Crypto.com is an established Cryptocurrency online exchange and mobile application with many leading and innovative Crypto features (eg. NFTs, Visa debit card, crypto earn, supercharger, etc) that is disrupting the traditional banking and finance industry. There are so many features in this platform and I will be first covering the more important ones in this post.

Disclaimer: All information stated below are only for illustration purposes. It's not a call to buy or sell any financial products. Please perform your own due diligence before investing as always. 

First and foremost, crypto.com consists of a website browser online exchange and a separate mobile application. They are standalone but connected together with your signed-up information backend so that you can transfer your crypto coins back and forth between these two entities without any hassles.  

Crypto.com metal debit VISA card

I will be focusing on the crypto.com metal debit VISA card. This is an absolute game-changer in my perspective. This one really disrupted the fintech industry to a whole new level. Back in the olden days, we have to spend money with the bank's debit or credit cards to earn some sort of rewards eg. flight mileages, cashback or interest rate returns, etc. 

Now with the crypto.com metal VISA card, you can spend money as you normally do but you get rewarded with Cryptocurrency instead! This is mind-blowing. 😁😍

Here is my referral code if you are interested to sign up. Get FREE $25 worth of CRO coins when you sign up for the metal visa card right now. Click here.

There are many different tiers and each tier will have its own benefits. Here is the table showing their differences. 

There are the 

• Midnight Blue (level 1)
• Ruby steel (level 2)
• Royal Indigo and Jade Green (level 3)
• Frosted Rose Gold (level 4) and last but not least 
• Obsidian (level 5). 

First, you need to select a card tier based on the number of CRO coins (the native currency in crypto.com) you are willing to stake into this application. You cannot choose more than one-tier. Stake means your CRO coins will be held and cannot be touched for 180 days which is about 6 months long.

For example, if you choose tier 1 which is Midnight Blue, you do not need to stake any coin. At any point in time you can only have one tier and need to stick to this tier unless you decided to upgrade to the next tier and go for Ruby Steel which requires you to stake 500 SGD worth of CRO. 

To upgrade to the next tier, you need to meet the CRO staking requirements as shown. 

Your first card will be delivered free to your address. Any subsequent cards you order will be required to pay a fee. 

Of course, when you upgrade let's say from Midnight Blue to a Ruby Steel card tier, you can still continue to reuse your blue colour metal card but instead of a 1% CRO cashback, it now becomes 2% CRO cashback. This is a way to save and avoid paying the fee to buy the red colour metal card.

Each tier will have a different level of cashback when you spend using the metal debit Visa card. You have to first choose a card tier then top up some fiat currency (eg. SGD) into your crypto.com mobile application. Your first card will be delivered to you in around a week's time. Once you get your card, you can activate and link that card to your crypto.com account. 

This is how the package will be delivered to you. It is so damn dope! 😍

The cashback is given in CRO coins which is the native coin for crypto.com. As of today 6th Oct 2021, each coin is valued at 0.18 USD. 

There will be other benefits as well depending on the tier that you have chosen. 

The higher your tier, the better are your benefits eg. free redemption of Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime subscription plans, etc 

There are many terms and conditions to read which I did not cover as there are just too many to list them all out. Please be aware of the fees. There are fees such as inactive card penalty etc so please make sure you are going to use this card before you apply for one. 

You will need to understand and choose which one works best for your needs. Click here to find out more. 

What I did

For myself, I first signed up for a crypto.com account back in November 2020 just before the big crypto bull run in December 2020. However, my account was not accepted at that point in time. 

Crypto.com stopped accepting new application sign-ups at that time all the way till May 2021. Out of the blue, my account suddenly got approved and accepted in May 2021. That was a long 6-month wait. In the meantime, I was exploring Binance.com, Gemini, Blockfi, Cakedefi, Kucoin, etc other online exchanges to buy bitcoins. 

I was very interested in getting this metal debit Visa card as in Singapore, this is currently the only crypto card that we can get access to at the moment. I am still not able to get a Gemini or Blockfi card yet to try. 

When I filled up my particulars, did the mandatory KYC, and activated my account, crypto.com had some welcome promotions where I could use my credit/debit card to directly buy CRO coins in the platform for no fees (they waived the 3.5% processing fee). 

I took advantage of this and bought enough CRO coins and applied for the Ruby Red (level 2) card tier where I would get a 2% CRO cashback whenever I spend money using the Visa debit card.

