth as possible.

Alternatively, you can also manually download a CSV file with your transactions and upload it to TokenTax.

Step 3: Choose Preferred Accounting Method

TokenTax offers support for a number of accounting methods such as FIFO, LIFO, minimization, and average cost.

At this stage of the setup process, you can choose which accounting system you want to opt for.

Step 4: Download Tax Forms

Once the platform has finished its calculation process, you will be able to download your tax forms right away. Crucially, TokenTax will automatically fill in your crypto tax forms on your behalf – making it easier for you to file them.

You can also import your completed forms directly to popular tax preparation services, such as TurboTax.

Features of TokenTax

In its simplest form, TokenTax is a software platform that can help you calculate tax on your cryptocurrencies. However, there is a wide variety of crypto investments and trade types and depending on the niche, it can be difficult to calculate net capital gains and losses – such as in margin trading.

This is where TokenTax truly shines. Unlike its counterparts, TokenTax can help you with any type of crypto tax statement. In this section, I will take a closer look at these unique products offered on this platform.

Crypto Margin Trading Taxes

If you are familiar with crypto margin trading, then you are already aware of its many intricacies. As you can imagine, the process of filing taxes on your margin trades can also be quite cumbersome. Generally, most tax rules for cryptocurrencies are identical to that of other assets – such as the likes of stock, forex, or CFD trading.

However, when you are dealing with margin trading, it can be a challenge to get the right data from exchanges in order to accurately report your transactions.In most cases, you will have to contact the exchange directly, requesting bespoke information – which will be provided in a different format.

crypto margin trading taxes

For this reason, not every crypto tax software can calculate margin trading tax for you. If you have engaged in crypto margin and derivatives trading on platforms such as BitMEX or Derbit, TokenTax can automatically import your profits and losses from the respective exchanges.

On the other hand, platforms such as Bitfinex are even more complex. For such cases, TokenTax has a team of crypto CPAs and accounting experts that can offer you special guidance. They can help you account for earnings from lending interest and any liquidations involved with crypto margin trading.

Note that this service is reserved for only Pro and VIP level users. I will look at the Tokentax pricing structure later in this review.

Tax Loss Harvesting

It is common for cryptocurrency traders to sell off the assets they hold at a loss in order to reduce their capital gains liabilities. This method – called ‘tax-loss harvesting’, allows you to decrease the amount of taxes you owe. As such, even if you make a loss when selling your asset, you will be able to offset the capital gains from other investments, such as stocks.

  • For instance, say you have made capital gains of $10,000 for this tax year.
  • You also have holdings in Litecoin that is currency at a loss of $3,000.
  • In such a typical scenario, you will have to pay the full amount of $10,000 in taxes.
  • However, if you are able to sell your LTC holdings and harvest the losses – then your taxes will be reduced to $7,000.

TokenTax offers tax-loss harvesting tools that go through your crypto translation history to find out how many assets you hold and which positions are at a loss. This can give you a better idea of any tax-loss harvesting opportunities that you might have in your portfolio.

crypto tax harvesting

Not only that, but the TokenTax team itself is always ready to assist you in harvesting your losses to reduce your crypto taxes.

Tax Professional Suite

This TokenTax product is specifically designed for cryptocurrency accountants and accounting organizations. The platform will help your accounting firm build support for cryptocurrency traders using their exclusive features. You will be able to import your clients’ transaction histories, calculate their taxes and complete their tax forms – all in one place.

In effect, accountants will be able to manage your clients’ crypto taxes much more competently. TokenTax will also give you access to additional tools such as performance graphs, tax-loss harvesting, and finding missing extraction histories.

In other words, TokenTax can become your support system for offering cryptocurrency accounting services to your clients. It is also the first crypto tax software to offer tax harvesting and accounting services.

Note: Apart from these services, the TokenTax team also offers additional assistance for those that are facing IRS audits.

TokenTax Pricing

TokenTax has a unique pricing plan for cryptocurrency traders. To start with, it offers two types of services – one only for crypto tax calculations and the other to handle your entire tax filing needs.

tokentax price

Crypto Tax Software Plans

The plans listed below are best suited for those who seek help with filing crypto gains and losses.

Basic Account – at $65 per year

This account offers you support only for Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Binance.

The features include:

  • Up to 500 yearly transactions
  • Integration with TurboTax
  • Support for IRS Form 8949/International Reports
  • Unlimited Tax Form Revisions

Premium Account – at $199 per year

This account allows you to gain access to transactions across all supported exchanges of TokenTax.

