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ai copywriting, ChatGPT and the talking chimpanzee

AI and ChatGPT are currently major buzzwords in digital marketing. As some businesses look to ChatGPT as a way to cut costs we’re examining AI copywriting to see what’s cooking and examine if it is indeed worth it in the long run.

 

Let’s dive in and find out…

 

ChatGPT and the talking chimpanzee…

As far as I know, nobody has successfully taught a chimpanzee to speak.

Okay, bear with me here…

Let’s just say someone did.

It would become a highly trending topic, people would be amazed by the talking chimpanzee.

The talking chimpanzee, however, would be doing what millions of 5-year-olds the world over already do. They don’t make the news!

So why would the talking chimp create a sensation and make headlines?

Because as humans we are amazed by the seemingly impossible like sword swallowing or magic tricks.

That’s how I see AI writing tools like ChatGPT at the moment.

Wow, we think. AI is able to research and generate articles within seconds, way faster than we could ever do it.

The fact that the articles sound human-like is what makes ChatGPT particularly fascinating, just as a talking chimpanzee would! 

Still, as with magic tricks, things aren’t always what they seem.

It’s important to bear in mind that ChatGPT only uses available data up until 2021 and is not up to date with current events, furthermore, accuracy is not the focus of ChatGPT but rather producing natural language.

Open Ai, the creators of ChatGPT have clearly stated on their FAQ page that the information produced may not be accurate. All this to say that it’s important to understand the benefits as well as the limitations of ai copywriting.

Ai copywriting and AI, in general, is likely to have a growing impact on society, it’s just important we don’t get overly distracted by the talking chimp or trust in everything the chimp says!

 

What does ChatGPT or any other ai content writer know about love? 

If we asked ChatGPT how it feels to be in love and I did, you’ll get a list of feelings and sensations of what one could experience when in love.

In general, they aren’t wrong, but, ChatGPT has never been in love. ChatGPT is collecting data, assembling it in a readable format and spewing it out.

Ask a bunch of people how it feels to be in love and you will be able to connect and empathise with those people and their experiences because they actually experienced love and that is the point.

It’s not generic info, it’s individual experiences and feelings which is infinitely more valuable.

When publishing content, we want to provide readers with a perspective that comes from unique insights, knowledge and experience, this is what will keep people coming back for more and also have a positive effect on Google rankings.

 

AI copy, ChatGPT and the like could be crudely compared to ultra-processed food (UPF)

Here I go again, first I was talking about chimpanzees, then love and now ultra-processed foods, all in the context of ai copywriting.

Amazing what humans are capable of when they are feeling creative!! ; )

I would say we could liken AI copywriting, and ChatGPT output as it is today to ultra-processed foods, you know what I mean. Factory-produced food that is consistent, cheap and generally not the most nutritious if we’re honest.

Ultra-high processed foods are made to satisfy the largest amount of people, be quick to serve and be at a lower price point than freshly produced food.

The day artificial intelligence is able to produce content that is truly original, engaging and indistinguishable from content written by experts will be a different matter altogether but we’re not there yet and maybe never will be.

 

You’re perhaps getting the feeling I’m not the biggest fan of ChatGPT or some kind of technophobe stuck in the past, so a couple of disclaimers to put your minds at ease…

 

Disclaimer 1: I am not a technophobe, far from it in fact.

I have been in tech since before Windows was invented, going back to the days of MS Dos 3.3! 

I witnessed the advent of Windows and macOS, the growth of the personal computer, the arrival of email and the internet followed by e-commerce and cloud computing.  Then came smartphones, apps, crypto/web3/blockchain technology and now AI.

Throughout this time I have adapted, created and used technology to my benefit and continue to do so.

When ChatGPT was announced in November 2022 by Open AI I was naturally curious to see what it could do.

One of my other companies has a blog with specific pages that consistently rank page 1 on Google. They have been written and SEO optimised by us, sure, it takes considerable time and effort but the results speak for themselves.

I wanted to see if I could use ChatGPT to create similar articles. I rolled up my sleeves and gave it a go. 

Sure enough, I thought, oh, that’s readable, the grammar and syntax are ok and the writing sounds relatively natural.

Did I start using ChatGPT to scale our successful series of articles? Hell no!

I played around with ChatGPT to see if I could optimise the results and came to the conclusion that ai copy was not going to produce the quality, accuracy of information and results we need to confidently publish content for our readers. I also didn’t want to risk ruining the good reputation of our website with Google either! 

 

Disclaimer 2: I am not anti ai in general

I believe ai has its uses and in some sectors and fields may prove highly beneficial.

One of the key areas where I feel ai can be very beneficial is first-line customer service chatbots. Fact-based and predictable.

In customer service, there are always common problems and questions asked that are extremely repetitive. 

Do you deliver in this particular area? What happens if my package doesn’t arrive?  Do you accept American Express cards? And so on.

AI and a chatbot can respond to these queries in a human-like way and don’t require the customer to have to wait for a human operator.

By using ai for simple repetitive queries customer service teams can be more readily available for complex problems. It’s a win-win in the above scenario and fast and cost-effective for the company.

The above is one clear example of ai being used in a way that benefits all parties, is a great use of technology and a saviour for customer service professionals the world over!

 

Can ChatGPT and other forms of ai copywriting be useful?

Writing like playing the guitar is a skill that takes time to learn. If you don’t possess writing skills you could use ai tools like ChatGPT to create a draft article which you then fact-check and add your own personal touch. 

Another potential use could be to spark ideas. If you are feeling creatively blocked you could use ChatGPT to suggest topics for example.

