I thought it was pretty nifty. After a while, I found better ways to do this, for example, Acorns. The Acorns service does the same thing, but better and it also lets you add recurring savings programs and round-up multipliers. You can ask it to automatically take a certain amount every month and put it towards your savings and investment goals

Update 2021-12-29

I'm disappointed and I should have done more research before jumping into this. Please note, RoundlyX might still work for you, but it won't work for me. Acorns (mentioned below), actually withdraws the round-up amounts on a regular basis, so you don't really notice it in your bank account. RoundlyX doesn't.

For all intents and purposes, RoundlyX is just a glorified savings/investment plan that you still have to monitor and execute. If you decide you want to buy crypto in increments of say, $50.00, then RoundlyX will monitor your account and when you have accumulated that amount of "spare change" they will withdraw that entire amount $50.00 and make your purchase on your behalf. In other words, you're better off using your exchange's own recurring buy system to just buy $50.00 every month and save yourself the fee of RoundlyX.

This might work for you, but it won't work for me; YMMV. I've already canceled my Acorns account and will probably cancel this as well. I also use Digit, which I think can easily replace both services. Here's a Twitter thread where I had an exchange with the RoundlyX folks if you want to read it.

TL;DR

RoundlyX has a "spare change" round-up savings program that allows you to buy crypto automatically. It tracks your transactions, rounds up to the nearest dollar, and then takes that amount and buys whatever cryptocurrency you want in your favorite exchange, you can sign up here.

Acorns basically invests your spare change for you

The best difference between Acorns and a regular "keep the change" program is that you can have Acorns invest the money for you.

You don't get to pick individual investments, instead, you pick the levels of risk, moderate, conservative, aggressive, and they take care of investing it. I guess it is similar to how you invest in a mutual fund.

The returns aren't going to make you rich anytime soon, but they're better than the fraction of a percentage you get from a regular savings account with any bank today.

But now everything is going to the blockchain and crypto, so it was just a matter of time before someone replicated the spare change savings idea into a crypto-based system. RoundlyX just rolled out earlier this year.

RoundlyX buys cryptocurrency with your spare change

Enter RoundlyX. RoundlyX is the same as Acorns in principle, but instead of investing your spare change into mutual funds, or stocks or EFTs, RoundlyX buys crypto for you.

This could be one of the easiest ways to stack sats, without any effort on your part.

The account is pretty easy to set up, there are no complicated steps to create wallets or copy and paste your codes and all of that stuff that often comes with working with the emerging crypto space.

RoundlyX uses Plaid to connect to your bank and immediately starts going through your transactions to grab the "spare change."

Similar to Acorns and other "keep the change" and "save spare change" programs, they have multipliers, so you can accelerate your savings by adding a 2x, 3x, or 10x multiplier. So that if your transaction was $10.35, RoundlyX will take 65 cents, but with a 3x multiplier then the savings will be $1.95.

Once you accumulate $45.00 in your RoundlyX account, RoundlyX will buy the cryptocurrency of your choice in the exchange of your choice, the options include any token or coin traded in some of the big exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, Binance International, Okcoin, and others.

I've signed up for this now and have it active, I have canceled my Acorns subscription too, there's no sense in paying for that if I'm not going to use it. That's another benefit with RoundlyX, their service is only $1.00/month (the first month is free). Acorns plans start at $3.00/month. There's nothing wrong with Acorns as far as I can tell, and my experience with them has been great. But the future is here and the future is crypto.

If you haven't started using, accumulating, and transacting with cryptocurrencies, this could be the easiest way to dip your toes in the water with minimal risk. Check it out here if you want to join.

A Brief Introduction Video of RoundlyX

Here's an intro video about how you can use them to buy crypto with your spare change.

The post Save Your Spare Change in Crypto With RoundlyX appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

A satoshi (sat) is the smallest unit of Bitcoin you can buy. In case you didn't know, amongst the many differences between Bitcoin and regular currency, is that one single Bitcoin can be divided into 1,000,000,000 pieces. Each one of those is one satoshi.

The analogy to regular currency, like the U.S. Dollar is like this. Think about 1 dollar being the "whole" unit, while 1 penny is 1 tiny fraction of a dollar. In the same way, 1 Bitcoin is a "whole" unit, while 1 Satoshi is a tiny fraction of that.