This is the card, 100% metal, one of its kind and it's super heavy. 😂

Just look at this. It's unbelievable. 😍

I have been using this card for about 5 months since I first got it. I will deposit SGD fiat currency into the app and just use the card like a normal bank card.

The main disadvantage is that this card cannot be linked to my phone or to Samsung Pay so I will have to still physically take out this card to tap at the counter/cashier to pay instead of using my phone and paying with NFC. 

I will usually use this card to pay for my public bus/train transportation where I will get 2% cashback each time I travel out. Any place that accepts debit Visa as payment also can use this card to make your purchase. When I buy online at places such as Shopee.com, I will also check out and pay using this debit Visa and collect 2% CRO cashback. It's just fantastic in my opinion. 😆

A snapshot of some of my cashback that was deposited back into my crypto.com app immediately after I made a purchase.

This is how it looks like for each transaction.

If you have an existing credit or debit card that provides you with decent rewards then you might not need this. If you don't have one, might want to consider trying this out and get some legit coins.

Here is my referral code if you are interested to sign up. Get FREE $25 worth of CRO coins when you sign up for the metal visa card right now. Click here.

There are a few YouTubers whom I looked up to and I will like to share some of their videos which also explain their thoughts about this crypto.com metal debit Visa card.

Video 1 Crypto.com Card Review - Everything You Need to Know

Video 2  Crypto.com Visa Card Review - Is It Worth It In 2021?

Referral Links:

I personally use this platform to buy stocks and options.

Tiger Broker (click to sign up)

New sign-ups for an account and make your first deposit of a minimum 2000SGD to earn a free Apple (AAPL) share which will be deposited directly into your Tiger Broker account.

Welcome Gifts:

1. 1 x Free share of Apple (AAPL) (when you deposit min $2k, limited time only)
2. 500 Tiger coins (for redemption of commission free trades / stock vouchers)
3. 60 Commission-Free normal stock trades (expiry within 180 days)

Reach out to me to find out more!

This is the second learning lesson in which I will be sharing my thoughts and please bear in mind this is not financial advice. This is a series of articles where I will focus on topics of what others have done previously and to find possible ways to improve on their positions.

If you have not read the first learning lesson, click here to read it. 😀

Disclaimer: All information stated below are only for illustration purposes. It's not a call to buy or sell any financial products. Please perform your own due diligence before investing as always. 

Here, I will share the first real-life example of the following issue that this person is facing.

seedly.com

Background Analysis:

• From this case, there is about 20K SGD on hand in cash that is available now to invest into anything. 
• Risk-averse and prefer to put into somewhere relatively safe and stable
• Money will be required for home renovation
• Time duration to invest is about 1 year. 
• Besides Singlife, any other ways to invest?

First and foremost if you are using Singlife and treating this as a form of investment, I think you are wasting your time. Singlife has been reducing its interest rate returns for the past year. Now it's at 1.0% p.a. return and I expect them to drop this figure closer towards 0% return in the future. 

singlife.com

I will like to reiterate and emphasize that Singlife is not a pure investment product for goodness sake. It's a hybrid insurance cum 'investment' product that tries to promote to you a low-hanging carrot of the brilliant benefits of buying insurance and savings at the same time without having you put in time and effort to study about investments. Obviously, it's their Marketing department marketing strategy to get more people on board to sign up and be a member of this platform. 

We cannot always use the bank's saving account interest rates as a form of yardstick and be the benchmark of what might be a better alternative investment return. Banks are giving us a ridiculous savings interest of 0.05% p.a. Just look at the table below. Even by depositing 650K into the savings account, they will not even reward you with a higher interest rate and you still get to enjoy only 0.05% p.a. regardless of how much you plan to put in. 

DBS

Now comparing Singlife with the bank's savings account, getting a 1% p.a. return seems to be a good deal. But I beg to differ on this notion. Because there is something called inflation my friend. I covered this topic before. If you have not read it yet, click here to read it. 

MAS

Click here to read more on the rate of inflation in Singapore.

Taking reference from the MAS (Singapore's Central Bank) in August 2021, the MAS Core Inflation rose to 1.1% on a year-on-year basis. 😕 It's +1.1% inflation!!!!! 

Putting your money into a 1.0% p.a. Singlife product is going to reduce your purchasing power by -0.1% on a year-to-year basis. Please think twice if you want to put your eggs into Singlife. 

For me, any interest rate returns of less than 3.0% p.a, I will just ignore and don't care about it. The returns are just too little. 

