Transcript: The Next Crypto Bull Market

By Martin D. Weiss, PhD on November 28, 2018

The Next Crypto Bull Market:
How to Maximize Gains and Minimize Losses

(Transcript, edited for clarity)

Announcer: Weiss Ratings has burst onto the scene as the world’s only financial rating agency issuing grades on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Dash, and 107 other cryptocurrencies.

Based on these ratings, founder Martin Weiss warned investors not to buy Bitcoin, and he helped them avoid Bitcoin’s crash.

The Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings have been acclaimed by Forbes, CNBC, Motley Fool, Bitcoin News, Coinbase, Crypto News and dozens of others.

Today, Dr. Weiss answers four burning questions for investors:

Has Bitcoin hit bottom?

Will there be new opportunities to become a Bitcoin millionaire?

What’s the best way to do so, and what are the risks?

Which are the most promising cryptocurrencies?

Now, please meet Martin Weiss, along with our host, Lauren Hughes.

Lauren Hughes: Last year, a lot of people made big fortunes in Bitcoin and even bigger fortunes with other cryptocurrencies. But this year, newcomers, especially those that bought Bitcoin near the top of the market, have lost a lot of money.

Now, they’re anxious to make money again like they did in 2017, and they’re desperate for answers, for guidance, but they feel that they have no place to go.

Everywhere they go, they run into people hyping a cryptocurrency because those people were paid by the sponsors to hype it up. That’s a serious conflict of interest, but you don’t do business that way.

Martin Weiss: Never have and never will. We don’t accept compensation in any form from the companies or the teams behind the things we rate.

Lauren: No hard dollars, no soft dollars.

Martin: No fiat money, no crypto money.

Lauren: 100% independent and objective.

Martin: Absolutely! And I’ll tell you a story …

Once, a company that we were rating sent bag lunches to all of our staff.

Lauren: Really?

Martin: I had to refuse delivery. We sent the lunches back.

Lauren: Okay, so no free lunches here! But let’s talk about investment advice. I know everyone’s situation is different, and you can’t give investment advice tailored to each person’s needs. But in addition to your ratings, you do provide specific recommendations based on your investment strategy.

Martin: Based on our strategy, we do. And then it’s up to each individual investor to make the final decision for each trade.

Lauren: Now I hear some people saying, “Bitcoin is dead.” Is that really true? What’s your take on that?

Martin: Since Bitcoin began trading actively, Bitcoin plunged by 70% or more on four separate occasions. Each time, people wrote its obituary. And each time, Bitcoin rose from the dead.

Lauren: What exactly do you mean by “rose from the dead”?

Martin: I mean that, on each of those four occasions, Bitcoin hit rock bottom. It woke up from its slumber. And then it took off like a rocket.

Lauren: So there you have both sides of the story in a nutshell. The risk of loss and also the big buying opportunities. But how big are they?

Martin: The answer will shock you. On average, anyone who bought Bitcoin after those declines could have seen gains of 6,300%.

Lauren: On average? I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around that number. Can you translate that into dollars and cents for us?

Martin: Sure. That’s 63 times your money. If you invested $1,000, you’d wind up with $63,000. If you invested $100,000 —

Lauren:You’d be a new Bitcoin millionaire.

Martin: A multimillionaire. You’d have over $6 million. But making money is only half the story. Keeping it is the other half of the story.

Lauren: It certainly is, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. But first, I want to know this: Is now the time to buy Bitcoin again?

Martin: We just talked about the four times in the past that Bitcoin fell by 70% or more, right? And I told you how Bitcoin surged every time after that, how investors could have made an average of 63 times their money.

Well, that story brings us back to the present, because now Bitcoin has declined by more than 70% again. And looking ahead, even if the leading cryptocurrencies rise, let’s say, only half as much as the average of the last four times, you could still be looking at gains of half of 63-, maybe 31-to-1.

Lauren: I think that would warm my purse on a cold winter’s night.

Martin: Yes, but there’s one thing, though. Bitcoin is no longer the most advanced cryptocurrency in the world. This time, there are better choices.

Lauren: Okay, well, when you first launched your Cryptocurrency Ratings, you only gave Bitcoin a “C+.” So in effect, you were broadcasting to investors the message —

Martin: “Don’t buy!”

Lauren: Don’t buy, right. Why was that?

Martin: Because the time wasn’t right to buy then. And because Bitcoin’s technology has not kept up with the latest advances in cryptocurrencies. It’s too slow for transactions. It’s too expensive to use. So instead of using it as digital money, which it was intended for originally, most people are just hoarding it, like kind of a digital gold.

