Cryptocurrency 加密货币 (or Bitcoin 比特币 / Ethereum 以太坊 as most people know these terms outside of the crypto space) is an unregulated decentralized asset that runs on blockchains and only a handful of countries, cities, and companies have fully accepted and embraced its existence today with open arms.

That's why the tagline "FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE" by crypto.com resonates with me. 

This is the very sole reason why I chose to be involved in the crypto space at this early stage of this novel piece of technology and I am a current user of crypto.com. 

Every novel technology, idea, way of doing things differently from current processes do carry some form of uncertainty and risk towards the unknowns for the first few groups of brave people who have decided to take a leap of faith and try it out. Thus, I have decided to bring this up and highlight the current situation with respect to cryptocurrency as a whole with this concept.  

I believe that we have just witnessed the crossing of the chasm (diagram below) from the early adopter phase to the early majority phase where more everyday people (masses) that do not invest have seen or heard somewhat of the name crypto.com. 

Crypto.com has recently launched huge marketing campaigns worldwide such as being a partner of UFC for kits sponsorship and buying the rights to rename the iconic staple center as the crypto.com arena just to name a few in the current pipeline. 

Crypto is not a fantasy but a reality in our daily lives now. 😁

Click on the link (referral code: xiaogege) and perform the following steps to get a Free 25 USD sign-up bonus when you sign up for a crypto.com metal visa card right now.

(*if you have difficulty opening up this link in your mobile phone, you need to first open it using your phone's web browser)

What is Crypto.com?

I will be sharing key foundational information that is related to your interest if you are vested to be part of this project. 

It is first founded in the year 2016 and it runs on the crypto.org blockchain. Without going in-depth, the crypto.org chain hopes to solve the 4 issues in the blockchain space. 

They are the first cryptocurrency company to achieve the ISO/IEC 27701:2019 Certification, ISO27001:2013, Cryptocurrency Security Standard (CCSS) Level 3, etc. 

I am familiar with ISO certification as ISO:9001 (Quality Management System) and ISO:14001 (Environment Management System) are those that I have studied during my school days and know what they meant.  

ISO 27701 is the 'Privacy Information Management System'. This certification validated that the handling of confidential information is well defined and managed according to the framework and rules set forth by ISO 27701 standards. 

Most recently just last month. they have also just completed the Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Audit which was conducted by Deloitte. Having such standards will put us, investors in ease of mind knowing that processes are in place to govern our privacy and data. You can read more about it here. 

What is Crypto.com's roadmap?

What makes a brand/company so powerful is the formulation of the vision and what they plan to do in the upcoming years. Having a roadmap to inform users is key to mass market adoption from a technical perspective. 

In March 2021, crypto.com has released its Intergalactic Roadmap which comprises 5 phases of developments concerning the crypto.org blockchain.

Phase 1 has been completed as it is up and running at the moment while phase 2 had just recently been passed. I will say that they are currently in phase 2 of their roadmap and more are to come soon. 

• Phase 1: Canis Major: NFTs (Passed = June 2021)
• Phase 2: Draco II: Coin Issuance and Ethereum Virtual Machine (Passed = Dec 2021)
• Phase 3: Tucana III: Decentralised exchange with Automated Market Making 
• Phase 4: Hyrus I: Smart Contracts
• Phase 5: Carina III: Decentralised Finance and Oracle

Click here to see the Crypto.org Chain Intergalactic Roadmap

• Crypto.com debit visa card, supercharger, crypto earn, crypto pay, etc.
• A place to do your payments (I will be sharing more in subsequent articles 😃)

• Store your crypto in a safe vault-like location, earn, DApps, etc.

Crypto.com Defi wallet is a non-custodian account and you will have full access and control of this account as long as you keep the 12-word recovery phrases with you safely at all times. These are also called your private keys.  

Most Defi applications are built on the Etherum blockchain (ERC20) which is also true for Crypto.com. You need to pay the xxx amount of gas fees to do a particular action on your wallet such as buy, sell or transfer crypto. 

But with the recent breakthrough of Cronos (CRC20), the scalable EVM-compatible chain developed by the Crypto.org team has significantly lowered the transfer fee and processing time to buy various crypto in the Defi wallet. 

Now it is only available for a few selected coins and you can avoid paying crazy gas fees for doing the same action as shown. How cool is that! 😂

For example, I will like to buy some USDC coins. If I chose to buy using the Ethereum network (ERC20), I will need to pay a gas fee of 25 USDC and that is an absurd amount. However, with Cronos (CRC20), I can now buy with just 0.6 USDC gas fees.  

 

• Do advance trading, lending and there are other features here as well.

You might be confused on why is there a Crypto.com App and Crypto.com Exchange at the same time. Both have different purposes and both the app and exchange are interlinked with the same account that you first signed up with. The transfer of coins to and fro from these two has zero network fees.

There are currently 3 different kinds of mobile applications to download to use the various services as shown. 

• Completed under phase 1 Canis Major roadmap.
• Marketplace to buy and sell digital art in various forms. There are huge partnerships with various entities such as UFC, Gareth Bale, Seria A, etc.

Both the Defi wallet and NFT account will need to first connect and link up with your main crypto.com account app to have access first before you can start to use the features. Don't worry as the steps are pretty straightforward and you will know how to handle them. 

For the signup process, you are first required to do the necessary "know your customer" (KYC) personal verification steps.

