Current trading position amidst the Crypto storm 27/05/2017. 8.30PM

I’ve been buying Crytpo currencies for around 2 weeks now and thought I would share my current portfolio position and choice of Altcoins.

I’ve been buying through Bitonic/Bitpanda and transferring to Bittrex. Living in the Netherlands I find this the best option and given the lag rates on other platforms such as Poloniex I find the speed works for me.

I also use cryptocompare.com to help track my progress, although this is not 100% accurate due to buying BTC and no recording this initial price.

Firstly, I wanted to show you my current standing;

This time 2 days ago I was looking at a healthy ‘profit’ of 25%, then the market began to unwind yesterday and by this morning I was at almost minus 15%. At the current timing I am at almost a break even point.

I had thought about taking a prudent approach and withdrawing some of my paper ‘profits’ but being a block chain advocate and of an extremely positive mind about the future of the crypto market I took the HODL approach.

See below for my portfolio via value size, my two largest holdings were luckily pulling the whole portfolio upwards.

What I’ve learnt from this recent dip is that I have quite a spread portfolio. I’ve now decided to focus on ETC, ETH, Monero, Ripple and hold some BTC. My aim is to buy some BTC in the next day or so if the price hits $1850, $1600. I’ll spread these between my long terms holds.

I will also dollar cost average some of my other coins, but when they start getting back into the green I plan to sell some off and consolidate into my top 5 coins. I will keep investing in some less known altcoins but lock some profits in once they pop and re-invest these into my main holds on the dips.

Let’s see how this plans out.

Review of Trezor Wallet

I’ve been using Bittrex to handle my trades and buying BTC through Bitronic.nl and Bitpanda depending on the rates of the day. Over the past few weeks, however, I’ve accumulated a fair amount of value in my Bittrex account. This was starting to stress me out as I’ve read in the past some of the sites can get taken down for a considerable amount of time and there is a risk of people stealing your coins. I think the general rule is;

Keep only the coins you need in your trading account that you need to buy and sell that day/week (if trading is your option).

Any coins you want to use day to day to pay for goods and services should be stored in your chosen phone wallet app. This should be similar to the amount of money you would keep in your physical wallet.

Any coins held for the long term should be stored in an offline (cold) or secure wallet. This should reflect your current savings held in a deposit account at your bank. You can generally have confidence that it’s not going to disappear overnight.

After some research I decided on Trezor, their tech looked easy to use and their shipping was quick (see here). Other reasons include their great reviews within the community and also they have a credible team behind the company with a great track record.

I ordered the product on the 24th of May which set me back 128 USD and I received it two days later on the 26th May. I did get stung by a DHL bill however for around 45 euros, considering it was sent from within the EU I was surprised as DHL put in a 15 euros service charge. On the plus side it was sent via DHL signed delivery.

 

All in all the item cost me 160 euros so it came in just under the amount if I had bought from Amazon.de. In hindsight, I think I would have chosen Ledge Nano which seems like a cheaper option whilst still providing a good service. That said, they won’t ship until June 22nd which was too long for me to wait.

The first thing you notice is that the actual box has been well designed with reassuring security features. The box comes with a security seal which shows that no one has opened it before you, indicating that the device is secure.

Great security features on the physical box

The contents include the device, a USB cable, a Trezor keychain fob and a few stickers, along with two pieces of card to write down your secure 24-word sentence which is essential if you need to access your wallet without the device.

Box contens of Trezor

Getting started – simple and easy

The setup was extremely simple, plug in the device and follow the instruction from this link. The easiest way is to install the chrome extension.

You’ll need to first set up a pin code and then write down your recovery seed (and double check this). One set up you can start receiving bitcoins to your new secure address.

To add Ethereum and Ethereum Classic you can head to myetherwallet and login via Trezor to quickly create your own ETH and ETC wallet. To add ETC click the dropdown in the top right of the screen;

I tested some small transfers from my Bittrex accounts to ensure they arrived safely, and sure enough, they were in the wallets within seconds.

Compatible software wallets

Trezor is compatible with a number of wallets, including Electrum, MultiBit HD, and GreenAddress on desktop, GreenBits and Mycelium on Android, and myTREZOR.com on the web. Use the TREZOR Chrome extension to manage your device.

Compatible crypto currencies

At the time of writing Trezor currently supports the following crypto currencies;

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, ZCash, Litecoin, Namecoin, Dogecoin, Dash and Testnet.

Conclusion

Overall I would recommend purchasing a secure wallet for peace of mind. It’s way too risky to keep your currency in the 3rd party online trading platforms as they are not that secure as proven in the past. The overall price tag from Trezor including delivery and VAT is something to consider though, and in my opinion is quite steep compared to its closest rival Ledge Nano. That said if you prefer peace of mind over the price tag I would suggest Trezor based on my user experience and market reputation.