#173: Smart Crypto Strategies
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Welcome to another episode of The Richer Geek Podcast! Today, we are thrilled to have Peter Curk, CEO of ICONOMI, a leading digital asset portfolio management platform. Peter shares his journey from marketing to leading ICONOMI. Tune in as we explore navigating the volatile world of cryptocurrencies, assessing your digital investments' health, and adopting strategies for long-term growth without getting lost in the hype.
In this episode, we’re discussing…
Introduction to ICONOMI: ICONOMI is a secure, FCA-registered digital asset portfolio management platform.
Crypto Investment Strategies:
Importance of choosing regulated and compliant platforms.
The need for liquidity in the crypto market to avoid risks.
Emphasizing long-term investment and avoiding emotional trading decisions.
Bitcoin vs. Altcoins: Understanding the unique position of Bitcoin as a store of value versus the technological advancements of other cryptocurrencies.
Practical Investment Advice:
Set clear investment goals and strategies before investing.
Implement automated profit-taking and stop-loss rules to manage volatility.
Diversify investments within the crypto market, considering instruments like ETFs and liquid staking.
Educational Resources: ICONOMI offers a rich learning section for beginners and professional traders alike.
Resources from Peter
Resources from Mike and Nichole
+ Read the transcript
Mike Stohler
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Richer Geek Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by REI Words, your go-to SEO agency for increasing traffic to your website, check it out at reiwords.com. Today we have Peter Curk, he's the CEO of ICONOMI, a trailblazing digital asset portfolio management platform. Now, you know, we've had people talking about cryptos, and they talking about digital assets, but more of a portfolio management platform. So we're going to get into a little bit about that. Get into crypto whether or not it is the real thing? Is it going to take over the world? I think it already has. But we'll talk to the expert. ICONOMI is an FCA registered entity. And it ensures a secure diversified and carefully managed investment experience. How are you doing, Peter?
Peter Curk
Good. Thanks. It was a very nice day. So thank you for having me at the show.
Mike Stohler
Good. Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about your background for listeners and how you became the CEO of this platform.
Peter Curk
Yeah, okay, let's share some small details. So my background is actually business I would say marketing. But inside this, I was always very much interested in technology. So always working in CRM, data analytics, inside the marketing field also, then later on data and advertising and stuff like this. And then I guess it was 10-12 years ago, I first got to know what Bitcoin is, started researching it, and so on. And by some coincidence, some friends of mine created ICONOMI, these are the two founders. And yeah, like, almost 10 years later, they came by and said, "Look, we have discovered here we need somebody who has management and business expertise to bring us to a new level." And they brought me in to take over the company and actually expand it. So currently, or since we are around since 2016, as a company. Let's go back to me, sorry, I was too busy. Oh, cool. I'm a father of a family father, otherwise, Moto Guzzi driver, I enjoy my time driving the bike. And yeah, as you said, when chatting before the podcast, it brings you a lot of challenges and a lot of stuff to do each day. So not a lot of time for my hobbies.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, hobbies, you have to grow the business, you have to pay the bills, then you have time for the hobby, you know, it should be the other way around, I shouldn't be able to play guitar all the time, play golf all the time, and then do the business. But that doesn't work out that much. This whole crypto thing SPF guy, tell us about after seeing some of these things? And that's a one off, you know, criminals would be criminals. And that happens in every industry. How can we overcome our crypto fear?
And have some strategies? For someone like me, it's like, "Oh, man, I don't know if I want to dive into this right now."
Peter Curk
Yeah, okay.
Let me tackle it. I think there is a certain segment in the crypto industry, I like to call it fortunately, I see that it's pro regulation, it always was pro regulation, it always thought that it would be good to be regulated. And we are part of that section of the market, like we call itself. And I think the best thing to start with is if somebody wants to approach Twitter is to really select a company that's shown not this year, but has a track record of being compliant, and so on. Yeah, you know, you might not get all the richest fancy tokens, out of the 20,000 tokens that there are out there. But on the other side, most of those tokens allow me to call them anyhow, sheet coins, and you will have to be very likely to make money with them. Because there are a lot of tricks and a lot of hidden dangers in the crypto market for somebody who is not really familiar with it. Or one of them, for example, being very low liquidity or you know, you can have a ton of tokens that can on exchange look like they're worth something but then when you try to sell them, there's nobody actually bedside buying them. So they're worth nothing. So for example, what we do as ICONOMI here is we are kind of a marketplace. And one of the key things that we do is take care that we only list the tokens that are liquid. Yeah, we've been compliant with all anti money laundering regulations since 2021. We are around 18 years old which is almost like one of the old guys in the industry. I will say we've been around for example, more than more time than binance. So start with pro-rebel nation guys, and then you will have a good chance not to be on the right platform.
