You did not sell at 6 this time around, I hope. : - )
I added some shares under 6, because waiting for a big dip was not working. Patience is a virtue or so I've heard, but... I've had to add more 7.5 strikes to my options orders. I thought we could enjoy hanging around 5 for a while, but this thing is not accommodating that plan.

Is everyone enjoying this steady climb? We are just pennies away from being 100% up from the low for the year and yet this ticker is not on the breakout board. Which is good. Hitting #1 on the Hot Board is nearly always a sell signal.

Is Cathie buying the dip, while selling rips? Looks like she is taking profits in NVDA. Then again, Pfizer is not ripping. It has been down, currently in falling knife territory. Tempting... *

As for PLTR, I will have to sell another cash covered put the next time it dips; that has been working pretty well so far this year and the last.

*Oops, PFE up 4% today, Cathie, you may have blown that one! Don't worry; you are up 10% here. We will cover your mistakes.

; - )

How did that work out for you, ed? Did you get some 5's assigned to you last month? I only picked up another 100 shares in February, after doing the same in January. It was December when I increased my position here by 60%. Now all those shares are up for grabs at 5. We will find out in 10 days if that is a bargain or not. At worst it will be a 25% gain in 3 months.

I only have one position in cash covered puts. Those will also expire on the 15th. It will be like scoring a 20% dividend out of something that does not pay a dividend.* Wish I had more put positions; I will the next time this "pos" dips. BTW, I trade this in an IRA, so no Wash Sale worries. I won't presently become a millionaire like Volcano. But maybe future me will.

Obvious statement: I am not ed3/6me's financial advisor or anyone else's. Just demonstrating how you can milk a ticker for almost monthly income without it being a blue chip dividend payer. I can't say it removes those anxious feelings you get when it dumps (or pumps), but it will remove some cash off the table.

*I could use more such scores to keep up with inflation; you know, just in case Biden scapegoating evil corporations doesn't do the trick.

Well, there you go, XRP is airdrop heaven! : - )

I must have missed the memo on EVR. I hold half of my bags on Uphold and the other half in a wallet. (Not the one you mentioned; so I will have to check that.)

Sounds like, while XRP is good for airdrops, maybe Uphold is less so. I must say, I should hate Uphold with a purple passion for its connection to Cred, but since November 2020 they really have tried to make it up to us. They kept XRP listed so we could buy it cheaply (like we were Baron Rothschild) and see a 10x on the day Coinbase went public (even though Coinbase was still years from re-listing XRP). And speaking of beating Coinbase to the punch, Uphold tried to make me rich by listing BONK first, but did I jump on the opportunity to triple my money in a week? No, not me. (I did start to DCA on the dip and so maybe my latest 10 million barking memes have doubled. A 2x in two months is not quite as fun as a 3x in a few days, but I am relieved to see the pump to lift all doggies. Frankly, thought that was money down the toilet.)

Guess my subtle attempt to pump XRP failed. (Although looking better today.) Are people not buying the idea that this ecosystem is a good place for airdrops? FLR is now my hope to recover from the Cred bankruptcy disaster. Wouldn't it be funny if FLR flipped XRP? (On price per coin, not market cap; that would be the apocalypse.)

Speaking of flips, I wish I had put more into Solana once I realized it would flip us on the market cap list. But then if I had done that, I would probably have taken profits too early. As it is, I have to hold until 150 before considering selling even one SOL.

Speaking of airdrops, I got an email from our friends at Uphold warning of a phishing scam, and then another from them half an hour later saying I got some EVR. What is that? Something I earned from holding XRP, FLR, SGB, ExFi, or SOLO?

Another message from Uphold: One of my limit orders got bonked... if you know what I mean.
: - )

Was everyone here for FLR? Finally flying. Could the little coin lift the bigger one? Maybe the success of an airdrop will encourage people to come in anticipation of another one. Although, I still don't know where my Coreum is. Not on Uphold; maybe in a XUMM wallet? [Shrug] Or was I supposed to be doing something other than holding XRP for that one? Guess I failed to read the instructions correctly.

Maybe it was for SOLO, which I got along with Songbird and Flare (the Spark token name just did not stick, did it?), and another one... ExFi, I guess, but maybe so little SOLO, it did not merit a single drop (or drip) of Core from my "friends" at Uphold.

