Meeting with Ian Balina, ICO investor in Berlin

Today, Ian Balina is a well-known ICO investor who evaluates new blockchain and cryptocurrency start-ups. During the spring months, he organized a number of meetups in European destinations as part of his World Tour. I couldn’t miss that. It was Ian Balina who made it possible for me to discover a number of evaluation criteria that one should take into account in my investments.

Although Ian Balina had planned a trip to Prague, the date coincided with the Cashflow Summit in Olomouc . So I chose Berlin and went to see the Berlin meetup with Balina.

Opinions on Ian Balina

Some love him, others hate him.

Those who don’t like it argue mainly that they form a hype around the ICO, and because it goes pre-sell and gets tokens with a bonus, it then sells them at a profit (while ordinary investors are just buying them at a time when Balina tokens sold).

Those who like it admire its historical results and a relatively sophisticated method of selecting ICO projects, including publicly available evaluation. Today, it no longer provides GoogleSheet, but only screens on its Telegram, but it is still very transparent.

I like the journey of Ian Balin, who started at IBM as an analyst and was a freelancer for several years. He developed applications for local freelancers to help them find contracts and new clients. He spent $ 100,000 there. It was his school, how he does marketing, video, communication, etc.

Many have no idea about Balin and believe that he has let go of bitcoin and cryptocurrency to get rich. Yes, he wants to make big numbers and multiply his profit, but that path and mindset is just important.

The second thing that I like very much is the public evaluation of ICO projects and their evaluation. If you come across GoogleSheets that focus on individual ICO ratings, Ian Balina was in the first wave of who started doing it, if he wasn’t the first.

Here, as he says, he took to heart a message from Gary Vaynerchuk: Share data processing . This reminds me of the passages from the book Show What You Do, which invites us to share the process of our activities, not just their outcome.

• Ian Balina web
• Ian Balina YouTube (I recommend)

The most important ideas from the meeting

We all know what happened at the end of 2017. ICOs that did just 100 times, half a year later today, can’t do it 10 times, some don’t even 2 times and more and more projects won’t even fill their hard cap. It is getting harder, resp. more time-consuming to select ICO projects, because there are dozens of them every day. Obviously, as an individual investor, we do not have time for this. Ian Balina told us that they can’t catch up on his team either.

After half a year of the bear market, it was also seen in the group of Germans at the meeting that a slightly hesitant mood was appearing. Will ICO performance return to what it was at the end of 2017? Can ICOs still do 10x, 50x and 100x? Is it possible to enter ICO projects and be profitable as a normal investor?

Ian Balina unequivocally agreed that the conditions at the crypt market had changed a lot. He still focuses on early ICOs, ideally pre-sales or even private sales round A. He feels that the whole process is moving more towards VC style, ie collecting money over several rounds. And of course, the greatest profit potential comes when you invest the project at the earliest possible stage. That is why he is also touring Europe, the USA and Asia and looking for a new ICO.

But he told us that, as a normal investor, this is not capacity-tolerant. Instead, it is recommended to focus on new tokens entering the stock exchange. Above all, we should keep an eye on how the token economy of a project that did not choose a hard cap has changed. This can mean a revaluation of the token price and in connection with the decent volatility of the first days and weeks of token trading after listing on larger stock exchanges (eg Binance, Bittrex), there are significant opportunities.

ICOs need much more regulation than the rest of the cryptocurrency market. And I think that’s where intervention comes in as one of the first from traditional financial institutions. Withdrawals must be made in a legal manner and there must be proof that the money collected does not come from illegal activity. The whole regulation will move the ICO market to the side where it will move away from crowdsal and ordinary smaller investors.

This makes a lot of sense to me, and if we are already witnessing a relatively difficult journey to get a few thousand dollars’ worth of investing in ICOs, then it will get worse and worse in the future.

The way for the average investor who doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to calmly invest in an ICO is in the Post ICO condition and investing in altcoins.

Is your HODL alibism?

Especially in the Czech crypto community, I feel an incredible harmony with HODL. I will try to explain why I do not agree with the “Czech” mood of the HODL crypto.

When I talk to someone in the crypt at a conference in the Czech Republic, I most often hear the HODL strategy.

If you WATCH, you’re good. You’re just a dude and that’s how it’s supposed to be. You understand the crypt, it’s visible. You’re not speculating. You’re planning. You know what you’re doing. You have it clear. I’m WATCHING too.

No WTF ??! I just refuse this and it’s not close to me at all.

I have an increasingly strong feeling from the Czech environment, as if HODL means I understand the crypt, I’ve been in it for some time, so I HODL and you should too, because that’s how money is invested.

But for many people, HODL is just an alibi and not an investment

Paradoxically, these people (I call them HODLERS 2017) bought (if not all, then a significant portion) at a time when Bitcoin was more than $ 8,000. Do they plan or just wait and hope for green numbers? The problem is that once they are in the green, they will not know what to do next. They will WATCH. I’ll explain right away…

Maybe you can catch yourself or know someone who will be affected by these cases.

HODL because the investment in the crypt did not time well. But yeah, I trust blockchain and it will work. It is a long-term investment. Cryptocurrencies are like the internet in the 90’s. You have to EVALUATE. It takes time. This is such an odd argument, because it is said by people who cannot explain why today’s society needs a blockchain and what the difference is between decentralization and centralization.

I don’t believe in technical analysis. I’m not into intra-day trading. So HODL. This is one of the better arguments! Snad Those people don’t mean that, do they?

I could go on with examples, but maybe you’ve already caught the point.

HODLERS often do not have an exit strategy. I see this as a huge problem.

It’s not just a problem for HODLers, it’s an investment problem . As an investor, I have to have both an entry strategy and an exit strategy.

I would like to add that it does not sound negative against all HODLers that I respect the long-term strategy of holding and non-speculation and use it myself. I don’t want to categorize, box, make premature conclusions, etc. I like HODL for certain segments, coins. I like to talk to people who are familiar with the issue. Only after X talks, meetups, conferences did I get the impression that there is an imbalance (HODL is the right strategy, 99% of ICOs are shites, you still believe in ICOs? Ha!)…

When I sell, my question is

People didn’t get this clear at the end of 2017. That’s why they bought and didn’t know when to sell. They dragged on with the crowd and then they didn’t want to and didn’t want to sell. They hoped it would go higher and higher.

Do you have your exit strategy? Whether you are in the crypt or have other investments, you should have an exit strategy.

At the meeting, I asked Ian Balina about the exit strategy for ICO investments. This interests me a lot, how it works with money at different stages, when the ICO does 2X, 10X, 100X, etc.