The features include:

  • Up to 5,000 yearly transactions
  • Integration with DeFi platforms and margin trading.
  • Tax-loss harvesting dashboard
  • Includes all features of the Basic Account.

Pro Account – at $799 per year

The Pro account is best suited for advanced investors and margin traders.

The features include:

  • Up to 20,000 yearly transactions
  • Support for all margin exchanges
  • Support for FBAR
  • Includes all features of the Premium Account

VIP Account – at $2,599 per year

The VIP account gives you access to full functionalities on the platform, including advanced tax and accounting support.

The features include:

  • Up to 30,000 yearly transactions
  • Advanced tools for crypto reconciliation
  • Integration will all DeFi protocols and cryptocurrency exchanges
  • Private sessions with tax experts
  • IRS audit assistance
  • Includes all features of the Pro Account.

As you might have noticed, some of the exclusive products on TokenTax are reserved for those who sign up for Pro and VIP plans. If you are to benefit from the full functionality of the platform, you will need to pay a hefty fee. But, there is every chance that this will pay for itself – depending on how effective TokenTax is with your tax liabilities.

Full Filing Plans

TokenTax also has dedicated plans for those who want to use their services to file full tax returns, which is inclusive of crypto. You will also be able to work with a Crypto CPA to receive expert assistance.

Bronze Account – at $699 per year

  • Best suited for those who only need the essentials of tax filing
  • Up to 5,000 transactions
  • Up to four tax forms
  • Tax returns for one state
  • Support for margin trading and tax loss harvesting

Silver Account – at $999 per year

  • Best suited for those with multiple income sources
  • Up to 5,000 transactions
  • Up to 10 tax forms
  • Tax returns for two states
  • Support for margin trading and tax loss harvesting
  • Support for one self-employed business

Gold Account – at $3,000 per year

  • VIP tax filing services that offer support for the most advanced tax situations
  • Up to 30,000 transactions
  • Up to 10 tax forms
  • Tax returns for two states
  • Private sessions with experts
  • IRS audit assistance
  • Support for margin trading and tax loss harvesting
  • Support for one self-employed business

TokenTax also gives you a 10% discount if you use its service for multiple years. However, one thing worth noting is that TokenTax does not offer any free trails. As such, there is no easy way to assess whether or not the platform is fit for your needs.

You might also have to pay extra if you are to file taxes in multiple states or regions, depending on your country of residence.

Paying for TokenTax in Cryptocurrency

As you can imagine, TokenTax also accepts payment for its services through digital currency. Currently, the platform allows you to make crypto payments in Bitcoin and Ethererum. However, the payment procedure is a bit indirect.

You will have to reach out to the support team, mentioning that you would prefer to pay for your plan using crypto. The TokenTax team will send you a price quote and the amount you have to send.

The address for the BTC and ETH wallet is available on the TokenTax website.

TokenTax Customer Support

TokenTax has a well-curated section on resources and guides – that provides you with all the information you need regarding the different facets of cryptocurrency taxes. You will be able to find extensive guides on the different rules and even find data that are relevant to your country’s tax system.

In addition, if you need customer support, the team is available through live chat or email.

TokenTax Review – My Verdict?

Reconciling all your cryptocurrency transactions across multiple sources can be a daunting task. Undoubtedly, TokenTax can make the entire process easier and convenient for all cryptocurrency traders. The software truly shines in terms of automation and user experience. It can give you a clear account of gains, losses, and more.

Most impressively, if you are in need of an expert’s opinion, TokenTax also has in-house CPA counsel that can offer you all the assistance you need. That said, such exemplary functionalities also come at an expensive price tag. If you opt for a cheaper pricing plan, the features you have access to are very limited.

As such, depending on your tax filing requirements, you might have to pay a high cost to avail of the full services of TokenTax.

Nevertheless, if you have traded cryptocurrencies multiple times across different exchanges, it might be a good decision to use TokenTax. The platform is arguably a market leader in this space and thus – can solve almost any cryptocurrency tax challenge you might be facing.

Sign up to TokenTax

Filed under: Cryptoassets, Money

Why Stock Picking is a Losing Game

Published: May 04, 2021Leave a Comment

stock picking

One of the best tricks for living a happy life is to turn off the news. This includes social media feeds. Both mediums are designed to constantly bombard you with sensational elements to keep you hooked. They are not the source of truth or any useful information.