At the end of the day, ChatGPT is a tool which if used correctly could provide some benefit to those that don’t have the ability to write or the budget to pay professional content writers.

 

What is the end result? Is ai copywriting better than human copywriting?

It’s of course relative. Take a poorly skilled human writer and compare their writing with that of ai copywriting, ai will at first glance win.

However, pitch a highly skilled and experienced writer against ChatGPT and the opposite will most likely be true.

The human writer has feelings and life experiences to dig into, things that ChatGPT simply doesn’t have.

The human writer can take seemingly abstract concepts like talking chimpanzees, love and ultra-processed foods and weave them into an original story that is hopefully entertaining and makes sense to the reader.

The human copywriter will cost more and take more time, a little like the delicious food the expert chef makes or in fact anything of real value. 

So you have to ask yourself, would you prefer a bland-tasting microwave meal ready to eat in 1 or 2 minutes or would you prefer to have a chef cook up something delicious? Would you really trust the love advice of someone who’s never been in love or really fully trust the wisdom of a talking chimp?

 

Conclusion

If you want to stand out as a business, engage your prospective customers and increase conversions, content writing by experts is still the way to go based on current technology.

This may however change in the future as AI and future generations of tools like ChatGPT are released.

For now, though, I believe it is worth investing the time and money in original content written by expert writers if you want to stand out from the competition and be a true market leader.

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DeFi Explained

While crypto may still be seen by some as “underground”, a place for enthusiasts and tech nerds, DeFi is something that everyone should be paying closer attention to.

It could be that in a relatively short time the way we bank, borrow, lend, carry out financial speculation and even buy insurance could radically change.

 

Welcome to the world of DeFi!

DeFi stands for decentralised finance. It offers a decentralised financial system that eliminates the need for traditional middlemen: banks, payment providers, exchanges, insurance etc

DeFi today is still very much in its infancy but has a very promising future, potentially providing a more financially accessible and egalitarian possibility for millions, maybe one day even billions, of people around the world. 

That sounds like a good thing indeed!

 

TradFi vs DeFi

Traditional Finance is, as the name suggests, traditional financial players like commercial and investment banks and brokerage houses that can often be hundreds of years old and are involved in every aspect of finance from banking to trading and everything in between. 

On the opposite of that spectrum are the young new upstarts starting a revolution by throwing hand grenades into the traditional and gentile world of TradFi. 

These DeFi upstarts envision a world where there are no organisations controlling access to the world of finance and where the rule book is literally set alight and unceremoniously thrown out the window. 

In this article we are looking at the highly innovative world of DeFi and how it contrasts and potentially threatens the cosy and highly entrenched world of traditional finance (TradFi ).

 

DeFi vs TradFi, a historically monumental shift

Today’s financial systems might feel antiquated when compared to the wonders of the technology-driven world we live in. 

The world of TradFi tries to keep up with consumer needs by building on top of an existing closed system and open finance has helped somewhat to drag TradFi into the modern age. 

We must however keep in mind that even open finance whilst fresh and innovative is still constrained by the rules and limitations of traditional finance and their way of doing things.

DeFi on the other hand is starting from scratch in many ways and building something totally new and free from the constraints of TradFi.

The inescapable fact is that times and consumer habits, needs and expectations have changed and now technology exists that can facilitate the kind of monumental shift we are seeing in the crypto world. 

It is no different to automobiles challenging the horse and cart or online travel agencies such as Expedia or Booking.com challenging traditional travel agencies during the early internet boom.

 

So, what does DeFi potentially have in store for us? 

First, do note that this is a revolution and not an evolution. 

The automobile wasn’t a horse that could go faster, the automobile eliminated the horse completely from the picture. 

In much the same way DeFi is not an evolution in TradFi but rather a true revolution, a re-start from scratch, in a sense. 

Of course, people’s core financial needs are still pretty much the same: earn, hold, pay, save, borrow, lend, invest, convert, trade, insure, donate. 

But the infrastructure to do those “basic” things is about to be re-written completely!

Just as in the early days of automobiles when there were plenty of accidents along the way, no speed limits, no speed cameras or speeding tickets, DeFi is currently a bit of an unregulated, free and “wild-west” of finance. 

It’s basically doing everything that traditional finance does, and more, without re-using a single piece of it.

 

DeFi explained

Decentralised Finance is the “money” arm of the crypto world. 

Think of it as Wall Street 2.0, where decentralised companies go public and services like lending, borrowing and derivative trading can all be accessed by anyone.

 

How Defi Started

In many ways, Bitcoin could be seen as the very first example of DeFi even though the term DeFi hadn’t been coined yet, if you pardon the pun! 

Bitcoin was and still is a decentralised monetary system independent of any government or central organisation, the very essence of DeFi. 

But the only use cases were “hold” and “pay”. There was no lending, borrowing, trading or anything else natively built on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The first example of what we would today consider to be Decentralised Finance started in 2015 with Maker. 

Maker had a vision to create a decentralised financial system that would be governed by its user community and, in doing so, give borrowers more control of their assets. 

Maker allows users to borrow Dai, the platform’s native token which is pegged to the US dollar. 

This is one via a set of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, which govern the loan, repayment, and liquidation processes

So Maker lends money against collateral, like a pawn shop or a real estate mortgage dealer. 

That was DeFi use case #1. 

In 2018 Uniswap was released and allowed the exchange of any token for another token without the need for a central exchange and in 2020 AAVE made lending and borrowing decentralised. 

From then on things went crazy and today you can earn, hold, pay, save, borrow, lend, invest, convert, trade, insure, and donate with Decentralised Protocols. 

Whereas in open finance fintech apps are interfacing with established financial institutions to provide consumers with a greater ease of use, developers in the DeFi world are rewriting the rule book completely. 

