Cryptocurrency disclaimer
We are not an investment advisors. We are simply discussing our experiences using cryptocurrency.
Note that cryptocurrency can be very volatile. That’s why, in the paragraphs below, you will read that about 2 or 3 weeks after the bull market began, I removed everything I had initially invested. (Everything left was capital gain.) People should never invest more that they can afford to lose.
Cryptocurrency & our (very positive) experience
We started buying cryptocurrency from NDAX in January of 2024.
Much of our buying was done using dollar cost averaging (see below). At first XRP was around 70-75 cents a token and XLM was around 16 cents a token.
Then, on Nov. 5, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. He is known to be pro cryptocurrency. The next day, when I bought more XRP, it was 77 cents a token. On Dec.1 we sold enough to get back a bit more than we put into the market. With the money we had in our NDAX cryptocurrency wallet, we still had more than doubled our money.
Table of Contents
Bear Market Reversal
Bitcoin
Candles
Cryptocurrency in the News
Dollar Cost Averaging
ETFs
NDAX
Patience
Stop-limit order
Why this website?
XRP
Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) & crypto
In DCA, an investor invests a fixed amount of money into a particular asset, such as stocks or cryptocurrency, on a regular schedule (e.g., monthly or weekly), regardless of the asset’s price. This strategy helps reduce the impact of market volatility by spreading the investment out over time. When prices are lower, your fixed amount buys more tokens, and when prices are higher, it buys fewer.
NDAX makes DCA easy. Simply click on Recurring Investments in the side menu. Follow the prompts and you can do something as specific as automatically buying $100 worth of XRP on the 18th of every month at 11 am.
This method is particularly popular for long-term investors, as it avoids the need to time the market and reduces the risk of making a large investment at an inopportune moment.
In the animation to the right, someone bought tokens when it was $2. It stayed that way for 4 months. Then it quadrupled for 2 months. Then it was reduced to $4. The investor bought a hundred dollar’s worth and then sold everything.
He still made $300 profit with the $700 he invested. This was similar to what I did with XRP. I started buying when the price per token was 
around 75 cents. It stayed that way for 10 months before shooting up.
Crypto Bear market reversal
The candle chart to the right has one-day candles. They represent a serious downturn in the value of XRP.
But then, we noticed the chart here. These are the 30 minute candles following the end of the last one-day candle in the top chart. Notice how the first green candle is longer than any of the previous red candles. This indicates a change in market sentiment.
In the next half hour there was another green candle forming. In our minds, we are 
definitely experiencing a change in investor sentiment. So, we bought XRP at market price.
Judging from all of the positive news about cryptocurrency, we are assuming that we are in the middle of a bull market that could last for years. We bought XRP for $3.17. Then, when the price gets up to around $3.70, we will sell enough to get back the money we have invested since our last conversion to fiat currency.
Not quite high enough
(A few weeks later.)
That last candle is around $3.56. We’re not ready to sell yet.
Look at the one week candles here. The news stories were favourable and the trend is right. It makes me feel like we are close to the $3.70 point where we can sell some XRP.
We’ll sell the amount we’ve invested in all cryptocurrencies since out last withdrawal plus a bit more.
A change of heart
On Jan.13 I was ready to create a stop-limit order to sell XRP equivalent to what I had invested since Dec.1. I wanted to sell them for $3.70 or so each.
That evening 3 different people talked me out of it. By the following evening the price had surpassed $4. The bear market had ended.
One of those 3 people told me that some prophetic people expect XRP to reach $10,000 per token. Because of my understanding of cryptocurrency, that seemed quite possible.
Ripple designed XRP to be used for international payments. Presently it can take 3-5 days for money to reach a seller in a foreign country. With tens of billions of dollars crossing international borders every year, it makes sense that business people would prefer a system that gives payments to buyers within seconds and at a much lower charge than the present fiat system.
2025 is the beginning of what will become a very large industry.