Mike Stohler
For those that are familiar with crypto as I am, I'm familiar with it, but it's just, you know, you go online and say, "Man, I don't even know where to start." I go somewhere like the economy or I go to certain major websites. How does it work that there has to be some available, then I can purchase it? And then you just kind of wait because I don't really get anything in return. It's just kind of there.
Peter Curk
Yeah. I would say, no, there are different ways people approach it. Products of crypto is that everybody wants safety. And on the other side, I mean, that comes into space. Oh, I don't want to get screwed up. But on the other side, when you talk with the users, they expect honestly, oxymoron because if you expect 1,000x 100x And you on the other side that Yeah, but it has to be saved. Look, okay, say from a technology point of view, yeah. Okay. And that you will not be fraud but it's a high risk as an asset class at the moment. It's still as there are segments in it. Yeah. So there's Bitcoin the king and then there are the other assets, somebody should really set his goals. First of all, make a clear rational decision. Okay. Shall I invest in crypto, yes or no? And he can say yes, then, okay, switch that Bitcoin. Okay. Do I do anything else in Bitcoin? If yes, then Ethereum. Okay, do I go the max, and then you go and start maybe going to the other coins. Somebody can risk, you know, 3% of his portfolio in it. But as long as this percentage is very low, and then to expect maybe a lot of allotment 10x 100 x? It's okay. That's okay. But to go in like full? And then I would really not not advise that, too. It's still too early, too risky. And if you're not an expert, then better not do it, just maybe get some good advice, or just go slow.
Mike Stohler
I don't know anything about it. So why would I ever think that I can make the decisions on my own? You know, I'm just random. Okay, which one has the coolest looking token? You know, yeah, no one has a puppy dog on it, or one that has, you know, yeah, a cat or a horse, whatever.
Peter Curk
From the research and data we have on the platform. And what we see is that it's simply the same behaviors as from stocks or FX trading, apply for crypto as well. I actually think that the FX trading trend or industry that is now more in a mature phase kind of started this whole idea that a retail person is able to be a trader. And so everybody nowadays thinks, oh, I can be a trader. Is it FX that ban all stocks, whatever, everybody's trading on the returns? And everybody I'm, of course, the judge, really. But there are people who really think that good traders, yeah, but I can tell you and share with you that from the data on our platform, yeah, everybody gets a couple of trades, good. Everybody gets some good trades. But there are very few people who are consistently good at it. And this is simply because we are just human, we have psychological biases. Even if you know about your own biases, it's very hard, if not impossible to get rid of them and to overcome them. So it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. That will happen. So from the data on our better we see that investors that actually are in profit and actually have made money and, you know, I we call them winners in the segmentations that we use. They're the ones who invest for a longer time in crypto, first of all, because they're the cycles, that the cycle is the hype goes up and then the hype goes down. It's just simple human nature, the same as any other asset class, which is why one of the key features I really think and that's something an investor in crypto should set even more maybe for crypto because this picks up and down can be so violent or before depositing any money on the platform, you know, somebody should say okay, what's going to be my take profit rules? So how much profit Am I gonna take out if it goes up? 10-20%. So and to do this decision before you deposit that in before you invest it, so at a time when you do your strategy, say okay, this is my portfolio in various asset classes, then it's somebody can say, Let's to allocate our single digit to crypto, okay, and then, like the student how long longer am I gonna be there? Okay, and then the next one should be okay, how was My taking profit strategy and then apply it and remember one of the features on our platform that really pushed the users is this taking profits rules like to automate you're taking profits will, if it goes up, take something out, because for sure, it's going to go down. And for sure, almost sure, you're gonna get greedy. And then keep, you know, dreaming that it's going to go up up up forever. And then, oh, it's just, you know, a 3% correction, oh, it's just a 7% correction, then. And then it starts going down very fast. And then you have to lay any you have not made money out of your money, but the whole goal is not to make money. It's not that it's unrealized profits and what could have been?
Mike Stohler
Yeah, that's so true. I know so many people that were millionaire tech investors until the 90s, the late 90s, when we had the tech bomb, and they basically rode to the ground that were at some point, at some point worth millions, and then boom, the tech stocks completely bombed, and they lost everything. So that's really, really good advice. Talk about other ways that you can not just Bitcoin, ETFs, what are some of the other things that are out there that you can have in your crypto portfolio? So I think, you know, NFT's and some of the other types of where you can actually diversify beyond Bitcoin?
