Frequently Asked Questions

How do I make profit?

Always sell at a higher price than what you paid. Because of currency inflation, markets of assets like stocks, real estate, and crypto, always go up long-term. There are big dips, retraces, even prolonged bear markets in every asset class, but there is always a rebound to new heights even if it takes years. “Investing is transferring wealth from the hands of the impatient to the patient” as Warren Buffet says. If you are patient, you profit. Altcoin Alert is a service that drastically cuts down the time you need to be patient, by scouring the top cryptocurrencies and notifying you when there are opportunities to buy, and opportunities to sell.

What is Sentiment?

Sentiment is a data measurement of human emotion, sourced from news and social media, then run through a natural language processor to determine if it is relevant to the desired topic, and if the author is feeling positive or negative.

Altcoin Alert sources its sentiment data from TheTie.io -- an institutional-grade source for hedge funds and news media outlets. They scrape data from over 1200 websites and are 1 of only 5 financial institutions to have full access to Twitter’s firehose (every single tweet there is).

What is the difference between Short-Term and Long-Term sentiment?

Short-Term sentiment studies Twitter comments over the last hour, compared to the last 24 hours as the baseline. Long-Term Sentiment studies Twitter comments over the last day, compared to the last twenty days. Short term sentiment is best used for day trading. Long term sentiment for trend trading. These metrics are not necessarily buy or sell signals by themselves.

How does the AA Score work?

The Altcoin Alert score weighs all of the different indicators on the Radar dashboard, TheTie’s price prediction, and adds a unique algorithm that changes moment to moment and adapts to recent trends. That score is what determines the Buy and Sell opportunities and grades them from Strong Buy, Buy, Signal Expired (wait and see what happens next), Sell, and Strong Sell.

What is the difference between Bullish and Bearish?

These are industry terms to reflect the desire of an investor. Bullish investors want the price to go up so they can sell for profit. Bearish investors want the price to go down so they can buy cheaper. Both types are necessary for a healthy market.

In relation to Altcoin Alert, Bullish sentiment means the data is showing a positive impact on price is likely to occur in the next 12 hours. Bearish sentiment means the data is showing a negative impact on price is likely to occur in the next 12 hours. In some cases, Very Bullish or Very Bearish sentiment can be shown.

How do I understand this data to know when to buy or sell?

Because it is difficult to know when to follow the trend, or be a contrarian against it, we created the AA score to digest all of this data and run simulations on when the last time the market conditions and sentiment data matched the same conditions as the current moment.

The AA score is the number of simulations that occurred and showed a positive price growth. A score of 19 indicates a poor chance of growth in the next 24 hours. A score of 99 means that 99 out of 100 simulations showed positive price growth in the next 24 hours. However, it does not tell us how much price growth will occur, or for how long it will occur.

How do the price predictions work?

History repeats itself, and markets are no different. The price prediction is powered by The TIE. It takes in dozens of factors and how they align at every given moment, and compares it with past alignments and what happened to price within the next hour. Through both market data and sentiment data, we are able to make a conservative prediction of a likely rise or fall, and over several months of testing, it has shown 95% accuracy.

What are the Crypto Hedge Fund Secrets that came with my order?

Crypto Hedge Fund Secrets is a written collection of the top takeaways from the Crypto Hedge Fund Summit that aired July 22nd & July 23rd, 2020. Over 30 hedge fund managers, managing partners at venture capital firms, or co-founders of startup incubators participated in this free event to share their insights in how to be better investors. The full recording, plus bonus footage totally over 16 hours is available for purchase here: https://www.cryptohedgefundsummit.com

How do I get Buy and Sell Opportunity alerts?

Join our Slack channel to see them in real-time. The Slack invite is included in your Welcome email when you first sign up.

If I buy and sell every alert, am I guaranteed to make money?

There are no guarantees in life, and certainly not in crypto. However, we are very confident and proud to present this service as it has been shown in our tests to be able to predict future prices and give easy to understand actionable insights better than any other service we’ve ever seen.

Why is the coin I want to trade not available?

