I've never seen this before, but the U.S. government is auctioning crypto that was seized.  

Eleven lots of cryptocurrency up for bid on GSA Auctions

June 16, 2021

ATLANTA -- Become a part of the growing cryptocurrency community by placing a winning bid during GSA Auctions’ next cryptocurrency sale.

Bidding on 11 lots of cryptocurrency, totaling 8.93 bitcoins and 150.2 litecoins and with a combined market value of nearly $377,000, begins on Friday, June 18, 2021, at 5 p.m. ET. This 4-day auction closes Monday, June 22, 2021, at 5 p.m. ET, with the option to extend the closing time to accommodate last-minute bidding. This auction marks the first time that Litecoin will be available on GSA Auctions.

GSA first began auctioning cryptocurrency on behalf of the U.S. government in early 2021. To date, users of the GSAAuctions platform have successfully bid for a total of 16.99 bitcoins over three auctions that garnered $937,092.

“Experienced investors recognize a good opportunity when they see it, which is why our auctions have generated so much enthusiasm among the crypto community,” said Thomas Meiron, Regional Commissioner for GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service. “With the addition of a new type of cryptocurrency, this promises to be one of our most exciting auctions of the year.”

Registration is required to place a bid, and the winning bidder must make a payment via wire transfer no later than June 23, 2021. The winning bidder will also need a digital wallet to receive the property. Network transaction fees may apply. As there is no tangible asset up for bid, GSA will not hold an inspection day.

A service of the U.S. General Service Administration, GSA Auctions is the federal government’s online clearinghouse for surplus federally owned assets and equipment, such as office furniture, vehicles, scientific equipment and collectibles.

I'm a subscriber to the Modern Finance podcast and enjoy Kevin Rose's interview with various crypto personalities. You can find what I'm listening to right now here. 

In this podcast, Kevin is interviewing the co-founder of Alchemix, a DeFi lending platform. Before listening to this podcast, I had a rough idea of what Alchemix is but didn't really understand how it was able to do it. Below is what I have learned so far in my hour or so research:

1. A user deposits a stablecoin into the Alchemix vault
2. The user is then able to borrow up to 50% of their initial deposit
3. After a period of time (depending on the yield farming rate), the loan will repay itself
4. The user can then take back their original loan amount

This all seems very compelling; especially when the loan repays itself. I'm not sure how sustainable high yields will be in the long run but perhaps in the short term this can work. 

I plan on doing more work to learn about Alchemix and its (governance) coin, ALCX. 

Additionally, Gemini this week started allowing trading of ALCX on its platform. This is positive news and I hope more attention goes into DeFi. 

Finally, here are some stats about ALCX including a calculator to show how long it would a loan to repay itself.

Well, this is a big surprise. It appears GameStop, the meme stock, just went live with their NFT website.

It doesn't have much except that they're looking to hire a team. 

What's really intriguing is that there's an Ethereum wallet address (0x13374200c29C757FDCc72F15Da98fb94f286d71e) -- a subtle nod to the gaming crowd: 1337 = leet (as in elite) and 420 = well, weed.

Clever redditors have pointed out that GameStop is looking to launch their own ERC-20 token in July. Click here for a more in-depth analysis.

I recently came across this simple to use, yet highly educational website called Case Bitcoin. It lays the case to invest in Bitcoin and also has plenty of interesting resources, including a comparison to the S&P500 and gold. 

Let me know what you think of the site: https://casebitcoin.com/

Woke up this morning to see that nearly every crypto coin is down around 30-45%. What are you doing to cope with this? I'm just sitting and watching out things unfold. I can't access my Gemini account to make any trades though; wonder if some of the downward pressure is a result of panic selling like a run on the banks. Coinbase Pro seems operational based on their status page.

Elon Must has been on a crusade this weekend to disparage bitcoin. 

First it was about the climate impact (even though his private jet and space rockets use a lot of fossil fuel):

Tesla & Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021

To be clear, I strongly believe in crypto, but it can’t drive a massive increase in fossil fuel use, especially coal

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2021

Then it was about about pumping Doge more and making crazy claims:

Ideally, Doge speeds up block time 10X, increases block size 10X & drops fee 100X. Then it wins hands down.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021

And finally making fun of Michael Saylor:

He should wear outfit for Halloween, but with “Bitcoin” tattooed high on thighs

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021

I read an argument that if one man can have such a huge effect on the crypto market (so far down 20% overall), then crypto isn't yet ready for mass adoption; I tend to agree here. The power of crypto is that no one single person or entity can affect it -- either positively or negatively -- and Elon, whether you agree or disagree with him, has shown the crypto market is still very delicate.

As a follow-up to my previous post, here are the results:

Closing day (4/14) reference price: $328.28 -- since it's a direct listing there's no "IPO price"

One week later (4/21): $311.92 (down 5%)

One month later (5/14): $258.37(down 21%)

Boy, was I so wrong!

It took me a Google search and a YouTube video to find out how to withdraw my USD from Coinbase into my bank account. Did anyone else find this unnecessarily burdensome? Gemini makes it so much easier and clearer. I feel that Coinbase intentionally makes it difficult to withdraw funds to keep users locked into the account.

The reddit founder, Alexis Ohanian, recently changed his Twitter handle to reflect a pretty cool .eth web address.

You can register your own .eth domain too, but the gas fee right now is over $200 for a $5/year domain name. 

This seems either the beginning of the .com domain names or the AOL keywords fad. What do you think this will be in 5 years? 10 years?

I use a variety of ways to track my crypto portfolio, including using the built-in tools from CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. I tend to find the latter a bit more accurate since it includes the transaction fee in your total returns, whereas CoinMarketCap does not.

Separately, I keep track (and ensure the accuracy of the online portfolios) using Excel. I recently created my own Excel spreadsheet tracker which I intend to share in the near future once I have all the features built. It's quite a low maintenance tracker and all I need to do is enter my transactions manually (e.g., buy or sell) and the spreadsheet handles all the updating and tracking for me, including calculating my gains and losses versus the market price. This is accomplished by accessing the CoinMarketCap API (free for personal use). 

There's an excellent HOWTO guide on linking the API to Excel here. 

How do you track your portfolio? Let me know in the comments below.