Stop-limit order
Sometimes during a bear market you may want to sell part of your portfolio. In that case you may want to place a stop-limit sell order in order to sell within a better price range than a market price sell order would give you. Watch a YouTube video showing you how to do that. The video is sort of summarized below.
Suppose you place a stop-limit sell order for 250 tokens of some cryptocurrency. The order has a stop order of $3.71 and a limit order of $3.66. That means that you would hope to sell once the price reaches $3.71 (the stop price). Once the stop price is triggered, the order becomes a market order and will execute at the best available price.
However, the price may drop below $3.71 before NDAX has a chance to buy it. In that case NDAX will try to sell it somewhere between $3.66 & $ 3.71. If the price drops below $3.66 and recovers to between $3.66 & $ 3.71, you may be able to buy again. If the price drops below $3.66 and never recovers, you could end up losing a great deal of money.
A stop-limit order to buy is just the reverse. Let’s say you want to buy a token when it goes down to $3.41.
You must set two price points: the stop price ($3.41) and the limit price (say, $3.46). First, set the stop price, which is the price at which you want to buy the crypto. If the price of the crypto falls below the stop price ($3.41), the trade will be triggered.
That does not mean that the trade will be executed. There has to be sellers available to sell it. The trade will only proceed if the stock price is $3.46 and below. If the price rapidly climbs above $3.46 before NDAX has a chance to buy, the trade will not be made possible.
It’s best to avoid setting minimum prices at psychological levels like $5.00 or $10.00. Instead, use slightly adjusted figures like $4.95 to reduce the changes of activation due to market noise.
Patience & crypto strategy
Patience is such an important part of my strategy that we’re devoting this entire section to it. To the right are the monthly candles representing the value of XRP when we first bought it in Jan./24 until we sold part of it on Dec.1/24.
Those 11 or so months represent a great deal of patience. During that time we were using dollar cost averaging to buy XRP at what turned out to be very lower prices. They were very low compared to what it was the day we sold enough to get our total investment back plus a bit more.
Now (Dec 30/24) we are patiently waiting for the price to go up to $3.70. That’s our target for when we want to sell again. In the meantime, we are buying XRP at a low price compared to our target price. Consequently, when we get to our target price, we will have made lots of money. (Study the Dollar Cost Averaging article above.)
Our investment strategy
Every month we buy exactly $x worth of Bitcoin & $x worth of XRP. (We might get only 0.006 of a Bitcoin. But that’s OK. We can sell small fractions of a Bitcoin.)
On Dec.1/24 we took out everything we had invested plus a bit more. The next time we sell some cryptocurrency, we will sell enough so that we get back everything we invested since Dec.1/24 plus a bit more.
We will sell when we know we have made a significant amount of money on whatever we invested since Dec.1.
A downturn in the market does not bother us. On the contrary, it means we can buy more cryptocurrency at a low price. And, we know that the market will eventually go up and we can make a profit. (How do we know that the market will go up? Read the first few sections of cryptocurrency in the news below.)
XRP, my cryptocurrency of choice
As you read above, we have had great success with XRP. And the investor confidence seems to be very positive. Some companies are accepting XRP as payment for goods & services. You can buy gold from SuisseGold.com and pay with XRP.
XRP for international trade
An article on the Ripple website begins with Trillions of dollars in payments are sent across borders every year. Yet, the traditional mechanisms supporting these transactions remain slow, expensive, and prone to failure. New, emerging solutions are leveraging the power of blockchain to overcome the limitations of these conventional payment systems—and Ripple is leading the charge….Ripple Payments enables near real-time payments settlement, reducing a process that can take at minimum 3–5 days using traditional finance, down to mere seconds. In fact, 58% of global payments leaders see faster payments as the number one value proposition for incorporating crypto into cross-border payments. Read More.
Let me repeat some of the concepts above so that you truly understand the importance of them.