Lauren: I can see why Bitcoin lovers don’t like you very much, Martin. In fact, when you gave Bitcoin a “C+,” the entire Bitcoin world erupted in a fury. They wanted you to give it an “A.”

Martin: They wanted my head on a stake.

Lauren: Yes, they did. So what did you do with the rating?

Martin: Look, I don’t decide what the rating is myself, personally. Our ratings are not based on each analyst’s personal opinion. They’re based on hard facts. And the hard facts about Bitcoin’s outdated technology didn’t change, so the rating didn’t change.

Lauren: Okay, before we part today, please make sure to name and explain the cryptocurrencies that do have the most advanced technology and that are the best profit opportunities for investors.

Martin: That’s part of the plan. We’ll get to that. But before we say another word about the profit opportunities, we need to remind our viewers about the risks.

Too many analysts forget that aspect, but the fact is that all investments involve risk. And the SEC has issued warnings about the unique riskiness of cryptocurrencies.

Lauren: Where’s that?

Martin: Well, just check out their website. Or you can Google three words, “SEC, cryptocurrency, warning,” and you’ll find it.

Lauren: So, how do you avoid the risk?

Martin: You can’t avoid all risk, but we found a way to reduce risk and make more money in the process.

Lauren: With your cryptocurrency ratings?

Martin: Correct. My strategy is based on the cryptocurrency ratings. And the first thing we do is totally avoid what we call “utility tokens.” Some people call them cryptocurrencies. Some people say they’re like buying shares in a company, but they’re not. They’re more like American AAdvantage points or Chuck E. Cheese tokens.

Lauren: Oh, I know what those are.

Martin: These are the ones that the SEC is really most concerned about. We don’t even rate them at this time.

Lauren: Okay, so the real cryptocurrencies are things like Ethereum, EOS, Ripple, Bitcoin.

Martin: Those kinds of cryptocurrencies, exactly. And those are the kinds we rate. Then, among those, we never recommend the low-rated cryptocurrencies, and that helps reduce the risk even further.

The next thing we do is we rank each cryptocurrency from the top: number one, number two, and number three, all the way down to the bottom, which brings me to the core of our strategy: We seek to invest only in those at the very top of our list.

Lauren: And how often do you update your ratings?

Martin: Once a week.

Lauren: Okay, so what do you do when the rating changes?

Martin: I was just getting to that. When a cryptocurrency’s ranking falls, our strategy is to rotate it out of our model portfolio. It’s still a good cryptocurrency. And when the ranking rises, then the strategy is to rotate it in.

Lauren: I know you can’t avoid it altogether, but what other steps can you take to reduce the risk?

Martin: We have a model that measures the downside risk of all the cryptocurrencies. If that risk model tells us to move on, then the strategy is to move on.

Just remember that 2017 was a spectacular year for Bitcoin. And it was an even better year for the cryptocurrencies that get our top ratings. You can’t expect every year to be like 2017.

Lauren: That’s what you told me at the beginning of the year, too, when I was here. You warned us, Martin.

Martin: Yes, and that’s why I insist on capital protection. For me, a strategy that outperforms strictly in markets that are going up is not good enough. It must also outperform in markets that are going down.

Lauren: And now, you say a brand-new cryptocurrency bull market is in the making. Why?

Martin: The big driver is technology. Modern technology has piled up the greatest fortunes of the 21st century. That’s why Apple is — or was — the world’s first trillion-dollar company.

Lauren: And why the CEO of Amazon is the richest man on earth. Mr. Jeff Bezos, right?

Martin: Right, but now, the hottest new technology on the planet isn’t the iPhone. It’s not online shopping at Amazon. It’s the newest cryptocurrencies. I call them “super cryptocurrencies.”

Lauren:Super cryptocurrencies.

Martin: Yes. And I think they have the potential to be rocket fuel for an investment portfolio.

Lauren: Why are you calling them super cryptocurrencies, and how do you find them?

Martin: We tear the technology apart, just like you’d tear apart the newest iPhone model. We want to find out what’s inside. And some of these super cryptocurrencies are thousands of times faster than Bitcoin and far cheaper.

So here’s the question for you: Which would you rather invest in? A cryptocurrency like Bitcoin that sells for thousands of dollars but is slow and expensive to use? Or a promising new cryptocurrency that’s greatly undervalued, sells for pennies per coin, but is lightning-fast and costs virtually nothing to use?

Lauren: Could you name one of those for us please?

Martin: Just last year, for example, there was an upstart cryptocurrency by the name of Cardano. At that time, almost no one knew about it. But it had and has great technology, and an amazing team of crypto geniuses behind it. If you had invested just $1,000 in Cardano, you could have seen it rise to over $58,000.