Stacking sats means buying satoshis.

Before Bitcoin's value shot up, past a few hundred dollars, it was inexpensive to buy a full coin. But as the price of Bitcoin (currently around $60,000 - check real-time prices here) goes up, buying a full coin can be out of most people's reach. So instead of buying full bitcoins, you can buy satoshis which are of course a lot more affordable. The whole goal is to "HODL" Bitcoin, meaning buy and hold as much as you can.

Currently, as the price of Bitcoin hovers around $60,000 USD, you can buy around 1600 satoshis with $1.00. If you want to check this in real-time for an accurate price, you can use a USD to Satoshi calculator like this one.

Now that you know what stacking sats means, check out this video, it's my response to @BrainnHarrington and why I decided to write this post, and now you know.

The post What does Stacking Sats Mean? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I've been learning about cryptocurrency for a while now. Enough that I'm going to share a few things here and there as I learn. Blogging about it will hopefully help me understand things better.

First, KYC is an abbreviation and it stands for Know Your Customer. It's often used in Marketing, Sales, and other industries.

So what is KYC when it comes to cryptocurrency?

KYC stands for know your customer. KYC in cryptocurrency is similar, to KYC in banking and finance, and investing. When you deal with KYC, it means the institution knows everything about you and monitors your account, transactions, and other activity.

One of the things that makes many cryptocurrencies attractive to the users/buyers/traders is their ability to be traded anonymously. I get it that not all cryptocurrencies are anonymous and that in some cases even if you try, it can be nearly impossible to maintain 100% anonymity.

But you have to consider this, as more and more authorities get involved with crypto, the more regulations that come into place. When you use a mainstream cryptocurrency exchange, like Coinbase, or Robinhood, then you have to reveal your personal information.

This information is required for you to participate in their services, and they need the information for the purpose of implementing KYC protocols, processes, and compliance.

Once you sign up for an exchange, like Coinbase, they now know who you are and they know their customer, they KYC. KYC is a system and collection of processes and protocols that verify the identity of a person transacting business. Generally, this is done in response or in compliance with self-imposed policies, industry regulations, and/or government regulations.

KYC in the investing world

KYC is used in the investing world which also affects cryptocurrencies now and will more in the future. Investopedia says this about KYC:

What Is Know Your Client (KYC)?

The Know Your Client or Know Your Customer is a standard in the investment industry that ensures investment advisors know detailed information about their clients' risk tolerance, investment knowledge, and financial position. KYC protects both clients and investment advisors. Clients are protected by having their investment advisor know what investments best suit their personal situations. Investment advisors are protected by knowing what they can and cannot include in their client's portfolio. KYC compliance typically involves requirements and policies such as risk management, customer acceptance policies, and transaction monitoring.

- Investopedia

But your bank, doctor, insurance, and investors all use KYC

This isn't too bad, right? I mean if you've always and only dealt with Fiat money for your entire life until now, you've always given the bank your information, so this is similar right? The bank uses KYC almost anytime you deal with them. Your doctor does too, your insurance agent does too.

Yes, this is exactly like your bank.

It's okay to share information with them until it's not. It's okay for them to know who you are until the authorities request access to your bank account because they want to investigate it and your bank simply gives them all your information.

What is KYC you ask? That's what KYC means.

It means they literally know you and verify your identity when you transact with them. In crypto, you try to avoid interactions where you are exposing your identity. - Here's a great article that helped me understand more about kyc.

Think of real-life and how you can meet with someone in private and exchange cash for goods or services. Imagine they give you the cash, and you give them the goods; nothing more, nothing less. You don't ask for ID, name, date of birth, or anything. They also don't know who you are. You complete the transaction and remain [mostly] anonymous.

That's more or less how you want to do transactions in crypto, anonymously. If I understand correctly, when you're dealing with big amounts or long-term investments, you want to avoid KYC institutions as much as possible. I guess part of avoiding KYC is that you most likely will need cold storage or a cold wallet. I might tackle that subject next.

So that's really it for now. Being that this is my first post about cryptocurrency, I'll leave it at that short and sweet.

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