The same goes for stock investing. There are TV channels dedicated to talking about stocks 24/7, but you need to avoid them. You also need to understand that historically stock picking has been a losing game.

Why Stock Picking Fails

Two words: Market Efficiency

Stock prices are constantly adjusting to the news that is available to all market participants. Without insider information, it’s impossible to predict future news. Can you tell if Apple will fall above or below their next earnings forecast? I don’t think so. If you had that magical ability, you’d be wealthy beyond imagination.

Stock pickers wrongly presume there are mispriced stocks that can be identified in advance and exploited for profit. They don’t realize that virtually all of the information about a stock, a sector, or an economy is very quickly digested by the entirety of market participants and swiftly embedded into the price of that security.

Because information is available so quickly, you never have an advantage over the millions of other market participants. Stocks are always “priced fairly” given the current information that is available. This market efficiency ensures the prices agreed upon between willing buyers and willing sellers are the best estimate of fair market values.
In other words, when you try to buy underpriced “winners” or sell overpriced “losers,” you have to think the person on the other side of the trade is misinformed or stupid. Why else would they be taking the opposite position?

Read more: How to buy tokenized stocks through crypto exchanges

Millions of investors, and an army of brokers, believe their own personal version of this fairy tale. And when someone indicates that they are beating the market while selecting individual stocks, they are also confessing the belief that the market is composed of fools.

Consider an online newsletter that shares “insider secrets” and recommends certain stocks. What are they basing these recommendations on? The only information they have is widely available to the public, for free.

If the newsletter worked, why would the author be sharing that information? Why not just keep the secret and make a fortune picking stocks? Furthermore, if the recommendations were sound, who on earth would be willing to part with a stock rated “buy” and sell it to you? And what kind of dimwit would later buy when the recommendation was to sell?

The reason that newsletters underperform the market is the same reason that individual investors underperform the market. They overestimate their knowledge and ability to predict the future.

Remember, when you decide to buy and sell stocks, you’re competing against Warren Buffett, the giant Yale endowment fund, corporate insiders, and an army of PhD quants who stare at numbers for 14 hours each day. Why do you think you have more information than the professionals on the other side of the trade?

And even if you somehow did know more than those people, what makes you think that anyone can predict the future prices of any given stock? You can’t! And neither can most professionally managed mutual funds and hedge funds.

Research on the Failure of Stock Picking

Research shows that from 1975 to 2006, 99.4% of portfolio managers displayed no evidence of genuine stock-picking skill, and the 0.6% of managers who did outperform the index were “statistically indistinguishable from zero”.

This doesn’t mean that no mutual funds have beaten the market in recent years. Some have done so repeatedly over periods as short as a year or two. But the number of funds that have beaten the market over their entire histories is so small that the False Discovery Rate test can’t eliminate the possibility that the few that did were merely false positives, in other words, they got lucky.

Individuals Are Even Worse

Individual investors:

  • Underperform standard benchmarks (e.g., a low-cost index fund)
  • Sell winning investments while holding losing investments (the “disposition effect”)
  • Are heavily influenced by limited attention and past return performance in their purchase decisions
  • Engage in naïve reinforcement learning by repeating past behaviors that coincided with pleasure while avoiding past behaviors that generated pain
  • Tend to hold undiversified stock portfolios

These behaviors deleteriously affect the financial well-being of individual investors.

Individual investors who hold common stocks directly pay a tremendous performance penalty for active trading. Of 66,465 households with accounts at a large discount broker during 1991 to 1996, those that traded most earned an annual return of 11.4 percent, while the market returned 17.9 percent. Overconfidence can explain high trading levels and the resulting poor performance of individual investors.

Read more: The best online stock brokers in Europe

Most investors also underperform the market by choosing to chase after hot companies that receive loads of publicity.

In their book Creative Destruction, Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan analyzed the companies of the original S&P 500 Index created in 1957. Quite shockingly, only 74 of the original companies remained on the list in 1997, and just 12 of them ended up with returns that outperformed the index for the 41-year period through 1998. 12 out of 500!

Keep in mind that these 500 companies are some of the biggest and most influential in the world. They are not small, distressed firms that you’ve never heard of. They are giants that people love to talk about. Just think about how many people bought the stock of these “safe investments” while trying to outperform the index.