Typically, a coin is not on our platform due to a lack of enough sentiment data. In a few cases, our team has blacklisted obvious scams so our users are not caught up in them. If you see a coin on our platform that you know is a scam, please contact our support department and alert us, so we can investigate into having it removed. Our user’s safety is our utmost priority.

How do I know this isn’t a scam like other alleged trading platforms?

Other trading platforms require you to deposit your money, guarantee you a daily or monthly return, and convince you to leave your money in their control for a long time because you see your balance keep going up. When it comes time to cash out, they either don’t give you your money, or they give you money they take from another new user, until their growth levels out, and they run off with everything. We saw this happen with PlusToken, OneCoin, and BitConnect, amongst many others.

Altcoin Alert will NEVER ask you to deposit your money. You are always in control of your funds at all times, including what wallet you choose, and what exchanges you choose to use. We have no affiliation with any wallet, exchange, or other custody solution. If you ever see an Altcoin Alert website asking you to deposit, it is a fake website and you should leave immediately.

If for any reason you are unhappy with your subscription to Altcoin Alert, we offer a full money-back refund within 30 days of your purchase. Refunds will be processed in 5-10 business days depending on how long it takes for your credit card to post the credit. After 30 days, refunds will not be granted.

What price should I buy or sell at?

Since these alerts are based on near-future projections, not current real-time movements, it is best practice to use a limit order slightly below the current price. This may allow you to save on exchange fees in some places where they take less fees from “market makers” vs “market takers”. It is entirely up to you to pick the exact entry price and exit price.

Where do I deposit my trading funds?

You will deposit your funds into a crypto exchange of your choosing. Please do a lot of your own due diligence before selecting an exchange and trusting them with your money. Altcoin Alert will never ask you to deposit funds with us, for ANY reason.

Will Altcoin Alert trade for me?

No. We are not a proprietary trading platform. We are a service that provides data-driven information on buying and selling opportunities.

How is Altcoin Alert so affordable for me if hedge funds pay over $5,000/month for this data?

Thanks to the CRYPTO101 Podcast and Crypto Revolution, they have collaborated with TheTie to bring this institutional-grade service to the average consumer, in a medium that even a novice trader can use to increase their wealth. The main difference between Altcoin Alert and TheTie’s institutional platform is the amount of customization.

What is Radar?

Radar is the name of the Altcoin Alert dashboard that displays various data metrics of over 150 coins, to take a deeper look behind the data driving the Buy and Sell Opportunity alerts.

What is everybody talking about?

Understanding crypto terminology takes time. To help expedite the process, here are some key terms and definitions to get you started!

● Public Address (wallet address)- If you want to receive cryptocurrency from someone else, you will give them your public address so they know where to send it. Public addresses are pseudonymous, meaning that it represents you without revealing your identity. You will have many public wallet addresses as you dive deep into crypto.

Every crypto has its own public address. For example, you cannot send Litecoin to a ZCash address. You cannot receive Monero with your Bitcoin address. Here’s an example of a Bitcoin public address:

38xFFKmQdY8Ax6e8Gfz4D7Wr9K1CVPUY1a

Think of this as an email address for your crypto. It is safe to give this to anyone. It looks like a string of random numbers and letters. Each cryptocurrency has its own parameters-- the length of the key or the starting number/letter (for example, all Ethereum addresses start with 0x and most Bitcoin addresses start with the number 1 or 3).

Again, when using a wallet app that stores multiple cryptocurrencies, coins in that wallet use different addresses. Each cryptocurrency has its own wallet address, so be very careful.

When noting your public address always copy and paste it, never write it out manually to avoid making a mistake. If you send Bitcoin to an Ethereum address or make a mistake in the address name, it will be lost forever. Good wallet software will have warnings and address validation security measures in place, but not all of them do, so don’t send crypto when you’re tired or drunk. Pay close attention. Please note, all ERC20-type tokens may use the same wallet address as your Ethereum address.

Your public address is a hashed version of your public key. Because the public key is made up of a very long string of numbers, the hashing compresses it to form the public address. Basically, your private key generates the public key which, in turn, generates the public address.