Lauren: Suppose I had invested $25,000?

Martin: You could have celebrated a surge of nearly one and a half million dollars. Even if you caught just the tail end of that move, you can see how easy it would have been to beat Bitcoin by a mile with these higher-rated cryptocurrencies.

Another super cryptocurrency is EOS. It already has made major technological improvements. It already has seen surging adoption and usage, just in the last few months. Last year, in October, its price was only 53 cents. Just three months later, it sold for $18.25.

That’s a gain of 3,343%. If you’d invested just $10,000 in EOS at that time, you could have walked away with more than $340,000.

Lauren: That’s not too bad for three months of work. But what about right now?

Martin: Cardano and EOS are still at the top of our ratings list. Plus we also give a high rating to two other cryptocurrencies, Stellar and XRP.

Lauren: What is XRP?

Martin: XRP is the cryptocurrency that was developed and is now maintained by the Ripple Company. Ripple’s XRP reduces settlement times for financial institutions from days to seconds. It takes days to settle a transaction with stock. With XRP, it would take only seconds.

And it saves about 70%, maybe 80% of the costs.

Lauren: That’s significant.

Martin: Yeah, and plus right now, the Ripple company leads the entire crypto world in forging partnerships with big companies. They have partnerships with multinational banks like Santander. They are partnering with American Express and MoneyGram. So that’s Ripple.

Lauren: Okay.

Martin: There’s another one, Stellar, which is very similar to Ripple in design. The primary difference is that, unlike Ripple, Stellar doesn’t allow a single institution to control most of the network. So it’s more decentralized.

But Stellar, like Ripple, is also starting to hook up with big companies, like IBM, for example. IBM and Stellar are working together on a project called Blockchain World Wire. And like Ripple, it aims to make transactions between these large financial companies fast and seamless.

Lauren: So far, we have Cardano, EOS, Ripple, and Stellar.

Martin: Yes, and we’ve also added a fifth one, Holochain. It’s not blockchain. It’s very revolutionary, and I’m not going to tell you all the details.

Lauren: I probably wouldn’t understand them.

Martin: It’s an entirely new design, and the key is, it’s as fast as the Internet. Plus, it’s almost infinitely scalable. That means no matter how many millions of people or tens of thousands of companies are involved, it just keeps working at that fast pace.

Lauren: So you just mentioned a lot of options. How do I know what to buy and when?

Martin: With my cryptocurrency strategy, we issue alerts on exactly when to buy these super cryptocurrencies. We tell you how much to allocate to each one.

We tell you when to take profits, how to set up your accounts. You still have to decide what’s right for you, and you still have to be the one to pull the trigger on the trades, but we give you the info you need to help make that decision.

Lauren: You know, this all makes a lot of sense when you explain it, Martin. But I still don’t have a clear vision of why these super cryptocurrencies — any cryptos for that matter — are going to be so important for the future. Can you help me out here?

Martin: Remember when you interviewed Larry Edelson years ago?

Lauren: Of course I do.

Martin: And then Sean Brodrick when Larry passed away?

Lauren: Yes!

Martin: What was the topic?

Lauren: Oh boy, the topic! I could never forget. It’s all about the cycles. Cycles in nature, cycles in history, cycles in financial markets, all converging, coming together and creating the supercycle.

Martin: Yes, a single giant cycle that marks the end of one era when governments could borrow and spend with impunity … and the beginning of a new era, in which governments are forced to cut back on their massive spending. A new era in which governments can’t continue borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, when the governments have to shrink in size.

And here’s the key: In this new era, governments are forced to give back some of their power to the private sector, to individuals, including individual investors. I’m not saying this because of partisan bias. I’m saying it because it’s the inevitable consequence of the huge debts that governments have piled up over the years.

Lauren: But that’s not what has happened so far. Why not?

Martin: Things started to unravel in 2008, when one of the world’s largest investment banks, Lehman Brothers, went bankrupt, and when the government started printing money on the greatest scale in history.

Lauren: Because it couldn’t let the financial system collapse, right?

Martin: They had no choice. They had no alternative system. There was no alternative to the monetary system we have today. But now, new cryptocurrencies, like Cardano and EOS, could provide that alternative.

In these cryptocurrencies, the monetary policy is baked in, right in the computer code. Their monetary policy can be more stable, predictable, moderate, and transparent. Not controlled by a small group of officials making decisions behind closed doors.