They are not looking for ways to integrate with traditional intermediaries but rather eliminate them from the picture completely! 

Why connect to a bank’s back end if everyone can hold their own keys and be their own banks?

How can this be possible you might be asking, don´t we need these very solid financial establishments like banks to provide us with lending, borrowing, derivative trading facilities and so forth? 

Well, it turns out that we maybe don’t. 

As mentioned above, the majority of DeFi applications are built on top of very sophisticated blockchain technology called Ethereum which had a market value of $225 billion as of 2nd August 2023. 

To put this into perspective, Barclays Bank had a market cap of $31 billion on the same day. 

So the market cap of Ethereum was nearly 7x that of Barclays Bank! 

Considering that Ethereum came into being in 2015 and Barclays Bank was founded way back in 1896, Ethereum is certainly no financial lightweight when compared to the big boys in TradFi. 

 

There are four main tenets that all DeFi apps share

DeFi apps use a blockchain as their core ledger

All DeFi apps use blockchains for their underlying technology, a few of the most prominent blockchains used to build DeFi apps include Ethereum, Solana, Terra, and Binance Chain. The blockchain performs the central task of recording a ledger of all transactions in the form of blocks.

DeFi apps are open source and transparent by design

Being open source and transparent by nature allows a level of auditability making it possible to delve into smart contracts to see exactly what a smart contract is doing in terms of functions, user data and permissions. Lastly, the entire flow of funds is auditable, this is pretty major when compared to TradFi where everything is hidden away behind proprietary systems accessible only by people on the inside.

DeFi apps are interoperable and programmable

We often hear about “money legos” when looking at DeFi. This is a reference to their composability. Each individual DeFi app can be seen as a “Lego brick” for a specific financial service or product that can be freely combined with others. These “Lego bricks” are in a sense clicked together for each individual transaction in real-time enabling a level of speed, flexibility and innovation that would be unthinkable or even impossible in the way more closed-off and proprietary world of TradFi.

This is why innovation happens so fast: if you want to build a service that requires “swapping” tokens and “lending tokens” as fundamental building blocks and then adds some value on top, you don’t need to rebuild those two building blocks, you can just “plug into” Uniswap” and “AAVE”, and you only need to build the small thing that is unique to your app. 

In traditional finance that could take months of negotiations; in DeFi it takes the minutes required to connect to an API.

DeFi apps are open and accessible to all

One of the most underappreciated aspects of DeFi products is the inherent equality of accessibility. No institution or intermediary can deny service which is also known as being permissionless. 

If you have sufficient funds within your wallet for the transaction that you wish to carry out, you can do it irrespective of where you are from or who you are, it’s as simple as that. 

Compare that to TradFi where an individual can still decide whether a person gets approved for a loan or can even open up a bank account! 

The DeFi world does not care about these sorts of things. 

As long as you have enough coins or tokens in place to carry out the desired transaction there is nobody there to stop you. 

In a world where discrimination sadly still exists and where so many people around the world still do not have access to basic banking facilities let alone sophisticated financial services it´s clearly about time!

 

The DeFi ecosystem now

Some examples of DeFi apps include: 

  • Decentralised Exchanges – also known as DEXs – such as Uniswap where trades can be executed without the DEX having to hold on to your funds to execute trades. 
  • Decentralised Derivatives Trading – On Synthetix for example, you can trade in commodities, something akin to derivative trading without the need to have and hold the commodities in question, instead you trade something called Synths that are synthetic assets. 
  • Lending – Compound is a decentralised peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform where users can earn interest or borrow assets against collateral. AAVE too.
  • Insurance – Nexus Mutual is a decentralised autonomous organisation that provides smart contract insurance.

 

Risks and opportunities with DeFi

By now the opportunities of using DeFi are probably apparent: Autonomy, speed and opportunities previously unavailable.

But there are also quite a few risks still associated with Decentralised Finance that you should consider before rushing into anything.  Here is an overview of the types of risks you are looking at:

1. The risk linked to the “smart contract”

The risk linked to a “smart contract” (the computer code on the blockchain) you are using (AAVE, Uniswap,…). For example, we have seen the following happen in the past:

  • Oracle Attacks &/or Clever Arbitrage Execution: Manipulate the price through oracles, volumes or both, get lots of stuff for cheaper than it is, and then sell it at its real value.

Example: bZx, Cheese Bank, Harvest

  • Contract Design: if you let them print tokens, they will. 

Example: PickleFinance

  • Reentrancy Attack – happens if a contract makes an external call to another untrusted contract before resolving. For example, if it transfers funds before setting its balance to zero, an attacker can beat the withdraw function to death and essentially drain the entire contract. 

Example: Akropolis, dForce, and Origin

  • Front-end issues: bugs in hosting or domain leads to attacks – not specifically DeFi, but still a problem faced by NiceHash. If you go to app.uniswap.org trusting that it’s Uniswap when it’s in fact an attacker, it doesn’t matter how safe the Uniswap smart contract actually is, because that’s not who you are interacting with.

2. The financial risk

As in the risk of not being repaid when needed, or at all, even if everything keeps mostly working

  • While most lending platforms use over-collateralisation to reduce credit risk, over-collateralisation does not completely remove credit risk – The collateral assets that back loans on DeFi platforms have a high level of variation, in liquidity & stability of price.  
  • Liquidity: if all the money in a lending pool is lent out, you can’t withdraw, and you need to wait until some loans are repaid.
  • The yield is still mostly variable today. If you deposit at 11% today, it might be 2% tomorrow. 1 year low is 0.68%
  • If you rely on EUROS for spending but lend out USD, there is a bit of an exchange risk too. 

