A growing number of Legacy readers have become crypto millionaires…
It’s thanks to the efforts of colleague and world-renowned crypto investing expert Teeka Tiwari.
Take it from paid-up Teeka subscriber Kirk M…
I just want to add my two cents to all the accolades directed Teeka’s way. My portfolio has topped the million-dollar mark, and it’s heading higher.
My wife keeps asking me, “Has our ship come in?” I tell her it’s still out to sea, but we can see the lights!
It’s no wonder Kirk and others are delighted. Teeka has racked up some extraordinary returns in his model portfolios.
In April 2016, he recommended paid-up Palm Beach Letter and Palm Beach Confidential subscribers buy bitcoin (BTC) at $428.
It’s up 12,361% since then. That’d turn every $1,000 grubstake into $124,610.
Teeka also recommended ether (ETH) at $9. It’s the crypto associated with what he calls the “App Store of crypto,” Ethereum.
ETH is up 28,203% since then.
That’s the kind of return that meaningfully moves the needle on your wealth. It’d turn a $1,000 grubstake into $283,030.
And of the 85 open positions in Teeka’s crypto-focused Palm Beach Confidential advisory model portfolio, the average return is 2,175%.
But here’s the crazy thing…
Despite Teeka’s best efforts… and our repeated recommendations in these pages… there are still plenty of crypto virgins.
By that I (Chris Lowe) mean folks who haven’t bought any crypto yet.
That’s a real shame. Teeka believes that within the next five years, bitcoin will smash through the $500,000 mark – a roughly 10x return from today’s level.
And he sees smaller, less well-known coins delivering even higher returns.
So today, I’m sharing with you a story about how Teeka’s new chief analyst at The Palm Beach Letter, Nilus Mattive, got involved in crypto for the first time last month.
If you still own no crypto, I hope it will get you to at least put $50 or $100 into bitcoin and other crypto. Even if you’re a crypto skeptic, that’ll give you a feel for how it works.
And as you’ll see today, the potential upside is still huge.
Nilus is 43 years old…
That’s one year younger than me.
He’s a longtime investor and newsletter analyst. And like most analysts our age, he has mostly focused on opportunities in stocks.
For wealth protection… and inflation protection, Nilus has long been a precious metals guy.
You could say it’s in his DNA.
He grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where he was surrounded by stories of financial loss and ruin.
Folks around him trusted gold and silver to keep their savings safe… not money in the bank or stocks or any other risky investments. As he tells it…
As a young boy, I’d watch my grandmother go into her bedroom and come back with a bag of silver Morgan dollars. Those are silver dollar coins minted in 1921.
Every once in a while, she’d give me one to keep as she talked about the Great Depression and her mistrust of the banks.
This resonated with him. And he’s long held that gold and silver are the one true way to shield wealth from inflation and fiat-currency debasement.
He held on to that belief… and largely ignored bitcoin as an alternative, private store of wealth… until a recent 8 a.m. phone call with Teeka.
As regular readers know, Teeka says gold is no longer doing its job…
Typically, folks buy gold to shield their savings from inflation.
But as we dealt with in detail in yesterday’s dispatch, gold is up a meager amount over the past 12 months – currently just 3%. That’s despite unprecedented government stimulus to combat the coronavirus crisis.
And here’s the kicker… Over that same time, bitcoin is up 649%.
Based on gold’s massive underperformance, and what Teeka believes is bitcoin’s higher potential for gains, he recently recommended Palm Beach Letter readers sell some of their gold and use the proceeds to buy bitcoin.
That’s why Teeka called Nilus at 8 a.m. He wanted to talk to someone smart who could poke holes in his argument. And who better than a long-term fan of gold…
Nilus opened with gold’s long history of protecting wealth…
Gold coins were first minted under the reign of King Croesus of Lydia, in what’s now Turkey, in about 550 BC.
The first bitcoin was mined in 2009.
So gold has had a roughly 2,558-year head start on bitcoin as a trusted store of value.
But as Teeka pointed out, there have been many other times in history when technological shifts have upended millennia-old traditions. It’s how society progresses.
The example he used is the motorcar replacing the horse and buggy as the primary means of transport at the start of the 20th century.