Peter Curk
Yeah, I mean, we have a platform mainly focused on spot markets. But there are different instruments out there that at least investors, depending really where they are, they can purchase. So of course, currently, there's a hype about the Bitcoin, ETF in the US, but then you have a lot of instruments, which are, for example, a sophisticated investor can, investors can invest in actively managed certificates linked to strategies, which are available, for example, or different, at least from what I know, European exchanges, then you have the exchange rate notes, again, and they can be linked to a single spot crypto asset or a couple of them or a portfolio of them. So different instruments that also you can purchase through Bloomberg. On the other side, more less sophisticated investors can access platforms like ours, which kind of combine crypto portfolios, that's what we do. Instead of buying a single coin, you just copy an investor, an experienced trader, and you get updates from him. And this trader actually has a portfolio of crypto assets, like, you know, it can be an index portfolio, or it can be an actively traded portfolio of winning, buying and selling by following these experienced traders, or users portfolio just behaves kind of the same. So you basically have an active strategy. For example, one of the biggest strategies we have on the platform is a blockchain index. It's been running for eight years, and it's simply indexing the crypto market. That's it, it rebalances every 30 days. And that's it, it's a very simple product, relatively passive. And so yeah, maybe coming back to the question before, because you asked about what are some of the things to be really careful about for going to the NFT is because I consider the NFT is more of a kind of an antique collecting similarities with that you need to know. So one of the things which in the crypto markets are the most important is liquidity. Because people would be surprised how illiquid non liquid, the markets were when there was a bear market. Yeah, we list for example, 150 tokens, but during the last bear market, some of those tokens were having so little liquidity that, you know, one of the biggest users on our platform could, basically move the price on uncertain exchange. Simply because, you know, during this really low low low price season sold during the worst of the bear bear markets, simply nobody, there's really low liquidity for all some of the altcoins and this starts at around, you know, 100 coins. So you can have 20,000 coins out there. Nowadays, there's also liquid staking. There are different ways of having some yearly yield on these assets while holding them. On the other side, you mentioned their NFT's which I consider more of a collector's kind of investment, not that much. And then there's a whole universe of this, you know, it's a rabbit hole of you know, you would need a lot of time to really know everything, which is why crypto I guess it's difficult, but I guess it's pretty much the same as in your in what you do in the hotels, there are specifics about it kind of hotel, the location, number of rooms dive, do they have a conference room? Yes, no. So you need to spend time with an asset class to be able to say, Oh, I'm competent to make my own decisions outside Bitcoin, if I may come back to it, because there is really a huge difference between Bitcoin and the rest of the pack. Let me take it to a maybe a philosophical point of view, let's assume that bit continues ago was more of a kind of a subculture, you know, there was a certain, let's call them geeks, doesn't matter who they were, but just for the purpose of illustrating so it was something which very, very niche and narrow subculture. And throughout the years, it kind of grew, and went through these cycles. But with what happened in January, when the PDFs came out, it was basically, we can take a look at it, like, is it maybe a new social contract that was established with this? Because what Now basically, it says, No, it's okay, it's legal to invest in it in the US. And we are not the only country. And this moment could be seen from far away from can be seen, maybe we have a new social contract. It's not anymore something that some geeks or a subculture believes in, and in a sense, it's from the beginning, it was almost a cry, like, can you please stop printing money? You know, so it's like, because Bitcoin technologically is not really very advanced. There are other blockchains, which are more advanced technologically have more features have a lot of advantages, from a technology point of view, but it is international, it's not controlled by anyone, there's going to be a limited number of bitcoins total, is kind of just a way to store value, basically, from this point of view, it's actually better. And this is what I think might be the moment in January, so the ETFs Yeah. Okay, is it from now on, we have a new social contract, which says, Okinawa, we're going to keep track of who owns what, and it's going to be linked to a digital commodity, which is limited. It's not, you cannot print it. Maybe that's where we are.
Mike Stohler
I haven't heard about it that way. And that's, I would agree. I mean, that's actually pretty eye opening. And I like the fact that, you know, I don't buy stocks on my own, I go through someone that knows what they're doing in order to do it. Just like you shouldn't buy a hotel and you're honest, like, why would you, you know, get someone who has experienced that. That's why I like your company, because you have people that know what they're doing. And I can just go in and say, Okay, I, you do it for me. Here's this index, here's this fund. You know, how do I put it kind of like, it's more relief for someone like me?