3. Blockchain or stablecoin risks

  • If the Ethereum Virtual Machine or Parachains or, your blockchain of choice breaks or gets hacked. But at that point, we potentially have a bigger problem.
  • Ethereum transaction fees and congestion leads to the inability to move in/out.
  • Your stablecoin of choice proves to be worthless, gets hacked…and your unit of value = 0

4. You make a mistake

You are your own bank, so your mistakes are your mistakes: Hacked keys, hacked notepads, metamask hacks, paper wallets lost in the wash or giving your money to a fraudulent project could all see you lose your money.

 

As wikipedia says, “Inexperienced investors are at particular risk of losing money using DeFi platforms due to the sophistication required to interact with such platforms and the lack of an intermediary with a customer-support department.”

 

Conclusion

Throughout human existence there have been events that have significantly shaped our societies, discovering fire, the wheel, horses for farming & transportation, the industrial revolution, the internet and most recently web3/crypto and DeFi. 

While DeFi may still be the new kid on the block, this kid isn’t messing around!

Whichever way we look at it, a shift in the status quo in finance and financial equality is urgently needed at a global level and now seems like the perfect time to throw that proverbial hand grenade!

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web3 the new technological wave

The crypto juggernaut is gathering speed and at a breakneck pace. What was once the sole domain of crypto enthusiasts is now entering the mainstream with a vengeance. 

It seems that nowadays everybody is talking about crypto and itching to get in on the action. 

In particular, the focus and excitement is in the explosive areas of Web3 and DeFi. 

In this article, we are going to look at some of the fundamentals and longer-term investment opportunities presented by the major technological shifts taking place in the world of web3 and Defi.

It’s 2009 and Bitcoin arrives on the scene

It all began in 2009 with the arrival of Bitcoin, a revolutionary decentralised digital currency without geographical barriers or any form of central government control. 

The pioneering blockchain technology running under the covers planted the seeds for where we are today. 

Bitcoin itself is still purely a means of holding and transferring value, much like a traditional fiat currency like the dollar or euro or a valuable commodity such as gold. 

Bitcoin does not serve any other extended purpose. The arrival of Bitcoin however introduced a breakthrough technology, the blockchain which has opened up a multitude of possibilities that have the ability to disrupt virtually every industry and in particular finance. 

Welcome to DeFi and Web3…

From its earliest beginnings, the crypto world has evolved at rapid speed and has in recent years spawned an entirely new industry known as decentralised finance or DeFi for short. 

DeFi mainly runs on the second largest cryptocurrency network, Ethereum. Ethereum has gone from being a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to becoming a broader ecosystem for DeFi projects mainly due to the availability of smart contracts. 

Smart contracts are agreements or contracts written in software that are not open to interpretation, discussion or adjustment. 

They execute exactly as per the instructions written into the smart contract and provide an ideal instrument on which to build sophisticated businesses in a trustless environment. 

In DeFi a smart contract sits in the middle as the authority, as opposed to a centralised institution as is typical in traditional finance and most other businesses.

What is Web3?

Web1 was the original bare-bones internet, simple, informational websites mainly. You can get a taste of Web1 by looking at ancient search engines like Lycos, hotbot and webcrawler that are still lurking around on the internet.

Web2 was commerce-driven and spawned the internet giants we all know today, Google, Amazon, Expedia, Facebook and so on. 

Web3 is the new kid in town and one that is creating quite a ruckus. 

Web3 has the potential to truly shake up and revolutionise the world we live in, create entirely new industries and potentially level the playing field, especially in finance. 

In essence, Web3 is the next major evolution of the internet, one that is decentralised and based on peer-to-peer technologies such as public blockchains. 

Take an organisation like Amazon, which is a centralised profit-driven Web2 business, it provides a centralised platform and infrastructure on which things can be bought and sold on the internet. 

In a Web3 world, there is no centralised Amazon, but rather a highly sophisticated blockchain technology using smart contracts that provide the software protocols and required levels of security needed to enable transactions without requiring a physical intermediary. Sorry, Jeff Bezos!

This Web3 model is extending into banking, trading, insurance and more. Just as there was an explosion in commerce-driven websites during the Web2 phase, we are seeing the same again with Web3 and this is presenting investors and novices alike with opportunities to get in early on the Web3 superstars of tomorrow.

Investing in protocols and the fat protocol thesis

Below every significant technology there are usually key protocols. There has been a fundamental shift in the way protocols are being monetised. 

Our current web technology is dependent on protocols like TCP/IP and HTTP and billions of emails rely on POP/IMAP protocols to enable sending and receiving. 

The crucial protocols that have enabled much of the technology we rely on today have been in effect given away for free by the developers who generously created them on an open-source basis. 

They are free to use and exploit and exploited they have been without a shadow of a doubt and one can argue with good effect. Imagine if every email cost money! (more on that later..)

Thin protocols/fat applications vs fat protocols/thin applications

In Web2, there are what are known as thin protocols and fat applications where the vast majority of the value is in the applications built on top of the protocols, think Google, Amazon and Facebook running on top of the core internet protocols. 

The value in Web2 is on the application side, not the protocol side. 

In Web3 this has fundamentally changed and has been flipped around, the protocol is fat and where the bulk of the value is and the applications running on top are on the thin side. 

Bitcoin’s creators cleverly invented a protocol and system that has an inherent value system and which rewards its participants at the core. 

If we were to look at POP3/IMAP, commonly used to send and receive millions if not billions of emails every day there is no financial reward. 

This on the one hand is great as emails remain free, but those that developed this essential protocol did not make a fortune from it. 