Come on now, a 6% pullback is something, if only intraday.
: - )
Maybe that was enough for somebody to sell a call and a put. (I only sold a put.)

It might be worth noting that we are up 50% already for the year. A breather at some point is quite predictable. When, how much, and for how long, is the question.

Going to fun (or maybe very stressful) to see what happens.

Whoops, indeed. Price spikes have a downside.
That's what makes them so pointy.

Chance to sell some cash covered puts may be coming up.

Thirty percent up; that beats most crypto rallies.

Glad I picked up some more shares during this past slack period. Sad I picked the wrong day to sell a call (that day being yesterday), but happy that most of my shares are not covering any calls. Not yet, anyway, Definitely should sell one more on this pop and then see what happens next. Any big profit-taking and I can sell another cash covered put.

Selling options still the best way to squeeze money out of this thing while we wait for it to get to $40/share and start paying dividends. (… he dreamed)

Buy low sell high has worked so far with this one. Or in my case, sell low and sell high. When it drops, I sell puts, and when it pops, I sell calls. (That's my way of getting "dividends" out of something that does not pay dividends.) Another spike and my Jun 7.5 order should catch.

I don't have quite as many shares as you do. Mine only account for 10% of one of my IRAs. But I am enjoying this recent rally all the same.
: - )

I would not mind playing GSOL and OSOL if I understood what the premium (or discount) was to NAV. I figure GSOL has a ridiculously high premium to the actual value of Solana in its holdings, but I am not sure about OSOL. Looks like it is in what they call Price Discovery. I would not mind a little premium, but if it is 5x, not so much. Just as soon buy more SOL. Glad I bought back in, but I won't get rich from my holdings...until it flips Ethereum.
: - )

Looks like the flippening happened overnight. Ouch!

Knew it was going to happen, but it still hurts. Well, maybe we can set our sights on BNB. Come on, XRP!

I have emailed Stretto three times with inquiries. No response yet. I don't think there has been anything on the court docket in 7 months, but the Donlin Recano website still lists it as an active case. The liquidation trust tried to do a clawback on me last year, even offered 70% reduction, but I replied that during the 90-day window I sent more than I received. Have not heard a peep from them since. That was back in Oct/Nov 2022. I see that they filed a claim against Celsius in January, so maybe that will drag things out more. I hate to say it, but it feels like all the money has already gone to lawyers, accountants, and to creditors "more important" than us retail schmucks.

Seems like the only chance we have of getting any pennies back on the dollar is if they have held onto some of the crypto and are waiting for Bitcoin to get back to 60k.

As for XRP, I see that we are only about 1.3 billion ahead of Solana in market cap. As soon as I saw the gap closing, I figured our getting flipped is an inevitability, so I re-bought into that one with some profits from the Osprey SOL trust. As it turns out, I should have just held onto those shares, but I had no clue about the NAV versus the price. I only know that the Grayscale one is way overvalued. Anyway... XRP could use a good buy-on-the rumor to liven things up, like if we were getting an ETF before Sol, that might do the trick.

As for Uphold, they did everything they could to give me a chance to make a quick killing, and I ignored the offer. That is to say, they actually listed BONK before Coinbase did.

: - }

GSOL? What about the Osprey Solana Trust $OSOL? That has been the proxy to play since the Grayscale one topped in November. A bit risky with low volume and not sure how over-priced it is versus the NAV. (Grayscale’s was definitely trading at a high premium.) Nevertheless, I took a chance on that one last week. Just in it a few days… then took my profits and bought more actual Solana.

My thesis is: once Bitcoin spot ETFs get approved, next to get an ETF after Ethereum will be SOL (no matter how much I wish something else was third in line). People seem to be frontrunning that possibility. (Along with the airdrops and the inevitability of flipping XRP—ouch!)

Guess we have to wait to be flipped by Solana… then maybe XRP can be the little engine that could.

Just two billion ahead in market cap now. Only a matter of time. That’s thanks to what…? Airdrops and ETF anticipation. It’s called having something to look forward to. We need something to look forward to. Coinbase can only go public once, and they already did that. : - /

Anyone staking SOL, and if so, where?

Uphold chickened out months ago.