● Private Key - This is like the lock to your house or the password to your email. If anyone has it, they can come in and rob you. You need this in order to send crypto to others, but most wallet apps keep this hidden from view and use the private key automatically in the background. Non-custodial wallet apps are built so that they never see your private key. The only way you can regenerate your private key is via your recovery phrase, which you will be prompted to write down when you generate a wallet. Do NOT give it away to anyone. Do NOT post it on the internet for any reason, no matter who asks. It’s yours and yours only. Do not lose it.

● Hash - Hashing is a way of compressing data, and hashes are used everywhere in blockchain systems. Hashing is one main aspect of cryptography, and there are many different kinds of hash functions (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, etc.). In fact, SHA-256, the hash function securing Bitcoin, was developed by the NSA!

A hash function takes any amount of data and spits out a fixed-size value (i.e. SHA-256 always spits out a value that is 64-characters long). One-way hash functions, the variation that secure cryptocurrencies, are impossible to reverse engineer. This means that you can’t derive the input value from the output value.

For instance the SHA-256 hash of the letter “a” is always going to output: CA978112CA1BBDCAFAC231B39A23DC4DA786EFF8147C4E72B9807785AFEE48BB

The sentence “Cryptocurrency is changing the world.” when hashed is always going to be: 93BC4593A7D0D9DD949041982EFAF6AC155C63A40586DEA4FDEC40C56DCDF3B D

However, if you remove the period from the sentence you will get a completely new hash value: 0BA7096FD4742AB21409E54904C2A788EE5D8DC4A49ED304FDE4DDD057929CF8

You can use SHA-256 to hash the text of an entire book and it will be compressed into 64 characters!

Working hash functions are also collision-resistant, meaning that no two pieces of data that you hash will ever spit out the same output. If a collision is eventually found, that hash function is considered broken and it is retired in place of a new algorithm.

Hashing allows us to compare two pieces of data and infer if those two pieces of data are the same or not. If you hash two pieces of data you and you get the same output, then you can trust that the input data is the exact same. You don’t have to manually review the data to see if anything has been tampered with because the hash function already did it for you!

For example say you send out a legal contract. Prior to sending, you can run it through a hashing algorithm to get the hash value of the contract. When that person sends it back to you, you can rehash it. If the hashes don’t match, you can be certain that the file was altered by that other party (even though the guy said he didn’t make any tweaks!)...

So why are hashes useful in blockchain?

Hashes make it so that you don’t have to trust anything other than Math, which is an unchangeable, constant force in nature.

In blockchain, hashes are used to represent the current state of a blockchain, from the very first transaction until now. The input to the hash function represents everything that has happened on that blockchain-- every single transaction up to that point (think of it like hashing an entire book like in the example above).

This means the hash output is based on and therefore affected by, all previous transactions that have occurred on a blockchain. So, a bad guy trying to change any transaction that has previously happened on a blockchain would change all prior hashes, making them easy to spot as fraudulent. This is because the blockchain is a transparent, open, publicly auditable database. A malicious/fraudulent change must happen in view of the whole network, and those changes will be programmatically flagged and rejected by the other nodes running the blockchain, thus maintaining the integrity of the entire system.

● TxHash - Also know as a TXID, this is the receipt of the transaction between two addresses. You can use a block explorer to see how much was sent, the time and date, how much the transaction cost, and other metrics.

● Block Explorer - These are search engines for blockchain transactions. Each blockchain has its own network explorer. You can find addresses and account balances, as well as the history of every transaction each pseudonymous user has made.

● Coin vs Token - A coin refers to a cryptocurrency, used to transfer value from one person to another. A token is a cryptocurrency that is primarily used to access services on a specific network, but is technically very similar to a coin. Bitcoin is a coin you can send to anyone. OmiseGo (OMG) is a token issued on top of the Ethereum network. If you want to utilize the services that OmiseGo offers in its ecosystem, you need to use the OMG as an access token. The token rises and falls based on the demand for the services that the token grants access to.

● Ethereum (ETH) - A platform for creating your own tokens, dApps, Smart Contracts. Thousands of other tokens and products have been created on this platform, and they all must have the ETH token to pay for data transfers and access to Ethereum’s network resources. Ethereum is like a machine, and ETH is the gas that powers that machine.