As a crypto investor, investing in protocols should be considered in addition to investing in the individual applications that are running on top of the protocols, a fundamental difference when compared to Web2. 

The name of the game is to be able to identify and invest in the protocols and applications of the future. 

There is something called the fat protocol thesis which says that the total value of all the apps running on top of a protocol such as Ethereum will never exceed the total market value of Ethereum. 

Thus according to this theory, Ethereum should continue to grow in value as the ecosystem it supports grows. 

The fat protocol thesis seems to be holding and provides a reasonable rationale on which to invest in protocols/blockchains for the longer term.

Web3 is the gold rush of the 21st century

One can liken the current Web3 boom to that of the famous gold rush of the 1800s. 

The pursuit then was gold and attracted hundreds of thousands of prospectors to California and South Africa. 

In a similar way, DeFi has exploded onto the scene with almost limitless possibilities, unlike gold however which is limited in quantity, DeFi projects are virtually limitless in scope.

However, not all projects will succeed and could be as useless as a hole in the ground so the secret is to know which tokens to pick and invest in and that isn’t easy even for seasoned crypto investors. 

Web3 money markets and how to earn a passive income from DeFi

Speculation is not the only way to profit in the crypto world. 

Just as with traditional financial markets, it’s also possible to earn a modest passive income by putting crypto assets to work. 

With interest rates still at a historical low there is a need for ways in which one can earn a reasonable passive income in DeFi from crypto assets by way of yield farming, staking, becoming a liquidity provider and through the lending of crypto. 

In very simple terms one can use their crypto assets to earn income in the form of fees or interest rather than profit from the growth of the underlying Web3 asset.

Conclusion

In the simplest terms, imagine having the chance to invest in Amazon, Facebook and Google when they were first starting out. Sadly, that boat has already sailed, however, the next generation of Amazon, Facebook, and Google are on the sidelines, fueling up and ready to make an impact. Just as with the web2 era, only a handful will become major players, the challenge is figuring out who the future DeFi and Web3 giants might be and get in on the action early!

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crypto arbitrage

Cryptocurrencies have grown into a mainstream phenomenon. As with virtually all types of global commodities, opportunities exist to make money but lose it as well.

Bitcoin may not be as well established as other trading assets, but it does have the advantage of being ‘open’ 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and is perhaps a little more accessible to everyday people. 

Bitcoin is global and not bound by borders or national restrictions. Bitcoin and other crypto can also be found on multiple exchanges across the globe whereas traditional assets are much more limited, although generally more robust for trading purposes. 

From futures trading, leverage and margin, to simply buying and holding, people entering into the cryptocurrency space are always looking for sure-fire ways to make their cryptocurrency grow, even beyond what its famed volatility will allow for. 

This is where crypto arbitrage comes in. Due to the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, traders can take advantage of price discrepancies across multiple global exchanges. 

Seeing as there are so many crypto exchanges and even more buyers and sellers across these markets, there will undoubtedly come a time when the price of Bitcoin is different from one market to another producing the perfect opportunity for crypto arbitrage. 

So what exactly is crypto arbitrage, and is it as easy as buying low in one place and selling high somewhere else? 

What is Crypto Arbitrage?

Simply put, arbitrage is when a person purchases an asset in one place and sells it in another to profit from a slight deviation in price between markets. 

As an example, if 1 BTC costs $30,000 on Binance but it’s currently also trading at $30,100 on Kraken, there is a $100 opportunity for arbitrage.

In this instance, if you purchase your Bitcoin on Binance and hopefully sell it quickly enough on Kraken you’ll make a $100 profit — easy enough, right? 

Unfortunately, while the mechanics are as easy as that, there is a lot more to consider before jumping fully into crypto arbitrage as a sure way to make quick profits. 

How crypto arbitrage works

As explained above, crypto arbitrage is looking for the same asset selling at different prices and taking advantage of that. 

There are mainly two types of crypto arbitrage: Arbitrage between exchanges and Arbitrage within the exchange.

The former is the most basic way to make crypto arbitrage work for you as different exchanges will have slightly different markets. However, with arbitrage between exchanges, some variations help you take advantage of price differences. 

Once you have identified the two exchanges you want to play off each other, it is time to enact the trades to make a profit. However, one also needs to be aware of the workings that can cause issues in trying to be profitable. 

It takes around 15-20 minutes for major coins to confirm the transaction. If the market price drops within this time frame, you may run a risk of generating less arbitrage profits. 

Factors like geographic location, time of day, and even different news cycles can all move the price of a coin within those 15-20 minutes and destroy your hopes of being successful in an arbitrage trade. 

Can crypto arbitrage be profitable?

Arbitrage is a well-known and established practice in the world of finance. It can be profitable. However, it will require dedication and persistence to succeed. 

Crypto arbitrages are usually quite small. You can earn profits from market differences, from about 0.2 – 2.5% ($10 to $100) every day. If you focus on around ten such spreads every day, you could make upwards of a thousand dollars per week.

However, you need to know what you are doing, and you have to be prepared with the right tools and platforms. 

If you are a day crypto trader, and there is not much market movement, you can always earn some profit from arbitrage. 

If you are persistent and quick to take action on profitable opportunities, it is possible to earn a decent profit from arbitrage. 

It will generally be a factor of just how much money you are able to put to work. Making 2% off of 500€ is nowhere near the same as 2% off of €1 million!

Crypto arbitrage comes down to awareness and speed. It is up to you to recognise the differences across various exchanges, and you need to access multiple listings at once, given that cryptocurrency exchanges operate 24/7/365, it can be very time-consuming.