And the authors sum up the problem with stock picking quite well:

As the ’80s passed and we made our way through the ‘90s, both of us observed that almost as soon as any company had been praised in the popular management literature as excellent or somehow super durable, it began to deteriorate.

If you still aren’t convinced, have a look at the 2010 study “Stocks of Admired Companies and Spurned Ones” by Meir Statman and Deniz Anginer.

The study was based on Fortune Magazine’s annual list of “America’s Most Admired Companies” from 1983 to 2007. The authors created two portfolios from the data, with one representing the most admired companies and the other representing the “spurned” or least admired companies. The “admired” portfolio contained the stocks with the highest Fortune ratings (which were popular companies like Disney and Google), and the “spurned” portfolio contained the stocks with the lowest Fortune ratings (which were no-name companies like Jet Blue and Bridgestone).

Can you guess the outcome?

Stocks of admired companies had lower returns, on average, than stocks of spurned companies. 16.12% annualized return of the spurned portfolio versus the 13.81% annualized return of the admired portfolio over the nearly 25 year span.

Not only that, but they found exactly the same results as the authors above.

We find that increases in admiration were followed, on average, by lower returns.

More media coverage and hype results in more popularity, which causes more people to buy the stock. This results in higher stock prices and ultimately, lower future returns.
Conclusion

The research is clear. Investors lose when they trade frequently and attempt to pick stocks. Keep in mind that even if someone could outperform the market by selecting individual stocks, they’d likely still underperform after accounting for taxes and transaction costs.

And how about the million-dollar question: If stock picking is so hopelessly futile, why does the media continue talking about it? Why do brokers continue selling it? Why do individual investors keep chasing it?

Read more: Index Investing for European Investors

A couple of reasons actually.

People are suckers who love a good story. Research and reason don’t sell magazines.  No big brokerage firm is going to place a full-page ad that says, “Trading your portfolio with us will cost you a fortune over time in fees and expenses, therefore you’re almost guaranteed to underperform an appropriate index fund.” No, they keep hawking the latest high-tech mutual fund, selling the dream while collecting those fees.

People desperately want to be better than the average, and smarter than the next investor, even though they probably aren’t either.

The best way to win this game is by refusing to play it. Invest in a global mix of low-expense ETFs via a good broker like DEGIRO and you’re good to go.

And Yet… I Still Pick Stocks

While all the evidence seems to be in favor of using low-cost index funds, the truth is that there are plenty of investors that have made big returns by picking stocks.

By going with the masses and choosing an index fund, you will only get average returns. This might be a fine strategy if you are adopting a defensive position, perhaps a bit later in life when you’ve already achieved your desired level of wealth and just want to grow it slowly over time.

All the wealthy people I know have either invested a huge chunk of their time and energy (10 years+) into a single project that becomes their golden egg, or picked a few stocks early in their trajectory and multiplied their money many times over. Even more common is a combination of both of these strategies – investing time in a business that eventually makes a lot of money, then investing part of that money into stocks or other businesses and multiplying the original wealth with minimal additional effort.

This strategy works well because these kinds of people are provably high performers that tend to be among the best and most informed in their industry, and they can spot new trends and markets before anyone else can. And therein lies possibly the only instance where the efficient market hypothesis breaks down.

What these people are doing is not stock picking in reality, and they tend not to care much about stock prices at all. They are applying their experience, connections, and vision to identify where the world is going, then betting on the companies that have already gained a foothold in those new trends.

Adopting such a strategy is especially well suited to tech investors because among all industries the tech industry is probably the most open and well discussed. While many commentators have long spoken of the tech bubble, and that investing in tech only works until it doesn’t, I believe that every company is now becoming a tech company, and this is not a trend that will end soon. For example, we have an upcoming monetary revolution that is driven by, guess what, new technology – in the form of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other protocols that are upending a very low-tech and tightly controlled monetary system.

Final Thoughts

So yes, in general, stock picking is a loser’s game and the chances of you making money in the long run by picking stocks are slim. However, if you’re lucky you can strike it big, so if you fit a certain profile, then stock picking might work for you.

As for me, I combine my deep knowledge of the tech industry together with that of nascent technologies like crypto, as well as my natural interest in spending time reading about investments, in order to try and generate outsized returns. So far, so good, but will it work long-term or will I spectacularly lose it all at some point? Only time will tell…

Filed under: Money, Stock market

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Jean Galea

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