According to Dr. Jürg Richards, an experienced financier, trader and CEO of a Norwegian-Swiss cloud mining company MiningFriendly, the crypto sphere is not the place to make predictions. It isn’t a place for the stubbornly minded either. The market is always king, and the winner is the one who takes the correct position and recognizes when it’s time to move on.
Having bought his first bitcoins in 2015, Jürg Richards, appreciated the enormous freedom, lack of restrictions and the trading potential of crypto. In the beginning, he viewed it as “another asset class” and added it to his watch list amongst all his other trading activities (commodities, stocks, bonds, etc.). He was especially captivated by the high volatility from a trading standpoint. As Jürg himself admits: “What moves, can produce profits (and losses of course), but if you are a trader by profession, you need stuff to move to make money. Worst is if nothing moves and then suddenly has a burst in one direction. Either you miss it, or you are caught on the wrong foot. Only very rarely you are positioned in the direction of the move. So, in this respect, something that constantly moves either up or down is easier to trade”. Jürg Richards’ crypto-trading activities soon became complementary to trading within traditional markets.
Traditional vs. Crypto-Trading
By analogy, the gravity exists in crypto as it does in conventional markets, that’s why lots of similarities and the same rules apply. From an experienced trader’s viewpoint, nothing needs to be re-invented in crypto-trading that doesn’t already exist in the traditional one. When it comes to MiningFriendly’s approach, the huge advantage it presents is the possibility not only to trade crypto but also “produce” it through mining. This adds an extra layer of safety to the company’s operation and its customers.
“You don’t always have to be “right” in the market to make money. As long as your output of coins and their exchange to fiat is higher than your production costs, you are profitable. That’s a huge advantage over the traditional markets, where you never get a free lunch. In crypto, you get at least a free breakfast so to speak, by having the ability to produce some coins yourself if and when you do your homework correctly.” – says Jürg.
MiningFriendly’s Trademark
Richards didn’t get into crypto-mining until 2017, a year before MiningFriendly was launched. Thanks to his wife, Katie Richards, who is the co-head of digital assets and head of process management at Falcon Private Bank in Switzerland, Jürg became interested in the Blockchain in general and, in particular, crypto mining.
Key Profitability Factor
The main factors that determine the profitability of cloud mining today are not a particular technology or coin or mining method as Jürg states. If you do PoW mining in the cloud, you need to make sure your operator has the newest and most efficient machines to write them off within a few months and cover operational costs to deliver the promised profits. When you do PoS or setup Masternodes, you obviously hold those coins and need to make sure that those coins do not deteriorate in value quicker than what you produce, and that they are liquid enough to be sold back for bitcoin and eventually to fiat. The most important thing is not getting stuck with a particular mining method but being able to switch to the most profitable one at any one time.
Evaluation System
According to Jürg, “The whole thing about cloud mining seems very easy from a distance but the devil lies in the detail. Being always positioned correctly in the mining field is not as easy as it looks. It has lots of similarities to trading”.
That’s why MiningFriendly has its own evaluation system. The ‘right’ coins are the ones that produce profits when they are mined with the PoW method. For PoS and masternodes (MN) mining, the coins need to be stable and deliver a healthy ROI, high market capitalization, sufficient daily trading volume and favourable price movement.
What makes MiningFriendly stand out as opposed to the rest of the players in this space is the flexibility and versatility of “production” methods used. The 3 methods include PoW, PoS, and MN. They are ‘weighed’ against the overall market situation while paying particular attention to the performance of the mined coins.
The company’s evaluation system breaks down and separates the profitable crypto from the ones that are not. Thus, if any underperform, they are eliminated from the production portfolio analogous to a stop-loss order in trading. Jürg runs his mining operation as a trading operation in a very unique way which makes it quite profitable.
Risks
For those who mine with old machines and high energy costs, the risks are quite high. Jürg himself explains it saying, “The Blockchain is a mega-trend and, as such, is changing the world. For the better, of course. And as long as you have a blockchain and record information on the public ledger, you need miners. They provide an essential service. Without them the Blockchain cannot exist”.
Expert Advice
Jürg Richards assures that as a trader, you should be correctly positioned in the market, wherever the market is going. Stubbornly fighting against a trend is pointless. He prefers to move with the flow instead of stressing and admits that there is no right or wrong. “Remember, the market is always right. And the cemetery is full of financial analysts and journalists that try to predict the future and are almost always wrong…,” – he adds.
“Take it a trade at a time, don’t “marry” yourself to any position and don’t try to predict. And get out if the market goes against you. The market is always right! So, don’t fight it. That’s true for any market, not just crypto.”