The regular way of sending currency across borders can take 3-5 days. Sending something like XRP can take 3-5 seconds. Sending fiat currency across borders can be expensive. For small amounts of money it can be over 10% of the amount sent.
The standard transaction fee on the XRP Ledger is about 0.00001 XRP). For example, if 1 XRP = $4.00, the cost of sending it internationally would be $0.00004/XRP.
Ripple vs. XRP
You may be confused when someone uses the word Ripple when they are talking about XRP. Let me explain.
Ripple Labs Inc. (commonly called Ripple) is a technology company that develops payment and financial solutions. Its main goal is to provide faster, cheaper, and more efficient cross-border payment solutions for banks and financial institutions. It created the RippleNet network, which allows the transfer of money and value across borders in real time.
XRP is a cryptocurrency that was created by Ripple Labs but operates independently of the company. It runs on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), an open-source blockchain technology developed by Ripple Labs.
Why this website for crypto?
Q. This website is about how to have a happy marriage. Why would it have a page about cryptocurrency?
A. 
The 3 main causes of marriage breakdown are problems with money, sex & communication. Sex & communication are discussed elsewhere on this website. However, no other page is about investing money.
Using knowledge from this page, a couple can take a small amount of their disposable income and decide it would not ruin their lives if they lost it investing. However, considering the current cryptocurrency investment sentiment, this type of investing could be something a couple could do together. In the process they could make a great deal of money.
It could also be a source of relatively cheap entertainment.
What are crypto candles?
In the investment industry, candles are indicators of the direction and movement changes in a particular period of time. A candle chart can represent 5 minute segments, 15 minute segments, day segments or any of a number of different time frames.
A red candle means that the price has reduced in a particular time frame. A green candle represents upward price movement. The ends of the wicks represent the highest & lowest prices in the time frame. The tops & bottoms of the coloured part represent the prices at the start or end of a time frame.
Political and economic events can cause changes in the movement of the candles. For instance, if a pro cryptocurrency candidate were elected president of the United States, a day candle chart could look something like the chart here. The candle in the lower left hand corner could represent movement the day after the election.
The red candles could represent large numbers of investors taking a profit.
Buy or sell your crypto?
Most investors try to buy low and sell high. So, it can be a good idea to buy when red candles finally began to turn green. Similarly, it may be a good idea to sell when green candles are about to become long red candles. But, how do know when those scenarios are about to happen? Read the next paragraphs.
Look at the size of the candles. The candles in this image are 15 minute XRP candles as shown on the NDAX website.
When the body of a candle is shorter than many of the candles before it, that can mean that people’s sentiment is changing. In the next 15 minute period you may want to see if the prevailing trend may be changing.
In the 2 short red candles here, they were both indicating that a downward trend was about to happen. In the very short green candle body, it correctly predicted that an upward trend was beginning.
If you want to become a serious trader, watch the size of the candles to see if investors as a whole are probably in a buying or a selling mood. You would want to accompany this information with news stories that could affect investor sentiment.
Free source of candles
If you want to see and candle chart for a particular cryptocurrency, go to the NDAX website and sign up for a free account. Then log into you new account with your NDAX password and your Authenticator password. (You’ll learn about Authenticator when you sign up for your free account.)
Then, with you desktop or laptop:
- Click on Trade.
- Click on the name of the token.
- Go to the right edge of your page & scroll down.
You can change the candle period to 15 minutes, 4 hours, one day and a number of different time periods.
Cryptocurrency in the news
This is a collection of news stories that lead us to believe that the present bull market will continue for years. We believe that there will be a short term bear market here & there. However, that will likely just be an opportunity to top up our holdings of cryptocurrency at a low price.
Presidential election
Nov.5/24 — Donald Trump was elected president of one of the most powerful nations on earth. He is a very pro-cryptocurrency president and has already selected a very successful “czar” to be in charge of cryptocurrency.