Going back to the case

Background Analysis:

• From this case, there is about 20K SGD on hand in cash that is available now to invest into anything. 
• Risk-averse and prefer to put into somewhere relatively safe and stable
• Money will be required for home renovation
• Time duration to invest is about 1 year. 
• Besides Singlife, any other ways to invest?

20K SGD is a sum big enough to invest into something and get a good return of investment after 1 year. 

I will skip Fixed Deposits, 1 year T-bills or bonds, savings account, cash management accounts, etc.

Moving Forward:

Robo-Advisor:

In a hypothetical situation, I will take the 20K and invest in either Stashaway or Syfe Robo Advisors. To me, this is quite clear as I have used both products before and their returns are good enough to achieve this objective in 1 year's time. 

Both Stashaway and Syfe are licensed and regulated by the MAS in Singapore as stated on their websites. This fulfils the relatively and somewhere safe and stable risk levels that the author is looking for. 

You can check their websites to find out more.

Click here if you have not read my reviews on Syfe and Stashaway.

There are many different plans on both platforms, choose one which suits your risk level and comfort level. Please take note, choose and focus on 1 plan only as concentration is the key to building wealth and 1 year is not a very long time to play with 2 plans. 

For me, I know how both works so I will be very aggressive and choose the Stashaway 36% highest risk level plan or Syfe Equity 100 plan.

Split 1 year into 12 equal months. Dollar-cost average a fixed amount monthly till expiry in 1 year time. With 20k, each month I will DCA 1666 SGD into the plan and wait for it to grow. Possible to reach greater than 7% return per annum after factoring in the platform's monthly management fees of xxx amount. How cool is that! 😎

For me personally, I did it for about 1 year and got back a 10% return for doing nothing every month other than to deposit money and just click into the dashboard to see my money grow while I sleep and do other things in life.

One strong reason for choosing Robo-Advisors is the unit of measurement (UOM) is in SGD which is just investing using fiat dollars. It provides convenience as I do not need to change to USD or a Crypto stable coin to invest.

Stocks:

Cryptocurrency:

For the more adventurous people, 1 year is also sufficient to invest in Cryptocurrency. But the obvious downside is you first have to convert your fiat money (SGD) into a stable coin (eg. USDC) then you decide what you want to do with those coins. After 1 year, you have to then convert back your crypto coins into fiat money (SGD) and use this sum to pay for the house renovations.

Of course, this brings with you a higher risk and more time is required to do your own research to find out how to maximize your returns using Cryptocurrency. 

Please avoid using Liquidity Mining (LM) as 1 year is a short period of time and you will be subjected to the 'Impermanent Loss' as the time horizon to invest is very short. 

Can focus on doing staking for coins that are able to stake. Those that cannot stake eg. BTC or LTC, you can deposit your coins into a lending platform and they will just reward you with interest rates according to the proportion that you deposit with them. There are a few platforms such as Celsius Network etc.

For stable coins: eg. USDC your returns will be solely based on the platform's interest rates. This one you can straightaway convert your fiat money into the stable coin of your choice in lump sum as stable coins prices are fixed at around 1 USD.

For non-stable coins: eg. BTC/ETH etc your returns will be based on the platform's interest rates as well as the price appreciation of the Cryptocurrency itself. For this, remember to dollar cost average in and out to average down on your purchase price. Never ever one lump sum buy into a particular price as that will increase your overall risk and you will take a slightly longer time to break even if the overall Crypto market is experiencing a bear market or at the accumulation stage. 

There is no right or wrong way to invest. It really depends on how comfortable and knowledgeable the person is and he/she will take the necessary actions that work best for them.

Referral Links:

I personally use this platform to buy stocks and options.

Tiger Broker (click to sign up)

New sign-ups for an account and make your first deposit of a minimum 2000SGD to earn a free Apple (AAPL) share which will be deposited directly into your Tiger Broker account.

Welcome Gifts:

1. 1 x Free share of Apple (AAPL) (when you deposit min $2k, limited time only)
2. 500 Tiger coins (for the redemption of commission-free trades / stock vouchers)
3. 60 Commission-Free normal stock trades (expiry within 180 days)

Reach out to me to find out more!

This past week (26th to 30th July)  made a total profit of 397 USD in Stock Options Trading. 

After 30 days of Options Trading, made a total of 1435 USD in profits. 

If you have yet to read my week 3 options trading article, click here to find out more. 😉

My Options Progress Week 4 out of 4

This is an intermediate level investing article requiring experience in buying and selling Stock Options to digest the information which I will share below.

