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How to Invest in Cryptocurrency Without Buying Any
But it’s also hard to ignore some cryptocurrencies’ astounding performance: The price of one Bitcoin jumped from just under $5,000 (roughly Rs. 3.74 lakhs) in March 2020 to over $60,000 (roughly Rs. 44.91 lakhs) as of this April. Bitcoin price in India stood at Rs. 40.62 lakhs as of October 6 (6:22pm IST).
The excitement surrounding digital currency may leave some investors feeling like the lonely kid at the pool party, wanting to join their friends having fun in the deep end, but too nervous to jump in.
For those investors who are cautiously curious, here are ways to gain exposure to cryptocurrency without buying it, and if you do decide to purchase, how to lower your risk.
Invest in companies with cryptocurrency holdings
Think of this strategy as cryptocurrency investing once removed. Some publicly traded companies have cryptocurrency holdings. And because they are betting on its success, you can too, with those companies acting as a buffer.
“When you’re thinking about investing in a company because they have exposure to crypto, it really runs the gamut from how direct or indirect you are in terms of that exposure,” says Douglas Boneparth, a certified financial planner and president of Bone Fide Wealth in New York City. “It just depends on how much of their balance sheet is in crypto.”
Checking a company’s balance sheet can be revealing: As of June 30, 2021, Tesla held $1.31 billion (roughly Rs. 9,806 crores) in digital assets. And while the tech giant has received lots of media attention for its investment, that $1.31 billion currently equates to only about 2.4 percent of Tesla’s total assets. But if those assets balloon in value, as cryptocurrency is sometimes wont to do, Tesla’s stock value could too.
Invest in cryptocurrency infrastructure
Another way to gain exposure is to invest in companies that have a stake in the cryptocurrency industry. Coinbase is a platform where investors can buy and sell cryptocurrency — and it’s publicly traded.
“Just like you have with gold, you can either invest in the commodity itself or the infrastructure around it, the miners, the materials needed for mining, same with energy and oil,” Boneparth says. “And there are public companies that are specifically operating in the blockchain space, but there’s not many of them.”
Riot Blockchain is one of those few publicly traded companies that focuses on cryptocurrency mining. Riot Blockchain, among others, helps build cryptocurrency infrastructure and provides another cryptocurrency-adjacent investment opportunity.
Get ready for a cryptocurrency ETF
While there are currently no cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds that have been approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission, there is demand for them. A cryptocurrency ETF would operate much like any other ETF, but instead of tracking a market exchange like the S&P 500, it would track a cryptocurrency. For instance, a Bitcoin ETF would track the price of Bitcoin.
“There’s been many different attempts at ETFs and many of these have been rejected. There are ETFs in other countries for Bitcoin that have been permitted, and I think it’s just a thing that will happen in time,” says Tristan Yver, the head of strategy at FTX.US, a US-regulated cryptocurrency exchange. “I don’t have an estimate of when this will occur, but I do think it’s something that will happen, and I think it’s something that will allow people who aren’t comfortable with investing directly in digital assets to get exposure to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.”
There have been numerous applications for cryptocurrency ETFs, and the SEC is expected to decide whether to approve investment manager VanEck’s bid for a Bitcoin ETF, which could be the United States’ first such fund, on November 14, 2021.
Use caution if investing directly
If you’re willing to invest in cryptocurrency directly, there are a few ways you can mitigate your risk. One way to do this is to reduce the amount of money you invest. Some credit cards offer cryptocurrency rewards in a similar way as cashback or miles. If you decide to add cryptocurrency to your portfolio by way of rewards, you don’t even have to use your own dollars to do so.
Another way to reduce your risk is to invest in stablecoins, which are similar to traditional cryptocurrencies but are backed by real-world assets, making them less prone to significant drops in value.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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