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Ive been writing about cryptocurrency for my entire career. In that time, one point Ive always stuck to is simple: dont listen to me for investment advice. Today, I want to quantify why.

Bitcoin was created in 2009, while I was in my first year at university. As an economics student and massive nerd it sat squarely at the intersection of my interests. By my final year of uni in 2011, the original cryptocurrency was experiencing its first boom and bust cycle. It rose from a low of $0.30 to a high of $32.34 that summer, before crashing back down to less than $3 when Mt. Gox, the original bitcoin exchange, was hacked. (This will become a theme.)

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That was also the year the Guardian first covered the currency, with Ruth Whippman warning: Its critics in the political sphere fear that it could give rise to an online Wild West of gambling, prostitution and global bazaars for contraband.

I was very much on the outside looking in, though. Not being a regular drug user (cf massive nerd), the mainstream use of bitcoin getting pills or weed delivered by post from the Silk Road passed me by, so I found it more of an intellectual curiosity than anything else.

This is perhaps in part because the first thing I remember hearing about bitcoin was a tale, probably apocryphal, of someone using their gaming PC to mine the currency in their dorm room in a heatwave. The air conditioning failed, the user reported in a forum post, and heatstroke left them with mild brain damage. You can see why I was unimpressed.

By the second major boom, I was covering economics for the New Statesman. And thats where the trouble starts.

In my first published piece using the word bitcoin the first time the New Statesman had covered the topic I confidently declared: This is what a bubble looks like. At the time, bitcoin was trading at around $40 a coin.

It has never gotten that low again.

I was right that there was a bubble in the offing: the price of bitcoin had doubled in two months, and would double twice more before it popped less than a month later. But the crash, which would have been huge for any other normal asset, was a reduction of around half, taking bitcoin to the lows of three weeks prior.

A decade on, the memory of this bold claim still haunts me, and I refuse to make predictions about the future of any cryptocurrency. In fact, Ive taken to joking that the best way to make money, historically, is to do the opposite of what I say.

So I put it to the test.

The Alex Hern bitcoin investment strategy

Obviously, I dont give actual investment advice. So I reviewed every article Ive ever written that mentions bitcoin, and sorted them based on whether or not a reader would think they were good news for the crypto, or bad news. Theres an element of value judgment to this, of course: you might disagree with my decision that a story about the Winklevii launching a bitcoin price tracker in 2014 is broadly positive; or that a story about Mt. Gox reopening after a hack (another hack) is broadly negative. My hope is that the disagreements average out.

Then, I paired the stories against the price of bitcoin on the day they were written, and asked a simple question: if youd bought $10 of bitcoin every time I wrote something that seemed like bad news, and sold $10 of bitcoin every time I wrote something that seemed like good news, how would your investment have performed?

The bottom line: you would have spent a net of $420 on bitcoin, and have a crypto wallet containing around 1.1 bitcoin as a result worth, at todays market value, a little over $22,000.

Oof.

Going over the specifics, though, gives me a bit of cheer. Well over half that gain comes from a total of just seven pieces written in 2013: six negative and one positive. At the end of that run, youd have spent $50, and own 0.7 bitcoin. Those articles have an outsized influence on the over-calculation, due to how much bitcoins value has increased in the nine years since they were published.

Bitcoin had two boom and bust cycles in 2013. The first, in April, took it to a high of $266. The second, in December was bigger much bigger. The price of a coin spiked at $1,238, and fell to a low of $687. The rush of pieces I wrote about the currency when I started at the Guardian, through late 2013 and the first half of 2014, contribute much less to the bottom line, even though there were more of them.

It was also the period with the most positive stories for bitcoin. In 2014, the potential of the currency was still untapped: the idea that bitcoin or the blockchain might prove revolutionary wasnt a hackneyed promise, but something that might be just around the corner. In that boom, I wrote as many positive stories as negative.

For every article about bitcoin hitting an all-time high of $269, there was another about a 1m hack of a payment processor. For every long feature asking if bitcoin was about to change the world, there was a warning from a Dutch central banker that the hype was worse than tulip mania (and he should know).

The timing of the pieces didnt quite balance out, though, and by the end of that boom you would have turned your 0.7 bitcoin into 0.9 while cashing out as many dollars as you put in. And in that period, those bitcoin would have gone from $100 to more than $500.