Thanks

Boring as in stocks, bonds, metals, commodities, etc. You can do OK in those kinds of investments; indeed most of my plays are in traditional investments, selling options and capturing dividends from blue chips and so forth. But crypto is not like that... not yet.

Crypto was more fun at the beginning, 10 years ago, even 5 years ago. A roller coaster ride, one that was life changing, if you got off at the right times. Back in the day, getting some Bitcoin wasn't just an action, it was an act of defiance (or self-defense), a statement about the way the world works. And you could make some serious gains while doing it. That (the money-making part) is the promise of this latest cycle. Bitcoin might triple, Ether might do twice that. Solana may yet prove more than a VC coin. And the chance to 100x or 1000x if you pick the right altcoin? That is still possible this time around. But this might be the last chance to take the kind of ride where your life can change in a few years. Once institutions get in and control so much of it... well, we will see. That is what I mean by "enjoy the ride." It might be the last one worth getting on.

Frankly, I am not in a hurry to get the ETF approval. Remember the futures ETF (BITO) came out at the top of the last bull.

As for XRP, it needs to do about a 20x from here to take care of me. Gooooooo XRP!

Thrilled when our cap is higher than BNB. Now if we were above Tether, that would be something. That would be quite a trick, as I hear more Tether will print during this bull part of the crypto cycle.

Enjoy the ride. Do we all agree this might be the last face-melting bull run, and then the big money comes in and makes it boring?

Here I was all ready to get excited that this ticker had risen to Number 1 on the hot board, only to read the posts and see that all the heat is being provided by people flaming each other. So there is nothing of value here and all our shares (free ones, I hope, for the sake of everyone here) remain untradeable… but, wait!

What about TB’s post, 79131. Is that good news or old news or what?

Will ranging above 5 be the new normal? I have enjoyed accumulating under 5 for the last 15 months, even grabbed a few shares under 4. And got paid to do so by selling puts and calls, but if this is a new level, I will be parting with a couple of shares at the end of the week, and more next month. Will still hold a bag for the double digits, which were promised the last time we spiked this high. That was two and a half years ago.

Huge green in my brokerage account today, but...

...I am going to need more volume than that! : - )

Normally I would put in my limit order now, so I don't forget, but I am going to have to set a reminder for Monday morning. Don't want to overload the Ask.

That news, Coinbase relisting XRP, explains the pump. Frankly, being ruled not a security for retail is not really news. We already knew that our bags of XRP did not contain any securities.

So, is there some place we can stake XRP, like we can with FLR and SGB?

Hope you got an answer to your question. Up 10% this week. Looking at its history over the last couple of years, it could easily have swings that big in one day. Indeed an 18% swing happened 8 days ago.

If it dips, I will sell another cash covered put.

When you hit a grand slam home run in you’re first at bat, you want to remember to touch home plate. Otherwise the guys in the dugout will never let you live it down.

That sounds like some life wisdom that could translate to the world of finance, but of course none of us are in the position to give you or anyone else here financial advice, so this conversation should not be considered as such. With that disclaimer out of the way, I am glad to hear you sold half your position. That books some profit and gives you powder for your next move. Looks like you followed some advice I give myself when I buy an option one day and it is up big the next. I tell myself, if the market proves you correct immediately, take profits. Why wait until expiration date? If I bought some cheap way-out-of the money options, I might sell 60% and let the rest ride.

Those OTM options often expire worthless, as most do, but then people don’t think about how many times Mickey Mantle struck out; they just remember the big hits. If you are really fresh to options trading, it may be too soon to talk about selling instead of buying them. You need more cash in your account to do this, and there are fewer home runs with this strategy, but when the option expires worthless, you are on the winning side of that trade; you are the one pocketing the money for the option premium and moving on to the next trade.

By selling cash covered puts and covered calls here for about 2 and a half years, needless to say, I have accumulated a few shares (although probably fewer than many here). Down or flat markets are just as good for taking money off the table, but, I must admit, rallies are more fun to play. The experts will tell you not to get emotional about your trades, but, hey, every trader has a pulse, right? The trick is to stay in control and be patient. I do have a few end-of-year calls out there (that folks like you are smiling about right now), but also a put position expiring at the end of this month. I will sell another put if we see another sizable dip. GLTUA.