Pros and Cons of Crypto Arbitrage

As with everything, there are certain pros and cons to crypto arbitrage, and a lot of it depends on you as a trader and what knowledge and access you have. 

There are indeed a lot of pros to crypto arbitrage, but it is not as simple as it sounds and many things need to be considered before jumping in. 

Pros of Crypto Arbitrage

Quick Profits

Because you can buy at one exchange and sell at another in a matter of minutes, the potential for profit in crypto arbitrage is fast. This is much quicker than traditional trading where you buy and hold cryptocurrency to sell at a later date.

A Wide Range of Opportunities

The cryptocurrency space is bursting with new markets, coins and exchanges and all of this gives rise to new potential avenues for crypto arbitrage. 

According to Coindesk, there are more than 391 cryptocurrency exchanges in the world today and these will all have a slightly different price for different cryptos.

The Crypto Market is Growing

Because crypto is still very much in its infancy and has not been totally adopted or accepted, it is not a mature and steady space. 

Due to this, there is quite a bit of irregularity, disjointing, and lack of information transfer between exchanges. There are also a fewer number of crypto traders than in the traditional markets, and thus less competition in the market, which leads to potential price differentials.

Cryptocurrencies are Incredibly Volatile

While volatility is often frowned upon in investing circles, it is the one aspect of crypto that makes it so enticing to risk-takers and traders. 

For crypto arbitrage, it also means more opportunities as there can be huge price changes between exchanges and this makes for a more lively opportunity for bigger arbitrages.

The Cons of Crypto Arbitrage

Anti-Money Laundering Rules and Restrictions

While not really a con, and quite acceptable with crypto, using multiple exchanges will often call for you to adhere to the KYC regulations that are in place. This will involve things like potentially holding a bank account in the same country where the exchange is based

Fees

This can be quite a hidden barrier for arbitrage. Because users are operating with often small profits, any fees for trading crypto, withdrawal fees, network fees or exchange fees, can impact the profitability of arbitrage, or could even lead to a loss. 

High Start-Up Capital

In order to really profit from crypto arbitrage, and make it worthwhile with the tiny profit margins there is a need for a relatively large amount of trading capital to make it worthwhile. 

Withdrawal Limits

With large trades and bigger capital amounts, there also comes an issue of withdrawal limits. Exchanges can have set limits for traders which means you may not be able to get the access you want to your profits right away. 

Slow Transactions

Crypto transactions are also susceptible to market volatility in terms of their speed and accessibility.  When the markets are on the move, the best time for arbitrage, it is not uncommon to have slower transactions, or even downtime on exchanges which could hurt profits. 

 

Things to Know and to Watch Out For

Understanding the pros and cons of crypto arbitrage will help you decide if this is the right option for you, but if you do decide to go down this route, there are a few more things to watch out for. 

A number of pitfalls can trap unsuspecting traders.

Similar Sounding Coins

The cryptocurrency space is large and constantly expanding. New coins are being created and brought to market all the time and they can often have similar-sounding names which can trick traders. 

A good example of this is the project ‘SIA’ which is an application for decentralized cloud storage solution and its symbol is very close to another project called ‘SAI’.

Even when it comes to the different coin tickers there can be issues — such as $HNC (HellenicCoin) and $HNC (Huncoin), or ($BTCS) Bitcoin Scrypt and ($BTCS) Bitcoin Silver.

Scam Coins And “Pump & Dump” Schemes

While the cryptocurrency space is certainly getting better and more regulated, there are still instances where people are being scammed out of their money. 

Many coins can come to the market with the express purpose of stealing money from investors. If you arbitrage such coins, you could get burnt. The same thing happens with pump and dump schemes where projects purposefully inflate the price of their coins only to sell high and collapse the market; this can also be devastating for arbitrage. 

A Lack of Trading Volume

Often when looking for arbitrage opportunities, you may be led to smaller, lesser-known coins with good potential for arbitrage. 

However, these coins can also lack trading volume. This can hamper large trades of the coin and lead to serious consequences such as delisting. You could avoid running into that issue by keeping an eye on the exchange order book and making sure that you see transactions happening or not.

Is Crypto Arbitrage Worth It?

Having considered all of the above, it is time to decide if crypto arbitrage is actually worth pursuing. Certainly, it is a viable opportunity, especially in the cryptocurrency space, but what needs to be understood is that it is not a silver bullet for making easy money. 

Buying a coin low, moving it across to where its price is higher, and selling it on to collect a profit sounds easy, but there are many considerations that need to be looked at. 

Dealing with crypto is still challenging and often lacks an easy user interface. More than that, the lack of full regulation means there are issues surrounding scams and schemes. 

Besides all of that, crypto arbitrage can be difficult to master and requires a lot of prior knowledge and experience, not to mention a decent amount of starting capital to ensure viable profits and some good coding chops if you are hoping to do it on a decent scale because if you are doing it manually, you are not going to be efficient. 

Crypto arbitrage is certainly an option to make money but to be successful it requires access to capital, hard work, a tolerance for risk and a thirst for knowledge. If you’re prepared to put in the work and have some skills it could prove profitable.

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crypto robo advisors

As they say on Wall Street… money never sleeps and it’s true. The investment landscape is constantly changing and global markets are permanently reacting to political and economic changes occurring throughout the world.

Nowadays we are used to and expect everything to happen at lightning speed and most everything we need is never more than a click or tap away on a screen.

The financial world has always been quick and has used whatever was the cutting-edge technology of the day to trade and gather market intelligence. The difference was that everyday life wasn’t quite as fast as the speed at which the money markets and those that worked in it were.

With this in mind, the consumer-facing side of the investment world has been forced to adapt. Today’s consumers demand everything now along with ease of use and good value.

