Stock Trading - Entry 49

Yes there are scammers out there and yes I fell prey to mistake number two that I mentioned in entry 6. This time I didn't fall prey and scammers inadvertently helped me rebalance my portfolio - and I am not kidding. What I will get into here is what happened - I am not dispensing financial advice.

So I get a call.

They tell me they are calling from the FCA in the UK (the guy on the phone had a British accent) and they have tracked the funds I had lost a few years prior. They had the correct amount and dangled a big carrot of the massive amount it was now worth - a common tactic to try to stop people from thinking clearly. But I maintained a level head and did two things simultaneously. One, I started working with them a little to ascertain a few key things. Two, I immediately opened my browser to research the FCA. After a couple minutes in, two things happened almost at the same time.

One, they said I had to send them Ethereum tokens (ETH) to cover their fees - a major red flag. Two, I read on the FCA website that they do not contact people outside the UK and they even have details on how to spot scams here. What did I do? I immediately hung up the phone, verified multiple levels of security of my account into which they had wanted to gain access. Then, I patted myself on the back for not being scammed.

But it didn't stop there.

I got to wondering if I should switch over from XRP to ETH. After all, the price of XRP tokens hadn't been doing so hot. It should be noted I refused to make a loss on that, but I lucked in and earned a very tiny sum - which I will have to declare at tax time. (I suppose it would have been serendipitous had it been $3.60 given I started my investing journey with $360, but I digress.)

When I learned that ETH can be staked (I like free blockchain tokens), I took a peek at ETH and found this article that describes ETH as all about smart contracts, decentralized finance, and having the capacity to generate revenues in fees (no wonder banks supposedly love it). So I bought some.

Then, I looked at ETH on coingecko and saw the price of Ethereum tokens was in a dip. So I bought some.

That means my autumn 2025 blockchain purchases have been NEAR and ETH.

Given that I want to keep the value of my blockchain portfolio under 10% of my stock trading portfolio, I will not be buying different tokens any time soon, but I have topped up my holdings a bit during dips.

What's my take on my blockchain portfolio?

My intention is to leave my blockchain portfolio alone for a while since the future use cases of those tokens won't be realized any time soon (although NEAR did surprise me a week prior to publishing this article with a spike in price). IMO, all the various tokens I have invested in are going to need greater uptake and actual use by industry/business before I sell.

Why not wait for more market hype to drive up prices? One, I have staked most of my tokens primarily to reduce my impulse selling. Second, selling before uptake means I will miss out on real gains, not just hype (again, I refuse to be a day trader). Third, when industry starts making greater use of them, the value of my tokens is guaranteed to go up. The only thing that could stop that is something completely bypassing blockchains - but again, that's why I look at the use case.

Speaking of uses...

I stumbled across something online that makes Bitcoin mining useful. I am not talking about currency use cases or anything like that. I am talking about the puzzle processing. Apparently, that takes computing power. Lots. That generates heat. Do you see where they went with this? A space heater that generates heat by mining bitcoin!!!

Some bad news: I did the math for me and it won't pay itself back at the BTC price as of the date of publishing this article. Still, very clever and I wonder how other appliances could harness decentralized technologies to satisfy other necessities in life. I am very impressed, really; I tip my hat to the designers of Heatbit.

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