From broker: No time left for pump.
Actually they phrased it as "Non-transferable security removed."

So, what else have you got for me, G Street? Me, I have mostly moved from pennies to crypto and blue chips. By move, I don't mean I closed all my positions, otherwise I would not have got that message from my broker, but almost all my remaining shares from trades over the last 4 years are 90+% in the red. Happy to say many of those are house money (aka free shares), but still, a lot of clutter.

A few exceptions: Up 100% on NIHK and 1200% on NetList; all house money, so patiently waiting for the next pump if one ever comes.

The only one I saw here on iHub that I am still trading actively is Capricor, thanks to monthly options and a share price that fluctuates between 3 and 7. That has been a good one to milk for about 10% every time somebody buys an option from me. Either a put or a call, I sell one on dips and the other on rips.

As an experiment I left FLR on Uphold. (As an experiment, or as an act of laziness.)

Uphold wraps FLR for you (but not all, keeping some available for liquidity). The effect was that I got about 80% of what I got in the last airdrop. Which means, since I had more now than before, that I got something less than 80% of what I would have ... if Uphold had not stopped staking or if I had sent the FLR to Bifrost or something like that. I will check it out; thanks for the tip. Are both the website bifrostwallet.com and www.bifrost.com legitimate?

I was being sarcastic, but the pump continues for some reason. I expected there to be more of a retracement to 38 cents once the Coreum snapshot was taken. It gave up 4 cents quickly, but is now higher than last week's spike. All that remains is hope for good legal news.

Meanwhile Uphold chickened-out and says they are going to end staking. I don't suppose a favorable court result in the next month will make them change their mind.

Speaking of Coreum and Uphold, I am not sure when we will see the new token drop, but they are already making it available to trade. It is double-digit red today (as is Arbitrum).

Spoke too soon: Uphold wimping out on staking. They are not even waiting for a Wells notice. They are bailing on staking. Will take a month or so to un-stake everyone, depending on the blockchain.

Crud, how am I going to get the max amount of FLR on the 2nd 36th?

The notice of this came yesterday… and yet they let me stake the FLR I received today. [shrug]

Cred FLR came a day after Uphold FLR. It was more because I lost more than half of my XRP to Cred. That was nice of them to include that, but, of course, I'd rather have my XRP back, not to mention a whole lot of USD. Ouch!

I have staked all my FLR with Uphold as it comes. They offer staking for 32 of the 237 tokens they carry. Not sure how long that will last. I am keeping an Excel file so I will be ready for tax time next year. They won't send a 1099-MISC for the staking rewards or airdrops unless the total exceeds $600, but you still need to report it. Got screwed by the Songbird drop; should have sold it right away before the end of 2021. Paid more taxes on it than it is now worth. SOLO and ExFi, on the other hand, started low and have stayed low. Peanuts. SOLO up on the Coreum pump, though, but still down 50% from when we got it March 31, 2022.

PS With Uphold, you cannot stake XRP. Understandable. However, you can stake FLR and SGB. Eleven and ten percent yield respectively, I think.

XRP: come for the airdrop pumps and stay... for that judge's ruling, that is gonna be any day now. Just you wait and see!

Yeah, we probably should have all sold into that pump, just like it would have been smart to do for the last two airdrops. But then where would you buy back in? After a 10% correction? Twenty percent? More?

And don't forget... any day now... it's a-comin'!

Be glad you found Nexo when you did. If I am not mistaken it saved you completely from the Cred Earn debacle. And you avoided Celsius, too, I am guessing. As long as get your money back at the end of this relationship, you should feel like you made out like a bandit.

Poor Cred Earn creditors don't even get any attention. YouTubers spend hours on Celsius and FTX, but the Cred bankruptcy can't hold a candle to those disasters. No press. Nobody following the story. The liquidation trust lawyers tried claw-backs last year. I did the math for them back in October and I have not heard from them since. Meanwhile (twiddling my thumbs) I harvested some other old capital losses to lower my AGI, in case this drags out another year before I can claim the loss.

Speaking of Nexo and airdrops, willl you be getting any Coreum? (That is the reason XRP has pumped, which for some reason only I have acknowledged over on the other board. Are they afraid it will dump if we don't stick to the judge's ruling coming any day now narrative?)

