Ugh. OK. Fine. Let’s talk about crypto!
🔸 Plus: Elon Musk has used illegal drugs, worrying folks at Tesla and SpaceX 🔸 Football stadiums are being redesigned for Taylor Swift 🔸 The 27 numbers that guarantee a UK lottery win 🔸
Hello! Here’s today’s 2-minute guide to demystifying money and making you richer
Yesterday’s markets
S&P 500: 4,697.24 ⬆️ 0.18%, ⬇️ 0.90% YTD
FTSE 100: 7,689.61 ⬇️ 0.43%, ⬇️ 0.56% YTD
Bitcoin: $44,158.20 ⬆️ 0.38%, ⬆️ 4.42% YTD
GBP to USD: $1.2725 ⬇️ 0.051% YTD
GBP to EUR: €1.1616 ⬆️ 0.70% YTD
Let’s talk about crypto
Bitcoin is slowly but surely retracing its way back to its all-time high. It’s currently at nearly $43,000 per coin, roughly two-thirds of its record price of $64,000-plus, back in 2021.
Moneyin2 is reluctant to recommend cryptocurrency as a savings or investment strategy because:
It is extremely volatile.
It is not backed by underlying real-life assets.
It has close to zero real-life uses in most countries.
And all crypto trading platforms are continuously targeted by hackers.
Crypto is a pretty good way to lose money quickly, in other words. So here is our disclaimer:
Only an absolute moron puts all their money in crypto. Only invest in crypto if you can afford to lose everything you put in.
But as Bitcoin climbs ever higher, it also looks like a pretty good way to make money, too.
Bitcoin rose 152% in 2023. By comparison, the S&P 500 was up 24.23%, the Nasdaq Composite was up 43%.
So, we hear you asking, again, should I be buying Bitcoin?
Heavy sigh.
OK. Let’s get into this.
First, you need to understand why Bitcoin is on the rise
A new “Bitcoin halving” is coming up. The reward for mining will be cut in half some time in 2024, making new Bitcoin harder to generate — and that’s putting upward pressure on prices.
Traditional platforms are coming in, boosting demand. Companies like Fidelity, Blackrock and Schwab have registered to offer crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which you can buy like mutual funds on most trading sites. Investors no longer need to figure out how a blockchain wallet works, basically.
In the US, the SEC is poised to approve the first of those ETFs, according to Bloomberg, and that will allow Americans to buy Bitcoin through more traditional investment platforms. ETFs won’t be available in the UK anytime soon but all that new American money will push up the price for everybody.
So our advice is: Be careful. If you want to invest a small percentage of your total wealth in crypto, now might be the time. By “small percentage” we mean a sum that won’t make you cry if you lose it all.
We recommend using a big, regulated consumer-focused platform like Coinbase, if you are a newbie. Coinbase is easy to use and registered with the proper US financial authorities. It’s legit, unlike many crypto platforms which are literally scams.
How to get paid to invest in crypto
We have one more recommendation. The second-biggest coin is Ether, or “ETH”, which is the native coin of the Ethereum blockchain — a more technically sophisticated and less energy-intensive version of the Bitcoin Blockchain. ETH rose 90% over the course of 2023.
The interesting thing about ETH is that if you lend your ETH to the blockchain (the process is called “staking”) then the blockchain will use your stake as a security in its transaction validation process. You can get your “stake” back at any time, but it takes a little longer than simply selling it in the normal way.
In return, the Ethereum blockchain will pay you fees. (Coinbase make this easy, too, and its platform shows you how much you make each time you get paid.) Those fees are running at about 3.5% at the time of writing.
That’s less than you’d earn in a decent high-rate savings account at your local bank.
But if you want to take a gamble on crypto, then buying ETH and staking it is a way to get paid while doing so.
One final note: Once those ETFs arrive, and after the Bitcoin “halving”, you’ll need to be vigilant. Be prepared for prices to decline quickly.
And for dessert …
“Elon Musk has used illegal drugs, worrying leaders at Tesla and SpaceX,” the WSJ says, to the surprise of absolutely no one. “Some executives and board members fear the billionaire’s use of drugs—including LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine—could harm his companies.”
Football stadiums are being redesigned for Taylor Swift. And other rock concerts. Because that’s where the money is. Real Madrid’s new Bernabéu will have a retractable roof to keep the rain off Swifties and a “button [which] begins the five-hour process that splits the stadium’s football pitch into six sections and sends it to a vast underground storage space, where light, temperature and humidity controls provide optimum conditions to maintain the grass regardless of what is happening overhead,” per the FT.
Do not use the word “rizz” at work if you are a manager. The youngs don’t like it.
These 27 numbers guarantee a UK lottery win. But there’s a catch — there’s always a catch — you’re likely to spend more on tickets than you’ll win in prizes because a “win” includes the free play for getting just two numbers right.
People are 20 times more likely to save for retirement if the money is taken automatically from their salary, this study says. This article contains all of Moneyin2’s favourite advice in a nutshell: Just start saving, even if it’s only £5 a month. “Whatever amount you can save per month, you just have to start, because it creates the habit,” says Crystal Cox, a financial planner.
Don’t send that angry email when you quit your job. A law firm staffer who resigned and then sent inflammatory emails to his former colleagues calling them “liars and scammers” was ordered to pay double legal costs when a tribunal found his allegations were BS.
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Photo: Eva Rinaldi, Flickr; Giphy.