To reiterate the purpose of doing this 30 days challenge is to inform and educate beginner investors with less options trading experiences on what options trading could potentially be like. 

There are still risks involved and proper research has to be performed for all investments including options. Be mentally prepared to cut losses when required and at the end of the day, you can suffer losses or make profits depending on your strategy and emotions.

Disclaimer: All information stated here are only for illustration and educational purposes. Its not financial advice to buy or sell any financial products. Please perform your own due diligence before investing as always. 

Week 4 Progress 26th - 30th July 2021

• Each market trading day I would spent at most 3 to 4 hours doing research and monitoring the prices to buy and close the options.

• No speculating on ‘meme’ stocks. To trade in a systematic manner.

• To make it clear, the market opening hours at my side is 9.30pm to 4am (GMT +8).

• Below are the options trades that I bought and closed for the past week.

This past week (19th to 23th July)  I made a total loss of 166.78 USD in Stock Options Trading. 😒

The first week (6th to 9th July), I made 58.01 USD profits and in the second week (12th to 16th July) I made 1,146.81 USD. 

If you have yet to read my week 2 options trading article, click here to find out more. 😉

My Options Progress Week 3 out of 4

This is an intermediate level investing article requiring experience in buying and selling Stock Options to digest the information which I will share below.

To reiterate the purpose of doing this 30 days challenge is to inform and educate beginner investors with less options trading experiences on what options trading could potentially be like. 

There are still risks involved and proper research has to be performed for all investments including options. Be mentally prepared to cut losses when required and at the end of the day, you can suffer losses or make profits depending on your strategy and emotions.

Disclaimer: All information stated here are only for illustration and educational purposes. Its not financial advice to buy or sell any financial products. Please perform your own due diligence before investing as always. 

Week 3 Progress 19th - 23th July 2021

• Each market trading day I would spent at most 3 to 4 hours doing research and monitoring the prices to buy and close the options.

• No speculating on ‘meme’ stocks. To trade in a systematic manner.

• To make it clear, the market opening hours at my side is 9.30pm to 4am (GMT +8).

• At the later half of last week, the S&P 500 was experiencing a mini correction and this continued forward into the following Monday (19th) of this week.

• The correction in price was at most a 3.3% decline from 15th to 19th July.  

• However, from the 20th July onwards the market correction was short-lived with the reversal occurring so fast and swift.

• This was how the S&P 500 looked like for the past week as shown below. The stock market had recovered and continue to rise over the next 4 days till Friday. 

• S&P was holding strong at the 50 day EMA support line (yellow line). It went down and swiftly bounced off that support line and continued its rise upwards.

• Below are the options trades that I bought and closed for the past week.

19th July 2021

• From what I observed in the stock market, it was experiencing a correction on the 15th and 16th July. I sat back and waited, decided not to put in any orders. 

• On 17th July, the stock market continued to drop downwards which constituted about -3% in prices, it was just a bloody red mess across all sectors. 

• I looked at that first candle at 9.30pm (GMT +8), in the US is 9.30am when the market opened and decided to place my Buy Put Options on AAPL, V and SPY. 

• I have my reasons so usually I don't do Buy Put Options, but I went ahead with it. 

• Throughout that day, these options were still slightly profiting. 

• However, as the day went on, I noticed that the selling momentum had dropped drastically. It started to plateau and moved sideways instead of going down. 

• At 12am, I saw the market continued to dropped slightly and made the decision to continue to hold on till the next day and didn't exit in any of my Buy Put Options positions. 

20th to 23 July 2021

• On the 20th July during pre-market from 4pm - 8pm (GMT +8), I saw that the prices in the market started to move upwards. That was not a good sign for sure. 😐

• I started to plan my exit strategy for my Buy Put Options, knowing from past experience that I had to act and close the orders swiftly to minimize total loss.

• At 9.30pm (GMT +8) when the market opened, I continued to observe the market movements and true enough, it continued its pre-market movement and it went up.

• This meant that most probably the price correction had already ended and the public was rushing in to buy stocks at discounted prices. 

• I waited for 20 mins to see if there was any change in the candle stick pattern. No changed occurred and the market was very bullish. I decided to execute my exit plan and close my Buy Put Options one by one from 9.50pm onwards to cut losses. (This was also based on past experience and I knew right away that I needed to get out asap). 

• Once I exited the Buy Put Options, I wasted no time and immediately place orders to Buy Call Options for the same companies that I had just exited for the Buy Put Options. 