Lauren: That’s amazing. So you’re saying that, in theory at least, cryptocurrencies could not only replace fiat money someday, but could also help replace today’s monetary policy? They can help prevent central banks from printing money like crazy?

Martin: No one can predict exactly how that will pan out. But that’s the whole reason Bitcoin was invented in the first place — to create a stable kind of money that governments can’t corrupt and print into oblivion. And that’s a powerful, hidden reason why cryptocurrencies could rise so dramatically in value.

Even if it doesn’t happen right away, people see it coming. So they rush to buy these cryptocurrencies. And our cycle analyst says that we are close to the early stages of that new era.

Lauren: Cryptocurrencies also have cycles?

Martin: Yes, and one of the cycles they follow is the technology cycle.

First comes the invention, like the invention of the World Wide Web. A small group of professionals discover it. They start buying it. And its value begins to rise. That’s the first phase of the cycle.

Then the word spreads. Investors and speculators pile in. They drive the prices sky high. You get this massive, speculative bubble. And the bubble is bloated by hype and distortion. But few people actually use the technology at that point. So there’s no real substance to support those sky high prices.

Lauren: Kind of like we saw at the Internet bubble in the late ‘90s?

Martin: Yes, and it’s what we saw in the cryptocurrencies in 2017. Then, you know what comes after that.

Lauren: The bust! And it was precisely at that juncture, just as the market was transitioning from the boom to the bust in cryptocurrencies, that you issued your first cryptocurrency ratings — as kind of a warning, right?

Martin: Yes, a warning to underscore the message that, at that particular junction in time, the risk factor was extremely high.

But we also predicted something else. We predicted that, after the bust, as soon as the dust settles, the next phase of the cycle will begin. That’s when you will see the real boom, the more sustainable and less risky period of time.

Lauren: Again, just like the dot-com cycle.

Martin: Yes, very similar. In the bubble phase of the dot-com cycle, the leading tech stock index, the NASDAQ 100, surged from 500 to more than 4,000. Then in the bust phase, it plunged to about 1,000. And that’s when the real boom began. Buying cryptos today can be like buying the NASDAQ at 1,000.

Lauren: You talk about a bubble. Then you talk about the boom. What’s really the difference between them?

Martin: The bubble is based entirely on the promise with very little actual substance behind it.

Lauren: The hype and the hope.

Martin: Well said! But the boom is the real deal. The boom is when the technology is not just a dream anymore.

Lauren: When it’s actually used by millions of people.

Martin: Not millions, billions! Like cell phones, for example. More people have cell phones today than indoor plumbing.

Lauren: That’s kind of sobering. What is the usage of cell phones today?

Martin: It’s actually over four billion. Cell phones are everywhere, all over the world, and that’s also how cryptocurrencies are likely to spread. Like wildfire.

Lauren: How do you see that unfolding?

Martin: Our lead cryptocurrency analyst, who’s the architect of our cryptocurrency model, is Juan Villaverde. He sees this evolution unfolding in three different directions.

First, you have the governments themselves. They’ll develop and adopt their own kind of digital money. And right now, actually, some are doing it. It’s mostly rogue or adversarial countries like Venezuela. Venezuela has launched its own government-sponsored cryptocurrency, the Petro.

Lauren: Really? I didn’t know that.

Martin: Plus you’ve got countries like Iran and Russia that are planning their own cryptocurrencies — to try to escape U.S. sanctions.

But in the future, it’s going to be more than just these smaller economies. The world’s largest economies — the United States, European Union, China, Japan — are going to be launching currencies based on the same kind of digital technology that cryptocurrencies use.

That’s number one. Number two is big multinational banks and other giant companies. They’re going to do deals with cryptocurrencies like we talked about just now for Ripple and Stellar.

I told you about Santander. I told you about American Express, MoneyGram, and IBM. Well, there are many more companies like them queuing up to get into this. They want cryptocurrency technology, and they want it bad.

Lauren: Because?

Martin: Because it’s so much faster and cheaper to transfer money. I told you about that. But also because it’s so much more SECURE. No more hacks, no more disasters with your personal information.

Lauren: Which we see all the time.

Martin: Millions of customers’ information spilled all over the Internet. And one more thing: No more vulnerability to cyberattacks from foreign adversaries.

Lauren: Okay, that’s two — governments and corporations. Now, what’s the third?

Martin: The biggest of all — the people, the masses. Right now, despite this amazing technology, the number of people actually using cryptocurrencies is still very tiny.

And this is the main reason we feel that the biggest profits in cryptocurrencies are yet to come. All over the world — in the Americas, Europe, China, and India — people are afraid of what their governments could do to their money and to their bank accounts.