The Republicans had 5 million more popular votes than the Democrats. This means that there will be very high pro-Trump sentiment.
Inflation & global money supply
On December 18, 2024 Jerome Powell from the American Federal Reserve spoke at a press conference. He said that for 2025 the inflation rate would remain above the Fed’s target of 2%. Within half an hour of the press conference, the crypto market began to decline.
That problem, accompanied by a shrinking of the global money supply mean there is less liquidity. With poor liquidity, investors are less likely to invest in riskier investments such as crypto. Thus began a tumble in the crypto market.
Global Liquidity
Global liquidity is the amount of money & credit available around the world. When central banks lower interest rates and print more money, global liquidity increases. When they raise interest rates and stop printing money, global liquidity decreases
Dec. 23 News from The Crypto Nutshell
On Truth Social, President Elect Donald Trump said, “Bo Hines will be the Executive Director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets (the “Crypto Council”), a new advisory group composed of luminaries from the Crypto industry, and chaired by our Crypto Czar, David Sacks. Bo will work with David to foster innovation and growth in the digital assets space, while ensuring industry leaders have the resources they need to succeed. Together, they will create an environment where this industry can flourish, and remain a cornerstone of our Nation’s technological advancement.”
Bo Hines is a graduate of Yale University and Wake Forest University Law School.
Never before have we had a government that actually wants the crypto industry to thrive.
Now let’s talk about Raoul Pal. He is a macroeconomic expert with one of the best track records in the space. He not only invested in Bitcoin way back in 2013, but his calls throughout 2024 have been spot on.
For the past week or so the crypto & stock markets have been dropping.
In response Mr. Pal said, “I know it’s important to everybody, and I know this is the biggest bet everybody’s ever taken in their entire careers. And if it isn’t, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, because this is the greatest opportunity of all time.”
The above news is from The Crypto Nutshell. Get your free subscription here.
Advance fee fraud
A man in Cyprus went to what he thought was a legitimate website for a crypto trading company. It was a scam & the man lost $58,000. Read the news story here.
To help me find whether a company is fraudulent, I went to CHATgpt and typed in: How to tell if a cryptocurrency website belongs to a legitimate company. Then, to help me find if NDAX is a legitimate trader of crypto, I went to a search engine as asked if NDAX was registered with the Canadian Securities Administrators(CSA). I found a number of links and went to the one I knew belonged to the CSA. There I found the documentation showing that NDAX was a legitimate Crypto-Asset Trading Platform.
January 8/25 crypto price drop
On Jan.7 Bitcoin was up to $145,000 (CDN). In January 8 it was $137,000 and change. What’s going on?
First of all, people like me look at this as an opportunity to buy crypto at a very low price. We can get more tokens if we are dollar cost averaging.
It may surprise you to learn that the price drop was because of stronger than expected US economic data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ job openings for October were 7.8 million. Job openings for November (the latest numbers available) went up to 8.1 million. Other US economic statistics were higher than expected.
Now the economy looks so bright that interest rate cuts will not come as quickly as expected.
Higher interest rates now makes some traditional investments such as bonds more attractive. So, a significant numbers of investors are staying away from higher-risk, higher-reward assets such as cryptocurrencies.
And that, ladies & gentlemen, is why cryptocurrencies took a hit on January 8.
That same day the newsletter called The Crypto Nutshell said, “In a few weeks, today’s price dip will feel like a tiny, meaningless bump.“
Corrections are a nature of the beast when it comes to crypto. To have volatility on the upside you can also expect volatility on the downside.
Kingdom of Bhutan
Jan.9/25 — The Kingdom of Bhutan just announced plans to add digital assets to its strategic reserves. That include Bitcoin, Ethereum & BNB into its reserves.
Crypto vs ISM
Jan.16/25
Raoul Pal is a macroeconomic expert with decades of experience in finance. He spoke about ISM.
ISM measures how busy & healthy businesses are in the U.S. The closer the cycle is to the top, the better it is for business.
