Winter in Bākūži 2 - 2018

25 February, 2018 | | 3 seen

A couple of weeks ago I made a couple of HDR's back at Bākūži (Bākūži Winter 2018), despite it was still a winter, we had little to no snow back then. Now at the end of February 2018, I made some more photos - let's say this - there is still room to grow to reach the levels of the fairytale in Tbilisi, but still lovely.

Snow, frozen pond, and lonely rock garden see it for yourself

Car parked next to the pond

Pile of firewood

Still needs to be processed

Rock garden in Winter

The house

Still, a lot to do :)

How To Verify Skype Account Without US Credit Card (Microsoft Account Verification)

24 February, 2018 | Servers | 46 seen

In today's article, I'll share my experience how I managed to verify my age for Skype account. It all started that one day I was not able to login to my skype account, which I have been using for more than 10 years already. 

It turned out  Skype / Microsoft thought I'm a child, as apparently in my Skype account I had entered my birth year as 2008. Now back in 2008, it didn't seem an issue. Since Microsoft acquired Skype back in 2011, apparently, some new rules have been pointed out and it was on the February 2018, Skype started to think I'm a child. I was not able to login to my account, even despite I've been a paid subscriber to Skype OUT

Trying to Google out some solution for this strange case I ended up in this article: How do I change the birthdate on a Microsoft account?

I’m an adult, but my account thinks I’m a child

To change your own account from a child account to a full account, you need to prove that you're an adult. You have two options:

• Option 1: Provide a valid U.S. credit card number
• Option 2: Send us proof of age

Despite I have a valid U.S. Credit Card (see: How To Open A Bank Account in U.S., As A Non-resident Non - citizen, Wells Fargo Bank ) I decided to choose Option 2:

Send a fax or postal mail to us with proof of age. Use the following contact information:

Fax: (425) 936-7329
Mailing address:

Microsoft Account Child Age Verification
Microsoft Corporation
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052

Make sure to include the following information:

• This header at the top of your letter, "ATTN: MICROSOFT ACCOUNT CHILD AGE VERIFICATION"
• Your complete Microsoft account email address. 
• The first and last name for the Microsoft account.
• The city, state, and ZIP code for the Microsoft account.
• A photocopy of official identification that shows your birthdate, such as a driver's license, state-issued ID, or passport.
• A valid email address (other than your Microsoft account) where we can contact you.

Next was to figure it out how could I send a fax in 2018, luckily I found a free solution, see: How to send international fax to USA using Faxapp

Here is the fax I sent to Microsoft Account Child Age Verification (attaching a copy of passport)

After a couple of days, I received a positive answer and my Skype was unlocked:

Hello,

This is Ronald with Microsoft Customer Support and I received an escalation in regards to changing the date of birth for your Microsoft Account @youremailadress. After reviewing the photo ID and account information you provided, we have updated the account date of birth to match the date of birth shown on your photo identification. Our process requires us to change the account date of birth to match that shown on the ID, but you can change it to something else if you wish. Please log into your account at the following site to verify the change and make any adjustments necessary: https://account.live.com. You should now be able to access your account normally as an adult account.

Please provide an update directly to this email letting us know if you have additional questions or concerns regarding your issue and I will be happy to assist you further.  If you wish a phone call to discuss this issue further, please provide us with your phone number. If I do not receive a response within 24 hours, this case will be closed.

Victory!

Google Introduces Machine Learning AdSense Auto Ads

23 February, 2018 | Blogging | 21 seen

Yesterday I received a promotional e-mail from Google AdSense, introducing the new Auto Ads.

As a long-term Google AdSense user (How I Made $2,135.03 with Google AdSense in 8 years), I decided to give it a test for my Drupal-powered blog, despite I was amazed at what I saw, I still removed Google AdSense Auto ads shortly.

Let me explain - Google Adsense ads have been featured on this blog for about 4 years, during the past 4 years the blog has grown into a complex multi-topic website/portal. Despite I'm serving Google AdSense ads on most of the content pages, there are sensitive categories and pages I'm not using Google AdSense to monetize the content. With enabling Google AdSense auto ads, this exception is not honored and I saw Google AdSense auto ads served even on About page. Sure I believe I could custom code to remove auto ads from specific categories and pages (How To Hide Drupal Block For Nodes In Specific Taxonomy - Example With Google Adsense) , but right now the solution of the box just didn't work for me. Probably after some custom coding and longer testing I could implement Google AdSense auto ads on the blog.

Finding the time to create great content for your users is an essential part of growing your publishing business. Today we are introducing AdSense Auto ads, a powerful new way to place ads on your site. Auto ads use machine learning to make smart placement and monetization decisions on your behalf, saving you time. Place one piece of code just once to all of your pages, and let Google take care of the rest.