Once you have filled in the necessary details, wait for the verification team to certify your details. Once they have done so, you will get an email notification of your sign-up application and you will be ready to start. 😃

Is Crypto.com right for me?

It is not easy to digest so much information in such as short period of time 😅 and this article that I have just shared with you is really just the tip of the iceberg of what Crypto.com as a company is doing in the crypto space. 

I will be providing more information on the different features that they offer in subsequent articles and stay tuned as I will go deeper into those topics. 

I came across this 'Ask me anything' (AMA) session between crypto.com CEO and CMO, and the contents discussed in this video I feel will answer most of your basic questions regarding the features and future plans moving forward.  Click here to watch the AMA if you can. 

"FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE"

If you believe in the project and the team behind it, click on the link (referral code: xiaogege) and perform the following steps to get the Free 25 USD sign-up bonus when you sign up for a crypto.com metal visa card right now.

http://crypto.com/app/xiaogege

• Click on the link and download the app via the Apple App store or Google Play store

(*if you have difficulty opening up this link in your mobile phone, you need to first open it using your phone's web browser)

• Submit and confirm your email
• Do the KYC verification

I will be posting more crypto.com content so stay tuned! 😀

In this post, join me as I unravel and share some light on a Singapore stock called Parkway Life REITs (C2PU). Personally, I used to hold this stock for about 1.5 years since Covid started. I bought it quite cheap during the market collapse period. 

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

Why is this my favourite stock?

The answer is simple. I want to invest in a REITs type of stock in Singapore to generate consistent returns via dividends. When the price of REITs goes up or down, I can sleep well at night as I am not bothered by the constant fluctuation of stock prices. All I need to do is to make sure that I receive its dividend during the payout period and I will be happy. 😀

Dividends are not taxed in Singapore so that is another good thing to know. I did cover the pros and cons of dividend stocks in one of my previous articles. Can click here to view it if you have not done so. 

What do Parkway Life REITs do?

Parkway Life is one of the largest listed healthcare REITs in the Asia region. They have successfully expanded and currently managed as of 30 Sept 2021, 55 different hospitals and healthcare medical centers in Singapore and Malaysia. They also have over 50 assets in Japan.

The 3 most popular hospitals in Singapore are Mount Elizabeth, Gleneagles, and Parkway East. All of which I have never been to before. 😄

The remaining leases for the hospitals are still long at 54 years at the very minimum with the carrying value increasing from the previous year.

Basic Stock Information

Listed on the Singapore stock exchange as a ticker symbol C2PU. 

Looking at the data from Yahoo Finance, its price on 8th Dec 2021 is around 5.02 SGD per share. Not to forget that SG stocks need to buy in lots of 100 shares each. 1 lot is 100 shares and that is a total of 502 SGD excluding brokerage processing fees etc. 

Beta value 0.32: the price is more resistant to price fluctuations and less volatile in the short term. This has its pro and cons. If you just focus on getting your returns via dividends, then a stable price is beneficial but there will be no capital appreciation from the price. 

Market Cap of 3.037B: is in the top 50 list of listed companies in Singapore.  

Price for the past 52 weeks: 3.77 to 5.09 SGD. Price movement is small but it is on the uptrend now.

Other factors:

Profit Margin: 279%

Operating Margin: 79%

Net Income: Maintain at current levels with not much difference across the past 4 quarters.

The company is still in a stable and healthy position at the moment. 

The unit price hit a record high which was boosted by the inclusion of the REIT in the FTSE EPRA NAREIT Global Developed Index.

The only outstanding part that I saw was the rise in the 'Current portion of Long Term dept/capital leases'. The company did more loans/ borrowing for business-related purposes. This is something that the company will need to monitor and keep in check to ensure that they can pay it off in the 12 monthly periods.

There was a drop in Long Term debt to 551.9 in the last quarter which is good news.

This will help to calm and maintain the level of confidence for investors. 

This will be music to the ears of investors. Distribution per unit (DPU) has increased.

DPU = The number of dividends a REIT investor receives for every unit he has in the REIT

Technical Analysis

I like this company as they not only give dividends, the price also appreciates for the past 1 year as shown. It has a healthy up and down price fluctuation cycle. But always remember to DCA and never enter at the all-time high. 

Comparision 

C2PU- price for the past 52 weeks: 3.77 to 5.09 SGD. That is a 35% rise in price. 

D05- DBS bank's price for the past 52 weeks: 24.71 - 32.70 SGD. That is only a 32.3% rise in price.

G3B - STI index's price for the past 52 weeks: 2.87 - 3.34 SGD. That is only a 16.3% rise in price.

The price appreciation for ParkwayLife is really outstanding beating the likes of DBS and the exchange index. 

Healthcare is an essential sector. With an aging population and the rise in new diseases not to forget about Covid, this will remain a strong pillar of support for our society. 

Even during COVID in March 2020, ParkwayLife was able to rebound back to its pre-COVID stock price by August 2020 which took about 5 months. Up till today, it continues to be trading at a higher high with the 20 and 50 EMA always above the 200 EMA line.

From the above, it is obvious that ParkwayLife has strong fundamentals in their business and the price is an indicator of it. In my opinion, there are a lot of potentials if you are hunting for dividend and REITs related stock for your portfolio. As always, please do your own research and build your own conviction before you buy. This is just a dossier report.  😃

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!