The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
I mainly use Coinbase Pro - reasonable fees and they offer a decent selection of coins.
The other fiat onramp I use is Kraken which has slightly more attractive fees, however, I have my bank account etc verified to a higher level on CBP so that's what I almost exclusively use.
I'd start with them - if you don't have an account on either, sign up for both NOW (even if you don't intend to buy yet), because account verification is slow at the moment. So it's better to have them all ready for whenever you do decide to jump in.
Loading money into coinbase pro is a bit of a hassle but honestly I don't know if I'm doing it an antiquated way and perhaps it's a lot easier if you were to start today. My process is from 2017 and it works so I just stick with it, I transfer money to Coinbase, then 'import' the balance to CBP. CB and CBP are different experiences completely, so just be careful of that, as you will have much higher fees on normal coinbase. CB is probably no bad thing if you just want to dip your toes, but when you start working with larger amounts or frequent trades, CBP is the way to go.
hope that helps!
I jumped back in having sold most of my stack last time at £3, where to me it was clearly overheated at the time. I'm still keeping a little more on the side-lines just in case it goes a little lower, but I have no doubt 2021 will be a great year for BTC & ARB, and these prices imo are very attractive. If it reaches £1.40-50 I'll definitely make another buy.
I still maintain that everyone here should hold BTC in addition to ARB. Or rather, my actual opinion is you should hold more BTC than you do ARB. Anecdotally, if you had held BTC you'd be faring much better than being ARB alone over the last couple of months. Obviously it's all relative to your buy price, but having exposure to both ARB and BTC makes perfect sense, regardless of when you buy.
happy to help CTC1988 - just make sure you use Coinbase Pro to get the rates I just described!
Coinbase and Coinbase Pro both use the same login credentials, but the pro interface is a little more intimidating for first time users, however it doesn't take long to get the hang of it - especially given you will be familiar with things like limit orders from buying/selling shares.
Lots of videos available on YouTube if you need an in-depth guide to coinbase pro if needed.
You will get a poor spread using something like revolut - as they'll be buying it through an exchange and taking a cut so they will have higher fees. It's not possible to transfer it off revolut platform which means you also don't own the bitcoin that you buy on revolut.
There is no reason I can think of not to use coinbase pro/kraken - they are regulated and I'd suggest going with them if you have the option.
I sold £12.3k BTC back in January for a fee of £61 - so just to compare to K3VMC's sell, the fees on revolut are over 2x what you would pay on coinbase pro, and you would get less BTC for your money.
DB - Well, that's certainly some mental gymnastics and I'm guessing I've found someone else who doesn't own crypto. At the absolute highest level, if crypto didn't exist Argo wouldn't exist. If you think that crypto has a place in the future, you would own cryptocurrency, even if it's just a tiny amount. There will only be a finite (21m) amount of BTC, if you don't hold BTC now and think it has a purpose (to the point where you are investing in companies that back it), then you will simply be left behind, no matter how many shares in Argo you have.
Lunq - yes exactly, and I get that everyone has different risk profiles so I'm not saying everyone should go balls to the wall into BTC, but just owning some to understand how it works. It is an absolute game changer. There are so many applications for it
fp999 - 900%...I think you need to take a look at the charts, 5 years ago BTC was at $400, now it's over $50,000.
If you want an asset that tracks BTC you should buy BTC.
I was disappointed and surprised at how few people here actually hold crypto when I asked last week. Given crypto actually provides purpose to Argo, I feel like everyone here should have at least a small amount, to understand how it works if nothing else.
If you really believe in Argo, you would hold crypto.
RC, I will give you a slightly controversial answer but one that us becoming more accepted recently...honestly if you are working with less than a certain amount (say 5k), I would keep it on the exchange, but ONLY if the exchange has insurance and regulated by fca.
the days of mt gox are gone for regulated exchanges, and not everyone wants to have sole custody of their crypto, keeping it on a regulated (kraken/coinbase pro etc) exchange in my opinion is perfectly fine for smaller amounts.
I keep around 5-10k on exchanges at any given time, the rest goes on my ledger
Pearls you should go hang out in the buttcoin subreddit they would welcome you with open arms there.
I’m sure you said the same when BTC was at $50, $500, $5000, and now $50000...perhaps one day you will be right, I’m hedging my bets you are wrong given BTC is nearly at 50k and mania phase hasn’t even begun yet.
It’s very hard to avoid tax with BTC fwiw, it is a transparent and public ledger, can be examined by anyone, including HMRC. Very few cryptocurrency coins can be used the same way as good old trusty fiat.
Yes...I learnt a lot in 2017, baptism of fire springs to mind - glad you didn't let it put you off. I held over 6BTC and 120 ETH at one point - but through various trades etc I obviously didn't come out with that much...!
btw HMRC treat cryptocurrency as an asset - not a currency - might be worth looking into that a little more.
teawithsugar - I had a lot of luck with ZIL last year - I sold it all now but I have my eye on it. good luck!
LTC...I still hold - perplexing it hasn't recovered to its previous ATH yet - I still have faith in it though
I have never used paypal as part of the onboarding/offboarding for crypto so not sure about that.
Kraken is regulated a fiat exchange, same as coinbase, so they send the money to your bank account. I used them in 2017 when they weren't down!
Honestly, I was surprised by the average age (~45) of people on this board - I figured it would be younger. At 34 I'm no spring chicken but certainly below the average age. But it got me thinking, and this is possibly a stupid question, but given the results of the age thread surprised me, I think it's worth asking.
Who here actually owns cryptocurrency? If yes, what % does it represent of your entire investment portfolio?
I'll start - I hold crypto, it's 85% of my entire investment portfolio. Have been involved in crypto since 2017.
Mattermatics, there would be no benefit of a raise, as it’s in a stable coin. The only scenario I can think of where that might provide benefit, would be you put it into a stable coin and stake it, but PoS is taxed as income, so again no tax advantage. You cannot take advantage of a change in price in your scenario as you have put it in a stablecoin. If there is a raise that you are taking advantage of (and the raise exceeds your cgt allowance), you will be taxed on it.
fiat > crypto = not a taxable event
crypto > crypto = taxable event
crypto > fiat = taxable event
taxable events only incur tax where there is profit/a raise in the asset, and that raise exceeds 12.3k, but keep in mind you might have other assets that are liable to CGT which can eat into the allowance.
Unfortunately, HMRC doesn’t view crypto as a currency, and therefore once your CGT allowance is used up, you cannot legally avoid tax where there is a change in value.