Lauren: I remember that Larry used to talk about it all the time: Countries that have frozen people’s bank accounts, countries that confiscated their money. That’s terrible.

Martin: Or devalued their currency! There’s a long list of them. You’ve got India, Argentina, Uruguay, Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Ukraine, Russia, just to name a few.

A couple of years ago, for example, the government of India canceled large bank notes. It would be like the U.S. government suddenly declaring that your $50 bills and your $100 bills are worthless.

They gave citizens in India only days to turn in their old bank notes for new ones. So millions of people lost their savings just because they couldn’t get to a bank in time.

Lauren: Wow! What about Argentina and Uruguay?

Martin: They’ve had so many currency failures and so many devaluations, they have a special word for it:  “Corralito.” I saw something very similar myself when I was growing up in Brazil. They call it “o Confisco,” the Confiscation.

Or go to Venezuela. Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, has been collapsing so fast, so far, that the limit on their ATM machines plunged to the equivalent of just $1 per day.

Lauren: So that’s all that they can take out?

Martin: That’s it, $1 per day.

Lauren: So how does this type of thing tie back to the cryptocurrencies?

Martin: In Venezuela, people had no place to go. So many rushed into cryptocurrencies. They bought Bitcoin like crazy. But looking broadly, this type of thing has the potential to create a massive, burgeoning demand for cryptocurrencies as an alternative, as a currency that governments can’t corrupt, can’t devalue, can’t print into oblivion. And more importantly, it’s an asset that can never be confiscated!

All the average person needs to start making use of cryptocurrency is one of those four billion cell phones with a connection to the Internet.

Lauren: But not many people use cryptocurrencies yet, as you said.

Martin: That’s exactly my point. Right now, for every 10,000 adults, you’d be lucky to find one that actually owns cryptocurrencies or makes use of them. That’s why the door is wide open for enormous growth.

Lauren: And, as always, the biggest profits are made by investors who get in at the right time.

Martin: Sure, let me put some big numbers on that. Recently, the total market value of cryptocurrencies was about $250 billion. That may sound like a lot of money but when you compare that to the global supply of government currencies, it’s not. The government currency supply is over $90 trillion.

Lauren: I don’t even know what that looks like.

Martin: It’s 360 times more than the cryptocurrencies supply. We expect cryptocurrencies to cannibalize some good portion of that, and that’s another reason why we think the value of the best cryptocurrencies is likely to explode up.

Lauren: That sounds like a bright, shiny new world that could help create new fortunes for people. But right now, you’ve also told us about the dark side of this crypto world. You’ve written frequently about the lax standards, the murky operators and the periodic market crashes.

Martin: That’s the reason why I created the Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings. The industry desperately needed the clarity that only robust, scientific ratings can give you.

Lauren: And at the same time, you also created your cryptocurrency strategy, right?

Martin: Yes, like we said earlier, it’s a strategy based on buying the coins with the highest Weiss ratings. And it’s also an actual portfolio that I invest in as a model for other people to watch.

Lauren: It’s a real live portfolio, then.

Martin: Yes. But before I buy or sell with my own money, I wait for 24 hours.

Lauren: Why is that?

Martin: I give subscribers one day’s advance notice so you can get in or out before I do. Plus to better align myself with you. I don’t call the shots personally. Instead, I’ve hand-selected Juan Villaverde. He does it based on the model and the strategy that we created together.

Lauren: I remember meeting Juan the last time I came down to visit you. He’s a master mathematician. He’s been dedicated to cryptocurrency since the early days, back in 2012, if I remember.

Martin: Yes, plus, like I said earlier, he’s also the leader of the team that created our Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings. So I can’t think of a better person to entrust my own funds to.

Lauren: I can’t, either. He follows the strategy religiously, right?

Martin: Faithfully, not religiously.

Lauren: Okay, well, that’s surprising. Why not?

Martin: The strategy is based on a mathematical model. In the real world, though, you sometimes get special situations. And the mathematical model can’t capture those special situations. It requires a thinking person, especially for the timing. So you can’t just be cornered inside a black box.

Lauren: For example?

Martin: For example, a few months ago. Based on his analysis of the Bitcoin cycles, Juan predicted a very choppy market with a lot of false rallies, and he was right. So he decided to lay low for a while, to keep at least half of my money in cash, trade less frequently and so on. And I’m glad he did. But now, as the bull market resumes, he’s getting ready to really launch ahead with the model.

Just remember one thing: Never invest more than you can afford to lose.

Lauren:Makes sense. Thank you, Martin, it’s always nice talking with you.

Martin: Thank you, Lauren.

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