Now have more FLR on Uphold than XRP. Admittedly I added some since the drop, because, if I understand correctly, that means my 1/36 was bigger than it would have been if I had just stuck with what I got in January (and staked it). Patiently waiting until next month to see how big my 2 of 36 is then.

Price just popped 17%. Weird thing to happen on a dilution day. Although a 36th is only 2.77%

This is probably due to the Coreum airdrop, coming in two days. Which means smart people should be selling into this pump, with a dump to follow in a few days. I misplayed the last two easy money airdrop pumps, so I will probably shrug through this one, too. Uphold flashed the news yesterday when I entered the app, so I did have a chance to load up before the pump. All I did was put in a crazy low limit order for more Sologenic. SOLO is also up nicely for the same reason. Guess I should have just bought at market; then I could be enjoying the 25% gain today.

You stumped me with your DFLR question, KC. After SGB, SOLO, EXFI, and now, finally FLR, I forgot all about DFLR. Not sure when and if I heard about that one. Is that something different than ExFi? I would probably defer you to You-Tubers like Crypto Eri or Mickey B Fresh for the answer to that.

The question I am thinking of asking Uphold is: Will all the staked FLR be considered wrapped? And therefore count towards getting the most out of subsequent drops (over the next 3 years). Logic dictates that staked tokens would not be available to provide liquidity for the exchange, but not sure logic always prevails.

Follow up: after looking on the internet, if I understand correctly, DFLR is to be distributed at a 1:172 ratio of FLR, but what FLR where or when, I don't know. And the D stands for DAO? Again, I am seeing an icon that looks exactly like the ExFi icon. Are we sure that all the drops we have been expecting have not already happened? I have a very small amount of ExFi, hardly worth mentioning, so, if anything the ratio was 1 of those for every 172 of FLR, if that.

No, I do not even have that much ExFi. Too bad. It is up 15%, one of the few things in my portfolio that is up this morning. Maybe it is up because people think that they need ExFi to participate in the DFLR drop. So... if I had scooped up more cheapily, I would be selling it now.

Have staked most of my FLR with Uphold, rounded to the nearest thousand, and already earning (the earned FLR will show every Thursday). If Uphold is wrapping most, I hope at least everything I am staking is wrapped. Maybe the act of staking it would force Uphold to wrap it if it wasn’t already. After all, the un-wrapped FLR is un-wrapped for liquidity purposes, but staked coins are by nature not liquid. It would take a few days to un-stake them.

If you had your XRP with Uphold on December 12, 2020, then you should already have the first 15%, and you can stake those. Indeed, I even got credit for the XRP I had with Cred at the snapshot. It just took one more day, and I have already staked that. More than what I got on the first day. Ouch, that hurts. That means more than 50% of my XRP was lost to Cred. (Twenty-six months and counting on that debacle; good luck, FTX customers, if that earlier, smaller bankruptcy is any indication of how long it will take to get pennies back on the dollar.)

I guess I should thank Flare for doing the airdrop, because I probably would have lost even more XRP to Cred, but I started holding back XRP on Uphold in order to participate in the airdrop. Cred eventually said that XRP in their programs would also earn us FLR (and it did), but fortunately they were slow to say that and so did not sucker in quite as much money as they would have if they had jumped on board as quickly as Uphold did.

Still, I contend that the best way to take advantage of the airdrops (for FLR and to a lesser degree for SOLO), would have been to play them like a trader. Sell into the pumps, and then reload after the dumps. Those, along with the Coinbase public listing, were pumps that did not require any technical analysis skill. Those three trades would have been no-brainers, just like buying Doge and selling right before Elon’s SNL appearance for a quick 10x. (Finally a listing from Uphold that was not too late to the party.) I would probably have twice as much XRP now, maybe enough to make up for my Cred losses.

Anyone still here is a bona fide HODLer -- after all we have been through the last few years. I, too, have only bought XRP and never sold any. (Lost half thanks to Cred, but never cashed out.) That is why I have some SGB, a little SOLO, and even a tiny bit of Flare's ExFi. All three of those tokens are cheaper than they were yesterday, not to mention down from when they dropped. Indeed, if I took the taxes I paid for the SGB we got in December 2021, and bought more SGB today, I would increase my bag by 650%. (Thanks, Uphold, for that inflated 1099.) But why would I? Is there even a point to Songbird now that Flare is finally here? At least I can easily stake my FLR with the exchange that participated in the snapshot 25 months ago.