It therefore stands to reason that the consumer side of investing has had to catch up and this is where robo-advisors have come to the rescue.


Robo advisors in traditional markets

If you are not familiar with the term robo-advisors, they are algorithm-driven software bots that perform portfolio management 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

They don’t need food or sleep and that’s a very good thing when it comes to taking care of your hard-earned cash.

The first robo-advisors arrived on the scene way back in 2008 during the financial crisis and were initially used by financial managers as an online interface and to balance their client assets.

A couple of prominent robo-advisor examples are Betterment and ETFmatic. Betterment, one of the largest independent robo-advisors based in the United States was launched in 2010 by Jon Stein.

Betterment is primarily focused on the US market and as of April 2021 had over $29 billion of assets under management and over 600,000 customer accounts. Brussels-based ETFmatic is a major player in the European robo-advisor space specialising in exchange-traded funds (ETF) and was acquired by Aion Bank.

Since then robo-advisors have grown both in popularity and in terms of the sheer number entering the market.

The math behind robo-advisors has been around since the middle of the past century and the underlying technology behind robo-advisors has been available since the early 2000s. The arrival of cloud computing and the internet revolution has now made it cost-effective and available to the masses.


Robo advisors for crypto

Fast forward to today and say hello to crypto robo-advisors, the latest innovation in the world of robo-advisors.

In traditional stock and commodity markets money does actually sleep whilst the markets are closed but in the hyper-fast world of cryptocurrency money never sleeps!

The crypto market is running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. With this in mind, it would literally be impossible for even the most talented and determined person to efficiently monitor the crypto markets around the clock every day of the year.

Crypto robo-advisors however do exactly that. Crypto robo-advisors are built to automate and optimize the highly demanding task of monitoring and fine-tuning crypto portfolios.

But there are different ways to build robo advisors and different ways of managing portfolios. From Indexing solutions to using highly sophisticated algorithms built on advanced award-winning scientific and economic principles, let’s take a look at the options.

Robo Advisor Strategies: Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), Indexing, the Ulcer index and iVAR

Let’s dive in a bit deeper and get a little more technical as to how robo-advisors and crypto robo-advisors actually work behind the scenes.


Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT)

Way back in 1952 Harry Markowitz introduced Modern Portfolio Theory as an approach to constructing investment portfolios and received a Nobel prize for his pioneering work.

Modern Portfolio Theory essentially boils down to constructing an investment portfolio that has the task of maximising the expected return whilst assuming a certain well-defined level of risk.

Markowitz defined this amount or level of risk as volatility, which is also referred to as the standard deviation, a value that measures the dispersion relative to the mean.

What this essentially means is that if a certain financial security has a larger price range variation where the data points are further removed from the average this indicates higher volatility and thus higher risk.

Most robo-advisors in traditional finance still rely on those basic principles of Modern Portfolio Theory to construct their portfolios.

However, it should be noted that investors generally do not perceive this standard deviation only as a risk but also as an indication of potential opportunity (i.e. when the price “deviates” upwards).

If a financial security hardly moves up or down, whilst it may be stable or safe it generally does not present much money-making opportunity either. What investors are interested in is a measure of the downward risk or drawdown as it’s known in investment talk in order to make safer investments with a lower downside risk.


Strategies based on Indexing

Today most robo-advisors in traditional finance work with exchange-traded funds built on market indices and they use Modern portfolio theory to decide what index fund to buy and in what proportion.

That’s certainly true for betterment and for ETFMatic that we mentioned above. Index Funds are great in traditional finance since they allow you to buy a whole swath of the market at once, and very cheaply.

So if you want to buy all the “financial” companies in the US, you can buy a share in an Index made up of all the “finance” companies listed on US Stock exchanges for about 100 dollars.

Because shares in traditional markets are not fractionable, it’s the easiest way of building a diversified portfolio with relatively little money.

Traditional market-focused Robo advisors will therefore choose from a list of 10 to 50 exchange-traded index funds to build your portfolio.

Indices (and so Index funds) are usually rebalanced on a monthly basis and work perfectly well for the somewhat slow-moving traditional markets.

In crypto too, some have replicated those strategies. MakaraDigital offers “baskets” of tokens you can buy at once, and which are rebalanced periodically.

TokenSets similarly offers a decentralized version of index investing with the DeFi Pulse Index and the Metaverse Index.

But applying the same principles used in traditional markets isn’t strictly necessary when it comes to crypto.

One can buy fractional shares in the vast majority of crypto and build a pretty respectable and diversified portfolio starting from just 100€, whereas 100€ would not buy you a single Amazon share!

Also, crypto moves fast. Really fast. At this point in time, it’s more like investing in startups and not like investing in 150-year-old industrial behemoths, so rebalancing on a monthly basis is maybe not the best approach and perhaps also a little risky when it comes to crypto robo-advisors.


Introduction to The Ulcer Index

The origins of the term Ulcer index you can probably guess. The term Ulcer index effectively derives from the level of volatility risk an investor can effectively stomach without getting an ulcer.

To deviate briefly from this point it should be noted that since the advent of the term Ulcer index, it is widely acknowledged that bacteria are the cause of gastric ulcers and not the stress from investments although the stress probably doesn’t help!

Be that as it may, the term Ulcer index has stuck and is an indicator of volatility that helps analysts and traders determine what are the optimal entry and exit points when trading.

The concept originates from 1989 when it was first introduced as a way to determine the downside risks of mutual funds. The Ulcer index is considered by many to be a superior way of calculating risk compared to say standard deviation.

The Ulcer Index calculates the amount as well as the duration of a percentage drawdown in comparison to the previous highs.