There are also plenty of examples from monetary history…
In 146 BC, the Carthaginians in North Africa issued leather promissory notes that would entitle the bearer to a certain sum of precious metals.
Then paper began to circulate as money in 11th-century China during the Song dynasty. And in the 13th century, the Mongol Empire adopted paper notes. (Paper money didn’t come to Europe until 1661. That’s when Swedish banks started issuing paper banknotes.)
In the 1950s, this technology gave way to a new one – electronic money. That’s when Bank of America (BAC) pioneered the use of electronic transfers between banks.
The lesson is clear: Because something has been used as money for a long time doesn’t mean it will always be used.
Nilus also raised the specter of something rattling faith in bitcoin…
What happens, he asked Teeka, if an event – say, a market-manipulation scandal – causes people to dump their bitcoins?
But Teeka was ready for this, too.
He says it’s highly unlikely at this point along the road to widespread adoption. Simply put, too many people own bitcoin for them to all decide to dump it.
And Teeka isn’t talking about just regular investors. Institutional investors – including stodgy old names such as the Bank of New York Mellon (BK) and MassMutual – are involved in bitcoin.
So are Nasdaq-listed tech firms. Tesla (TSLA)… software maker MicroStrategy (MSTR)… and payment processor Square (SQ)… hold bitcoin on their balance sheets.
Besides, every financial market can be subject to some type of manipulation – even the gold market.
Just last year, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) settled a lawsuit. The suit accused the firm of “spoofing” trades in the precious metals market.
That’s the practice of placing a buy or sell order with no intention to execute the transaction. The idea is to benefit a trader’s existing position in that market.
The accusation didn’t cause everyone to dump their gold and silver.
Finally, Nilus took out the big guns…
“What if the government bans bitcoin?” he asked.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt banned Americans from owning gold. This was in place until 1974, when President Ford reversed it.
“Couldn’t that happen again?” asked Nilus.
I’ve already written to you in detail about why the 1930s ban on gold was a result of the Gold Standard money system of the time. This linked the U.S. dollar to gold at a fixed exchange rate.
The purpose of the ban was to enable the government to devalue the dollar versus gold. This would stimulate the economy, which was in the midst of the Great Depression. But the U.S. is no longer on the Gold Standard – so this motive is no longer relevant.
Even if the government tried to ban bitcoin, it would fail. Teeka…
The Chinese government has already tried to ban bitcoin several times. It basically failed. The exchanges just moved elsewhere. If a major centrally planned economy wasn’t able to ban bitcoin, why should we think the U.S. can or will?
Washington’s chance at doing so was a long time ago. At this point, adoption is simply too widespread. So even if politicians were able to do it, the cost to our economy would simply be too great.
Nilus told me Teeka’s three answers were enough to convince him that bitcoin could be the new gold.
Then Teeka offered Nilus a deal…
A way to lose his crypto virginity, if you will.
If Nilus bought $5,000 of bitcoin that day, he’d buy it back from him for the same amount at any point in the future – even if the price fell far below Nilus’ entry price.
Nilus, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, did exactly that.
He bought $5,000 worth of bitcoin through the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). It’s a fund you can buy in your regular brokerage account that tracks the price of bitcoin.
It’s not necessarily the best way to pick up exposure. Teeka prefers to buy bitcoin directly on an exchange such as Coinbase (COIN) and then hold the coins in a digital wallet.
But it was convenient. And it stopped Nilus from procrastinating any more. As he told me…
The most important thing is to just get involved. Just buy something. Get over the mental hurdle. Commit to it in a small way that will not impact you financially if bitcoin turns out to be a dud.
If it goes down and you lose the money, it doesn’t matter. But if it goes up, you’re stoked. Don’t overthink it.
Just get over the emotional part and put $50 in. Then you can start to track it from a participant’s standpoint… not as an intellectual or philosopher.
One way or the other, you’re making money or losing money. But you’re in it. You’re doing it. You’re forced to learn about it.
My sincere hope is you’ll follow Nilus’ advice and get involved… even with a very small stake.
To learn more about how to do that, you can download our free one-page guide to buying bitcoin here.
Regards,
 |
Chris Lowe
April 22, 2021
Barcelona, Spain