Peter Curk
Yeah. It is. It is. Our headline is, I think something. I can't let me check what we have on the website, because I've not currently have like, easy way to invest. But one of the headlines we are thinking of currently is stress, investing in crypto stress free. Yes, which is, but I have to come back to what you said. It's a fund, let me just point out that the economy doesn't offer funds. But we because if an investor invests into our economy, an investor actually buys the underlying spot crypto assets, and always remains the sole owner of those assets. It's just that the trading of those assets behaves in a way that it it, you can make a choice to follow somebody, and to kind of make the same trades that he makes. And the whole purpose of the platform is really to save you time. Yeah, of course, the only time you really should make and should invest is like selecting the right type of strategy. It's not only the guy who does it is also the type of strategy according to your investment goals. So should it be more passive, you know, that rebalances trades a bit every now and then? Or do you want to put a percentage maybe or some something more into a more aggressive kind of trading and somebody who is really trying to generate that extra about the market. So any investor should Anyhow, this is part of the decisions to do before any money gets deposited anywhere? And yeah, and then you can really save a lot of time. Maybe not the stress, because it's really going up.
Mike Stohler
That's everything. That's real estate. That's the way I see it as if you were to put it in, invest in anything. Don't look every day To see what it's worth, yeah, yeah, I hate that part in Yahoo Finance, or any of these other things I don't want to know.
Peter Curk
I couldn't agree more. I mean, this is also related to the fear of losing, you know, because if you've made these decisions, like how much profits I'm gonna take out, How long am I going to hold this investment and so on. If you've done the research before the investment, then it's very easy actually to set your own take profit rules. And it's also very easy to then know where to set the stop loss. So we have a lot of smart rules, we'll call them on the platform. So an investor can set his own, you know, automations, in terms of profit taking, or failing or stop loss. Yeah. And one of the key things, again, which I see people do is that they set themselves too narrow of a stop loss, which basically, because crypto is very volatile, and somebody some of the beginners come into the space, they expect 100x, or 10x, but they are prepared to lose 20% of it. And which is again, very non realistic. Because if it's coming, there should be a bit more balanced expectations. And so instead of, you know, holding through the down periods, they simply sell, they realize the loss, and then they stay out of the market. So but coming back, take profits, I actually believe, actually more important than the stop losses.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, it's very good, because people won't do anything, or they'll just take it all out. They'll panic. And that's that emotional aspect of trading. Not everybody, it's ICONOMI, I-C-O-N-O-M-I and it's iconomi.com. Go on the platform. What else would you like to tell our listeners, before we leave? About the website, the easy way to to get involved in some training or some documents on there to let them know, what else can they find?
Peter Curk
I think we have quite a rich learning section. And I would really advise everybody to start there. And then, you know, select and roam around the platform. As I said, crypto is very, very early in a sense. I'm surprised when I'm, you know, traveling around how little people actually know about the underlying technology, about the whole market and so on. So if I think of this, it's really, very, very early in the development, and especially the tokenization trend that's coming from the other asset classes. Yeah, our platform is basically meant for beginners, and as well as more professional traders on the other side. But in a sense, it's an investment platform, not a trading one.
Mike Stohler
Yeah, that's great. And I was on your website, and I love this. Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. It's true.
Peter Curk
Quite straightforward with the risk disclosure, since there are no hidden fees. No, nothing is just...
Mike Stohler
Yeah. And I like that. Then it says click here just take two minutes or more. It makes it very, very easy. And everybody, it's economy.com easy way to invest and manage your crypto. Finally, you know, we've had so many people come on and talk to us about crypto, we should do crypto, why crypto is important is going to take over the world. But this is the first one where we've had an actual easy way to invest in and manage your crypto safely. Sir, I appreciate you coming on The Richer Geek Podcast. And I know it's late over in Europe. I thank you so much. We finally got a chance to talk and I hope you have a wonderful night.
Peter Curk
Thanks, it was a pleasure.
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ABOUT PETER CURK
Peter Curk is the CEO of ICONOMI, a leading digital assets portfolio management platform, offering secure and diversified cryptocurrency solutions. With over a decade of experience in marketing and strategy, Peter drives ICONOMI's vision and mission. His leadership has been key in scaling businesses, launching products, and building engaged customer communities. Peter is dedicated to lifelong learning, holding certifications in compliance and innovation.