From 2014 to the most recent boom, however, the money you put in would start being drowned out by the bitcoin you already own. $10 at the beginning of 2014 bought you around 0.01 bitcoin, and so 10 negative pieces from me would have sizeably increased your position.

Three years later, it would take 30 negative pieces for you to acquire the same amount of bitcoin. That meant the impact of the ICO boom the first of the great expansions of the sector from a handful of cryptocurrencies to a whole ecosystem of shitcoins was muted compared to what came before, despite stories about Iceland becoming a miners paradise and Kodak bringing out a branded cryptominer, leading to a flurry of buying and selling.

And three years after that, at the beginning of 2020, a $10 investment in the cryptocurrency would get you just 0.001 BTC. Thats good news for our theoretical investor, because 2020 marked my most positive reporting on the currency. Stories such as the US government seizing bitcoins used in the Silk Road were a sign of the growing professionalism of the sector and, for the first time, bitcoin was enough of a fixture of the tech scene that even in a comparative slump the Guardian was still covering it.

On to the latest boom and bust cycle, where finally the investor starts to lose out and I claw back some of my reputation. From its peak at $69,000 earlier this year, bitcoin has fallen by a third. Ive diligently covered the collapse, which has been by far the most brutal the sector has faced. That means the tracker has sunk almost $200 into bitcoin, and even as the overall value of the holdings has plummeted from a high of $50,000 in March to its present number.

What next?

The question going forward, of course, is whether the pattern holds up. Will you continue to make money if you buy when Im grumpy about crypto, and sell when Im optimistic? Obviously see above Im not about to make any strong predictions, but I doubt well ever again see as sharp an increase in price as we saw in the last decade, which means Ill never make a call that plays out as badly as the ones in those initial pieces from 2013.

Which is not to say I cant make other terrible calls. Remember Dejitaru Tsuka, the shitcoin that was sold with my name? I broke my rules, and warned readers: I do not think you should buy this shitcoin, nor any others. Well, if youd bought 10 worth of Tsuka when I said that, youd now have 4,000.

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TechScape: Im no longer making predictions about cryptocurrency. Heres why - The Guardian

"Well right now there is kind of a downturn in the crypto market," said James Beauchamp with MOTRAN.

MIDLAND, Texas West Texas has ties with cryptocurrency mining using natural gas from things like flares to power machines that mine bitcoin.

In the past month or so, the cryptocurrency market has seen a dip.

"Well right now there is kind of a downturn in the crypto market." Said James Beauchamp with MOTRAN. "Weather you like cryptocurrency or don't, from a Permian Basin perspective it's very unique because your using a product that's fairly expensive to capture and collect and to get into a normal system where you would sell your natural gas in a lot of cases and your providing a secondary market for it."

Here in the Permian basin, oil and gas is used to power cryptocurrency mining. This type of cryptocurrency mining is also important because it doesn't put a strain on the states power grid, especially in these hot summer months.

"I think one of the big concerns from a statewide perspective on cryptocurrency has always been if we already have an overtaxed electric grid, and we do if you're mining crypto off of that grid then that's just another burden in an already overburdened system," Beauchamp said

Mining cryptocurrency does have benefits for both groups.

"It's not just the fact that your utilizing natural gas or for the end user gathering the accumulation of the cryptocurrency they're mining for but also the carbon credits as we talk about air quality issues of that nature," Beauchamp said. "There are a number of credits out there, tax credits so again I think its another way we can be proactive and show our industry and our area is proactive."

From here, things are up in the air but for the Permian Basin things are looking up.

"Where's it going to end up?" Beauchamp said. "Nobody really knows, but at the same time not knowing there's some benefits in the Permian Basin. The good part is even if all the rest of it goes downhill in certain way the Permian wins at least in short term."

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A downturn in the cryptocurrency market and the impacts on West Texas - NewsWest9.com

EXCLUSIVE: Cryptocurrency pioneer Jeff Garzik has launched NextCypher Productions (NxC), a new independent entertainment company that will focus on using the emerging technology of Web3 (NFTs, crypto, blockchain applications) to empower the sci-fi community to turn fantasyinto reality.