● ERC20 - The most common “type” of token from a technology standpoint. ERC20 is a standard for tokens issued and created on the Ethereum platform. It is beneficial because they can all use the same wallet address as ETH, contrary to Bitcoin or Stellar. These tokens are exceptions to the rule of each coin having its own public and private keys. By using Ethereum, all these projects saved the time, effort, and expense of

developing their own blockchain and wallets, and put those resources directly into their main product development.

● dApps - Stands for “Decentralized Applications”. They’re apps, just like what runs on your phone, but does not have to adhere to the rules dictated by a centralized app store like Apple App Store and Google Play store. Apple and Google’s App Stores change their rules on a whim and can put honest apps out of business with one change to their rules or programming language. dApps platforms return control to the developers instead of corporations. dApps are made up of either one or several smart contracts interoperating with each other.

● Smart Contracts - These are a feature of Ethereum, Tron, EOS, Cardano, and many other blockchain platforms. A smart contract is a computer program that has its code executed by every node on the blockchain network. A smart contract is made up of conditional statements (if ____ happens, then do ______). A smart contract can be set up, for instance, to transfer assets from one wallet to the next, if certain conditions are met.

Smart contract platforms are called “world computers”. They are a shared execution environment for any program to run in. This allows untrusting parties to interact or transact in a safe and public space where you don’t need to trust the computers of the devices of other parties you are interacting with.

Why can’t we trust one other’s devices? Well as the old saying goes, “Possession is 9/10ths of the law.” If someone has something in their physical control, then it’s basically theirs and they can control what it does and how it works. If something is running on my machine I can look at it but you can’t. If data is stored on my computer I can look at it but you can’t.

Smart contracts level the playing field. Smart contracts are not controlled by any single party. They are computer programs that are running is in an entirely neutral setting. No one has an advantage over anyone else. No one has the advantage of controlling the computer on which a shared program is running. Everyone can audit the code, see how it’s running, and see who is involved. Therefore, you have a high degree of certainty that there are no backdoors or malicious bugs in the program.

● Circulating Supply - The amount of tokens currently traded on the open market. It does not include tokens locked away for later distribution.

● Market Capitalization - How much the value of all the tokens in circulating supply are worth. Market cap is not the same as the value of all tokens, just the liquidity in the current market for this token. To calculate Market Cap you multiply circulating supply by the price of the coin. To calculate the Implied Market Cap, you multiply the total supply

by the price of the coin. The total supply is the amount of coins that will ever be minted. In Bitcoin, for instance, the total supply is 21 million.

● Liquidity - Refers to how many tokens are available to buy or sell. A liquid market means it is easy to buy and sell at almost any quantity for the current market price. An illiquid market means it could be hard to buy or sell at the same price for your entire order. The more liquid a market, the greater the ability for a trader to buy or sell an asset in that market without affecting the price, or incurring slippage. For instance, say you are trying to buy 20 ETH, and the market price is $200. Basically you hope to get 20 ETH for $4,000. If you put in a market buy on an illiquid market, you will probably be forced to pay higher than $200/ETH, because there are not 20 ETH being offered at that exact price.

You may only have 10 ETH offered at $200, but then the next orders are as follows: 3 ETH offered at $200.50, 4 ETH offered at $201, and 3 ETH offered at $201.75. This is a result of there not being many buyers or sellers looking to transact with that particular cryptocurrency or on that particular trading platform. A liquid market would let you buy all 20 ETH at the market price. So, in this case, you’ll have to pay more than $200/ETH and you’ll be getting a worse deal. As an alternative, you can place a limit order bid at $200 but you’ll need to wait to get your order hit.

● Volume - Volume represents how many coins have been traded during a certain time period. It is popular to look at daily (24hr) volume or weekly (7 day) volume. A price move accompanied by high volume means that the market is showing its conviction in that move. A popular rule of thumb is that a strong price move should be considered truly strong only if it is accompanied by a high amount of volume relative to its trading history. You can use a 50 or 200-day moving average to see if volume is relatively high or low when compared to the last 50 or 200 days of trading. The higher the moving average, the longer timeframe you are looking back at. You can use any moving average number that fits the time-frame you are trading.