My point is that airdrops are for suckers, and seem to be more trouble than they are worth (even in a bull run, which is what we had at the time of the snapshot, but not so much now). While Crypto Eri was raising a glass of pink sparkle every time a new token for XRP holders was announced, an even slightly adept trader would have sold XRP into the rally leading up to the airdrop date of December 12, 2020 and then bought back in much cheaper days later. (And then regretted getting back in so soon, when the SEC dropped the hammer tens days later, but that is another story.)

That hypothetical trader could have his cake and eat it, too; that is, have XRP plus these four dropped tokens (if even interested in having any of them). True, those freebies would not be free to him. Yet, in a sense, they would actually be cheaper than free, since the price difference from pump to dump would more than cover the cost of them all. Or he would just have fatter bags of XRP. (And isn't that the goal?)

You could have bought these coins after dumping. Seems like that strategy is better than holding through an airdrop pump (especially if your exchange or whatever is not participating). Case in point, today FLR got to 5 cents, a 34% pop according to Uphold. Of course, then you would have to be actually interested in holding the coins/tokens for their own sake, instead of just getting them as freebies.

I am reminded of a year ago when, if you held AT&T stock, your stock price dropped when you became the proud owner of a certain number of shares of Warner Bros Discovery. That in turn dumped more than 50% last year. (Note: it was a good buy last week. Maybe it finally bottomed.) T also dropped last year, along with the rest of the market. Looks like it bottomed in October. (Luckily for my kid, I used his education account to play Catch a Falling Knife during that month, and he made out with some quick gains. I'll take 4% in a week over 4% after 25 months any day.)

Hmm... looks like the latest crypto rally, including the hot narrative in AI, is already fading.

Shall we review the airdrops thanks to XRP? Four of them: SGB, SOLO, EXFI, and now FLR. The current value of them combined today is about 3.5% of my total XRP value. Albeit all in a down market (and certainly not the juicy hot sector of the moment). Not sure that was worth the wait of over two years. In retrospect, it would have been simpler and better to just sell your XRP into the airdrop pump(s), and then buy it back cheaper. And wait for these coins to dump before picking them up for peanuts. But would you even think to do that? Or is it more likely folks would FOMO into the current pump instead. The latest fad is not DeFi, is it?

As for Uphold… “Flare airdrop is here!
Congratulations! You’ve received tokens as part of the Flare airdrop. Check below the Airdrop procedure:
. Your Flare tokens are credited to your account
. Uphold will wrap your Flare tokens so you are eligible to future airdrops
. All future airdrops will be a pro rata of the amount Uphold actually receive
. Flare staking is available on the Earn section”

As far as I can tell, my FLR is mostly wrapped. They kept some unwrapped for liquidity purposes. Additional FAQs under Learn more/support suggest that my XRP lost to Cred may yet get the benefit of the airdrop, but based on how many FLR received today, that has not happened yet.

Uphold provided notification of when we could stake. That happened a few hours ago. Flare (formerly to be known as Spark) is one of 31 tokens/coins that can be staked with Uphold.* (This is not an endorsement; just saying.) So I did that with the bulk of my FLR at 7%, which, as APYs go, is about in the middle. The SOL, MATIC, and ADA that I am staking earn less. NEAR and DOT earn more, percentage-wise.

Do I wish I got some Fetch.ai to stake yesterday. Yes; yes, I do.
: - )

*That still leaves nearly 200 cryptos that they list, but if you want to stake them, you have to take them elsewhere. Still nothing for my XRP. Just sitting there, waiting for the next run.

Just heard from Uphold that FLR successfully dropped. Already staking most of it (rounded to the nearest thousand). If this is 15%, then I am not getting credit for XRP lost to CredEarn.

So, of the things I have been looking forward to since the end of 2020, this one came first. The other two being the end of the SEC case and the resolution of the Cred bankruptcy. Good thing I've had other distractions.
...

Hmm... I guess it has been a while since I last posted. This signature line is from 18 months ago. Sorry for that being somewhat untimely. Feel free to ignore it.