NxC is more than just a mere production company. It is a passionate community, defined by the people and projects that it interacts with, said Garzik, who is best known as one of the pioneers of cryptocurrency, having worked on the Bitcoin Core project the first blockchain node as well as Bitcoin mining projects and the Linux operating system. One of our core principles is to enable sci-fi and fantasy fans to do more than simply consume content from the worlds we construct, but to allow them to truly participate in beloved properties in ways they never thought possible. Above all, NxC pledges to always put the needs of the audience first as we create consistently great entertainment.

As part of the launch, Garzik is announcing the companys first two television projects. The first is a one-hour action-drama series calledDeathlands thats based on the bestselling book series. Its being developed for television by showrunner/executive producer Mark A. Altman (Pandora, The Librarians, Agent X) and executive producer Thomas P. Vitale (57 Seconds, Slasher, Pandora).

Deathlands isMad Max: Fury RoadmeetsYellowjacketsin an epic post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure, said Garzik.Deathlandstells the story of a world ravaged by violence, destruction, and death. Now, only the most smart, cunning, and capable survive as they attempt to navigate the new normal of a world turned upside in the hopes of building a new, more just society for the future.

The other project in the works is Looking Glass thats based on an original concept from Garzik. He describes it as an exciting and thought-provoking new sci-fi action/adventure series in which a young woman whose memory was erased goes on a quest to discover her true identity as agridrunnerwho must save the outcasts of society from a deadly conspiracy that threatens to destroy the future.

Looking Glassmade its premiere as a graphic novel through the NxC subsidiaryNext Cypher Words + Art. The new comic book publisher announced the first issue of theLooking Glassgraphic novel at San Diego Comic-Con last week.

NxC will be announcing its next projects soon with production on Deathlands anticipated to begin in early 2023 in Bulgaria and Looking Glass later in the year.

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Cryptocurrency Pioneer Jeff Garzik Launches NextCypher Productions; Focus On Emerging Technology of Web3 - Deadline

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) As cryptocurrency becomes more popular, its important to know whats required of you on tax forms. While some people may see cryptocurrency as a virtual currency, in the eyes of the IRS, its not a true currency.

So what does this mean when it comes to reporting cryptocurrency on tax forms? News 8s Ally Peters spoke with CPA David Young, with the New York State Society of CPAs, to know more.

The IRS has taken a very keen interest in cryptocurrency, so keen that on the front page of your tax return, theyre asking: At any time during 2021, did you receive, sell, exchange, or otherwise dispose of any financial interest in virtual currency? Yes or no?, Young said.

Young says this means if youve transacted with cryptocurrency, you must report it. The IRS considers cryptocurrency to be a property and capital gains and losses should be reported on Schedule D and Form 8949 if necessary.

If you held on to a crypto for more than a year, its a long-term capital gain, and if its less than a year, its a short-term capital gain, which has to be reported on your tax return on your Schedule D, Young said.

Young adds for long-term capital gains, the long-term capital gains rate applies, which varies from 0% to 20%, depending on your ordinary income tax rate. For short-term capital gains, the capital gains from your crypto or Bitcoin transactions are added to your income and taxed at your ordinary income tax rate.

No. If you buy crypto, you do not, Young said. But when you need to report crypto on your taxes is if you were to say you bought crypto a couple of years ago, now you sold the crypto, maybe you sold it, just exchange it, or if you go from one set of crypto to another set of crypto, went from a to b, thats a sale and it does have to be reported on your Schedule D on your tax returns, Young said.

Young said if you dont report crypto on your tax return, its a problem because the IRS is getting a record.

A lot of times the places that hold your crypto, report to the IRS and they should be sending you a 1099 and so the IRS knows you have this crypto. And even if the IRS didnt know it, its still the right thing to do, Young said.

So if you didnt report it in the past, you need to go back and amend, because if you did not, youre setting yourself up for an IRS audit, which means you could have penalties and interest and additional taxes.

Young said a lot of companies will give you the option to go to their portal or website and download everything into a CSV format, which you can put into Excel.

That way you can parse out all your gains and losses, Young said. Now, ultimately, theyre going to give you a 1099, but if you go to their website, many of the larger exchanges will help you as their customer, parse out all your gains and losses. And you can use that spreadsheet or data to prepare your correct income tax return.

To learn more about cryptocurrency and taxes, or to contact a CPA, visit the New York State Society of CPAs website.

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Do you need to report cryptocurrency on your taxes? Heres what you should know: - RochesterFirst