The worse the drawdown is, the more time it would take for a stock to recover and return to the original high point, therefore leading to a higher and less desirable Ulcer index value.

There are not many robo-advisors on the market that look at investment risk the way humans do.

iVAR – the answer to managing the risks you should actually care about.

Now that we understand a little about Modern Portfolio Theory and the Ulcer index we can begin to understand the concept and the origins of iVAR.

iVAR is a human-centred risk metric,  based on Value at Risk (VAR) which addresses the key factors that investors perceive as risk; namely the frequency, magnitude and duration of losses.

Here we should highlight that we are talking about the frequency, magnitude and duration of losses and not upward and downward fluctuations which is what is commonly measured using standard deviation.

Because with standard deviation one perceives their portfolio increasing in value as an actual risk.

As you will see, not all robo advisors are created equal and regardless of the market you are investing in, traditional or crypto, it is crucially important that you understand and are fully on board with your chosen roboadvisor’s strategy.


The pros and cons of crypto robo advisors


First the pros

Crypto robo-advisors are operating in a not-yet-mature market

Whilst traditional financial markets are quite mature, the crypto market in comparison is far from mature. It’s still relatively new, has many hurdles to overcome and can be extremely volatile.

This provides an even greater need for crypto robo-advisors that can mitigate and manage downside risk using sophisticated algorithms for portfolio construction.

24 / 7 monitoring

One of the primary advantages of particularly crypto robo-advisors is the ability to continually monitor the crypto markets on a 24/7/365 basis and automatically adjust the portfolios they manage within very tight tolerances that have been set by the teams managing the crypto robo-advisors.

We have to acknowledge that whilst the world of cryptocurrencies presents massive opportunities for gains due to high levels of volatility the risk needs to be managed very well and crypto robo-advisors are ideal for this kind of work.

Now if you found a robo advisor that only rebalances monthly, it might have been more inspired by the traditional markets than what is actually most effective for crypto.

Non-emotional decision making

Another key advantage is that crypto robo-advisors don’t have emotions, they don’t get tired and they don’t have a bad day.

Robo-advisors are there to do a fast-paced and demanding job at the same level of quality, speed, pinpoint accuracy and endurance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

It would be practically impossible for a human being to perform this task with the same level of accuracy, precision or endurance that a crypto robo-advisor could provide day in day out, furthermore running the same equations every 15 minutes would also likely bore a human to death!

Investing democratized

Robo advisors in general and crypto robo-advisors have democratized investing and lowered the barriers to entry for everyday investors.

Serious investing was previously reserved for the wealthy who had the means to invest significant sums of money, think at least $50,000 and upwards and as a result were able to have a portfolio manager or financial advisor to manage their investment portfolios.

This however left behind a massive swath of everyday people who had relatively smaller amounts available to invest and were left to their own devices to devise and monitor their own investment portfolios while likely not being aware of the latest developments in applied mathematics for portfolio management because, honestly, who has the time?

Whilst this can work well for someone that has the available time, talent and interest, the majority of people simply don’t have the time or interest for that matter.

They want to put their money into safe, knowledgeable hands and not have to think about it. Crypto robo-advisors fit in perfectly here, they are relatively inexpensive and require very low opening balances and generally have lower fees than human managers.

The minimum investment levels are within the reach of most people and provide a very efficient and elegant solution for experienced investors as well as those that are maybe new to crypto investing.


Now the cons

It’s inherently less personal

One of the strengths of crypto robo-advisors, the lack of a real person managing the portfolio could also be seen as somewhat of a downside.

The fact is you cannot speak to your robo-advisor and discuss your very specific financial needs and goals. We should however put this into perspective.

Those with considerable funds to invest and wanting the reassurance of a person to call can always opt for a more traditional financial advisor, however, the sheer economical advantages of crypto robo advisors make it possible to have your portfolio managed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week using cutting edge technology and algorithms with lower fees and low opening balance requirements must surely be seen as a positive overall.

Crypto robo-advisors are by design built for the masses and have to fit the needs of a very wide cross-section of investors.

They are not bespoke like individual advisors and therefore are not tailored to the needs of an individual but rather to a large group of investors as a collective. This is however the only way such a technology can feasibly exist so perhaps it’s more of a pro than a con!

Also, they’re not all that different from one another, and the 10 or 20 types of portfolio a robo advisor can offer you is often enough diversity to satisfy 99.9% of people’s needs.

Robo advisor technology has not experienced a financial meltdown event

The first robo-advisors arrived on the scene in 2008 around the time of the global financial crisis and have since then operated in a relatively stable financial environment.

There is no proof yet as to how robo advisors would cope during another massive financial meltdown such as the global financial crisis of 2007 – 2008.

The 2020 pandemic is certainly a major global event however it has not shaken the financial markets in quite the same shocking way as the 2007 – 2008 global financial crisis compared to industries such as aviation, tourism, oil and brick and mortar retail which have certainly suffered more.

Fortunately, the financial markets have been more resilient since the 2007 – 2008 crisis and hopefully, this resilience could well spill over onto robo-advisory services whenever the next big one comes along!


Conclusion

The arrival of crypto robo-advisors should be seen as a real step forward.

The efficiencies brought about by highly advanced software algorithms, high levels of computing power and access at everybody’s fingertips mean that investing is truly becoming democratised.

You no longer need to have significant funds to invest or a deep knowledge of the crypto markets. As crypto robo-advisors grow in popularity and sophistication it is fair to say that we can expect a wider spreading of wealth across all levels of society, true accessibility at last!

But beware, they aren’t all created equal, so do make sure you really understand the pros and cons of the crypto robo-advisor you are considering very carefully!

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