• Usually for beginners, once they just burnt their fingers in the market, they would take a break from the market to heal from the emotional losses and monetary losses. But I have experienced this situation a couple of times before, so I knew instinctively that I had to dive into the market right away and ride onto the upward market trend which I did. 

AAPL

• My strike price was at 144 USD.

• I bought at the first circle and exited on the second circle.

• Bought two lots of AAPL at first and decided to average down to buy one more lot.

• Decided to exit at the price of around 148 USD per share as its going very close to AAPL's all time high price at 150 USD per share. 

SPY

• My strike price was at 430 USD.

• I bought at the first circle and exited on the second circle.

• Decided to exit at the price of around 437 USD per share as its going very close to SPY's all time high price at 437 USD per share. 

• It not only reached that price but broke through and went even higher thereafter. 

TWTR

• My Sell Put Option worked according to plan and I got +98% of the premiums. 

• Twitter's second quarter earnings came out after the closure of the 22nd July market. There seemed to be some big movements during post market (circle part) but overall I felt that it didn't had much of an impact on its share price just saying. The price was already surging upwards before the earnings were published after 22nd July market closure. 

• Just as what I have expected which is news coverage as such are just noise. Do not let this cause a distraction to your emotionally or to alter your investing plan just for this. Always stick to your investment plan objectively to buy and sell as always.

Will update week 4's which is the final week of stock options trading progress next week! 😁

This past week (12th to 16th July)  I made a total profit of 1,146.81 USD in Stock Options Trading. 😁

Last week (6th to 9th July), I made 58.01 USD profits in Stock Options Trading. If you have yet to read my week 1 options trading article, click here to find out more. 😉

This is an intermediate level investing article requiring experience of buying and selling Stock Options to digest the information which I will share below.

To reiterate the purpose of doing this 30 days challenge is that I want to inform and educate beginner investors with less options trading experiences on what options trading could potentially be like. 

There are still risks involved and proper research has to be performed for all investments including options. Be mentally prepared to cut losses when required and at the end of the day, you can suffer losses or make profits depending on your strategy and emotions.

Disclaimer: All information stated here are only for illustration and educational purposes. Its not financial advice to buy or sell any financial products. Please perform your own due diligence before investing as always. 

My Options Progress Week 2 out of 4

Week 2 Progress 12th - 16th July 2021

• Each market trading day I would spent at most 4 hours doing research and monitoring the prices to buy and close the options.

• 1204.82 USD / 9 days (week 1 & week 2) / 4 hours = A rate of +33.46 USD per hour for the time being.

• I was already anticipating a correction to occur in the stock market and it really happened this week. Thus, I decided to close all my stock options positions on Tuesday, 13 July 2021, don't delay any longer and take profits.

• Wednesday, Thursday and Friday was spent on just monitoring the market in the general. Didn't do any Buy Put Option except for just that TWTR Sell Put Option. 

• This was how the S&P 500 looked like for the past week as shown below. It was moving sideways then the correction occurred at the second half of the week. 

• Below are the options trades that I bought and closed for the past week.

• I took a calculated risk as I saw that the price of SPY got chance will peak just high enough for me to exit and make a profit. 

• When the SPY price peaked on Tuesday 13th July, I decided to close and exit my entire SPY call option to take profit as I don't see how the price of SPY will go any much higher than current before correcting.

MSFT

• My strike price was 275 USD.

• This was the same case as the SPY option where I bought my first call option lot (blue circle area) at a super overvalued premium amount. 

• Then the next thing I knew was that the price dropped. I didn't panic as I knew I had some time on my side as the option will expire the following week so I still could manage the time decay.

• When the price dropped, I decided to buy more lots (orange circle area) as its cheaper now. At the same time, I average down my premium cost for the options.

• When the price rose (brown circle area), I decided to exit and take profit based on my strategy. 

• I didn't bother to wait a day later or longer to see if the price could go even higher (it actually did went up higher alittle) as I didn't want to take the risk. 

BABA

• My strike price was 207.5 USD.
• If I held it longer, I would have gotten a higher profit.
• Though this one I bought and sold on the same day, it was to mitigate the risk that the price will erratically drop further. 

• My strike price was 65 USD.

• This one I bought about 45 mins too early in that day. Should have waited longer to see the trend and where it was heading.

• Decided to exit as the S&P and QQQ index prices were declining rapidly. These created huge fear and selling pressure for most stocks including this one. 

• Not a wise move to do a Sell Put option in the midst of a market correction.