There is a strong correlation between the ISM numbers and the price of Bitcoin. Raoul Paul recently said, “We’re only at the bottom of the ISM cycle… We are nowhere near the top. We haven’t even started the cycle yet.”
That suggests that the rest of 2025 has a bullish future for cryptocurrency.
Notice these 2 images of 12 hour candles for identical periods of time ending late Jan.8. Bitcoin took a much bigger hit than XRP. Makes me think that 
perhaps XRP should occupy a much larger percentage of my portfolio than Bitcoin.
NDAX & cryptocurrency
Before I became a regular crypto investor, a friend of mine told me about his experience buying Solana. He said that his trading platform charges 2% of the value of the currency when he buys & sells. Later I found out that NDAX charges a tenth of that amount. NDAX charges 0.2% of the value a token to buy or sell it. There is less than a difference of 0.6% between the buy & sell prices.
Look at this sample of XRP prices from the NDAX website. There is less than a difference of 0.25%.
Somehow, it seems, NDAX has figured out a way of keeping their expenses low.
NDAX is Canada’s most advanced cryptocurrency trading platform that offers one of the country’s most extensive selections of digital currencies. It also offers gold standard security. Their website says, “Our client’s fiat funds are never sent offshore or to other jurisdictions but remain in a segregated bank account, legally separate from Ndax’s operating capital and compliant with local banking laws. “
NDAX makes Dollar Cost Averaging easy. You can do something as specific as automatically buying $100 worth of XRP on the 18th of every month at 11 am.
If you’re a Canadian, you can sign up for a free NDAX account here.
Get started trading
When you want to start trading, click on the Trade button and then click 
on the down arrow at the top of the page. If you want to send less than $3000, click on Interac E-
Transfer. You will see a unique code similar to the one on the right.
Copy it into your clipboard and then go into the online account in your bank. Enter the data such as how much you want to send and from what account you wish to take the money. Then paste the unique code into the message box and press send.
If you want to send over $3000, click on Wire Transfer & follow the prompts.
Bitcoin
The information below is from The Crypto Nutshell.
Under the Trump administration, Fred is confident we’ll see some form of a Bitcoin strategic reserve. Fund Manager Bitwise predicts that Bitcoin will hit this milestone in 2029. (This would mark the top of the next cycle). And in a recent update, Fred Krueger broke down exactly why this scenario is possible.
How to win with Bitcoin
A famous investor by the name of Larry Lepard bought Bitcoin at $400, $9000, $60,000+ and other points. He said that no one who held Bitcoin for over 4 years has ever lost money on it. So, his secret for winning with Bitcoin is: hold onto it for over 4 years.
MicroStrategy & Bitcoin
MicroStrategy is a business intelligence (BI) and analytics company that provides software solutions to help organizations analyze data and make more informed decisions. The company’s flagship product is its BI platform, which allows users to access, visualize, and analyze large volumes of data from various sources, all through interactive dashboards, reports, and data visualizations.
Since 2020 MicroStrategy has has been buying Bitcoin. They want it as a hedge against inflation and to diversify its corporate treasury. As of the end of 2024, MicroStrategy‘s total bitcoin holdings are 331,200 BTC. That’s around $30 billion dollars worth.
That’s around 2.13% of Bitcoin’s total 21 million token supply. Remember that the supply of Bitcoins in the world can NEVER go beyond 21 million.
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) & cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency ETF invests in cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or a basket of various cryptocurrencies. Rather than buying and managing the actual cryptocurrencies, an investor buys shares in the ETF, which holds the underlying assets. Crypto ETFs aim to give investors exposure to the performance of cryptocurrencies without the need to deal with the complexities of purchasing, storing, and securing the digital currencies themselves.
Bitcoin ETFs were launched in January 2024.
A disadvantage of ETFs is that they may have higher management fees than a regular crypto broker such as NDAX.