● Exchange - A website or app that has several different cryptocurrencies you can exchange for one another. The prices are entirely subject to what people are willing to charge and what people are willing to pay (i.e. the market). Exchanges do not control prices.

Exchanges have cross pairs. This means if you are on an exchange and want to buy QTUM, but the only cross pair available is QTUM/BTC, which means you must have BTC in order to make the trade. If you only have ETH, you will need to trade your ETH for BTC, and then buy QTUM. Alternatively, you can find a different exchange with a QTUM/ETH cross pair.

● Tokenomics - Also called “token economics”, this refers to the monetary policy of the token, and is part of the framework to value tokens. Tokenomics refers to a coin’s inflation schedule, eventual total supply, and what the valuation of the initial fundraising was. Tokenomics also details the benefits of holding, spending, or using a token. Some tokens collect interest if locked away from the open market for a certain amount of time. Some networks burn their transaction fees, reducing supply gradually over time to increase the value. There are many different things people have thought of to give their token better value than the closest competitor. It’s very important to research these mechanisms.

● Immutable - Being immutable means that data, once entered, can never be altered. It is a property of secure blockchains. Data stored on a blockchain is immutable. Once the transaction is confirmed by the miners or validators on the network, that transaction will exist as it was initially entered, forever (i.e. 1 BTC from X address to Y address). Immutability is important because cryptocurrencies put transactions in sequential order so that there is never a “double-spend” (i.e. me sending you and someone else the same dollar). Transaction history must be agreed upon by everyone at the same time. It is vital to the trustworthiness of a payments network that the sequence of transactions remain forever unchangeable.

● 2FA - Two-Factor Authentication. This is an absolutely essential way to protect your assets from being stolen. 2FA requires additional permission to log in or make a transaction or do a withdrawal from an exchange. These steps could include a text message of a code to your phone or email address, or a specific 2FA program like Google Authenticator.

● Mining (Proof of Work) - At a high level, think of miners as the computers that make up the “decentralized VISA Network” that is a cryptocurrency. Instead of one company processing and verifying every transaction that happens on the network, there is a democracy of equal yet competitive interests simultaneously verifying the transactions. The miners earn bitcoin for maintaining the ledger of transactions.

Mining is very energy-intensive and requires extremely powerful computers, but it essentially boils down to the more miners there are on a network, the more secure and it becomes. Technically, mining is the process by which thousands or millions of people’s computers compete to be the one node to commit a block of transactions to the blockchain, that everyone else accepts and builds atop. The winner of the competition is the one who finds the right answer to a very difficult math puzzle. Depending on the processor, a computer crunches millions, billions, or trillions of computations per second in order to find a nonce, or the answer to the cryptographic hash puzzle. Once the computer finds the answer, it broadcasts the answer to everyone else. Everyone else verifies that that is indeed the right answer, and that block of transactions is settled. The higher percentage of compute power (i.e. hash power) that you own on the network, the

higher probability that you find the answer, commit the block, and get rewarded. The reward is called the block reward and it is made up of all the fees attached to each transaction, and the block subsidy.

Also, due to Bitcoin’s Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm, the more miners that come on the network equates to a more difficult puzzle that is generated to solve. The algorithm for Bitcoin targets 10 minute block times, meaning that transactions are settled on-chain every time a block is found which is usually 10 minutes. The algorithm for Litecoin for instance targets 2.5 minute block times.

● Hash Rate - A measurement of mining performance. It calculates how many of these math puzzles are being solved per second, as the “hash” is the result provided when the puzzle is solved.

● Consensus - “Majority rules”. Consensus is another term for “agreement” and is a hard-coded part of any cryptocurrency networks. The computers must all be in agreement with each other all the time, or the blockchain loses the very thing that makes it powerful-- distributed consensus. The consensus rules are a set of hard-coded instructions that all nodes abide by when gauging the validity of a block and its transactions. All the blockchain transactions have to go across several nodes, during a period of “confirmation” that protects against a node trying to slip false data into the blockchain. As all of these different nodes work together to ensure everyone has the same data, they attempt to reach consensus that all the data being processed is indeed valid and the same across all nodes. The only way to get rid of certain consensus rules are to hard fork, although new consensus rules can be added through a soft fork of the protocol.