Some of the benefits of Auto ads include:

• Optimization: Using machine learning, Auto ads show ads only when they are likely to perform well and provide a good user experience.
• Revenue opportunities: Auto ads will identify any available ad space and place new ads there, potentially increasing your revenue.
• Easy to use: With Auto ads you only need to place the ad code on your pages once. When you’re ready to use new features and ad formats, simply turn them on and off with the flick of a switch -- there’s no need to change the code again.

Getting started with AdSense Auto ads
Auto ads can work equally well on new sites and on those already showing ads.
Have you manually placed ads on your page? There’s no need to remove them if you don’t want to. Auto ads will take into account all existing Google ads on your pages.

Already using Anchor or Vignette ads? Auto ads include Anchor and Vignette ads and many more additional formats such as Text and display, In-feed, and Matched content. Note that all users that used Page-level ads are automatically migrated over to Auto ads without any need to add code to their pages again.

To get started with AdSense Auto ads:

• Sign in to your AdSense account.
• In the left navigation panel, visit My ads and select Get Started.
• On the "Choose your global settings" page, select the ad formats that you'd like to show and click Save.
• On the next page, click Copy code.
• Paste the ad code between the < head > and </ head > tags of each page where you want to show Auto ads.
• Auto ads will start to appear on your pages in about 10-20 minutes.

Back testing BTC/EXP RSI on Gekko Trading Bot

22 February, 2018 | Crypto | 26 seen

For the past couple of days, I've been testing Gekko BTC trading bot, executing a few trades running the bot on my laptop, ending to build a VPS to run Gekko trading bot on a cloud. As you can see for right now - I'm fully determined to master this trading bot.

To master trading like a pro some should learn basic technical analytics, in today's article, I will speak about using Relative Strength Index (RSI) for crypto trades. I believe RSI is one of the easiest ways to trade cryptos. 

Disclosure: I'm not a financial advisor and I don't give you any advice, I'm just sharing my own experience. Investments in stocks, funds, bonds or cryptos are risk investments and you could lose some or all of your money. Do your due diligence before investing in any kind of asset. 

RSI (Relative Strength Index)

The relative strength index (RSI) is a momentum indicator developed by noted technical analyst Welles Wilder, that compares the magnitude of recent gains and losses over a specified time period to measure speed and change of price movements of a security. It is primarily used to attempt to identify overbought or oversold conditions in the trading of an asset.

Backtest

For following backtests I will use data for BTC/EXP on Poloniex.com exchange for a time period (2018-02-01 00:00 - 2018-02-19 16:59)

Importing data for backtesting on Gekko

Once the import is done, we are ready to start backtesting. I will start with a default RSI backtest offered out of the box:

• Candle size:1 hour
• Warmup period: 10 hours
• Interval: 14
• Persistence: 1

Backtest BTC/EXP 1 hour candle

Nice, with failing market by -13% and with just 4 trades our simulated profit would increase by 7.7% in just 19 days. Results are pretty impressive. I mean +7.7% in a falling market. Awesome. 

I like the above chart for 75%, let me explain - those 2 red dots means bot have sold EXP back to BTC, while 2 green dots means bot have bought EXP. I don't like the first green dot, when bot has bought just shortly before the dip. I can explain this simple, probably the warm-up period of 10 hours wasn't enough. Not sure. What I really like - bot have sold at the peak twice.

Well, as we can see from the graph above there are more ups and downs in the chart, let's see if more trades would happen if we would adjust Gekko trading bot

• Candle size:30 minutes
• Warmup period: 5 hours
• Interval: 14
• Persistence: 1

Backtest BTC/EXP 30 minutes candles

Wow, in the same 13% falling market bot have made simulated profit +17% with just 8 trades

Using 30 minutes candle size Gekko trading bot has noticed 2 more large ups and downs.

17% gains in just 19 days is Awesome, but let's try push harder and see what could we get from 15 minutes candle size

• Candle size: 15 minutes
• Warmup period: 2 hours 30 minutes
• Interval: 14
• Persistence: 1

Backtest BTC/EXP 15 minutes candles

Still good, better than 1-hour candles, but worse than 30-minute candles, let's see what will happen with 5-minute candle sizes:

• Candle size: 5 minutes
• Warmup period: 50 minutes
• Interval: 14
• Persistence: 1

Backtest BTC/EXP 5 minutes candles

Trying to scalp more would give a negative -2.32% growth. last but not least, let's try 1-minute candle sizes:

• Candle size: 1 minute
• Warmup period: 10 minutes
• Interval: 14
• Persistence: 1

Backtest BTC/EXP 1 minute candles

Surprisingly but trying to scalp each movement might work, and actually gives a simulated profit of almost 8% in the same falling market. Amazing.

Now, you have some basic idea how to trade with RSI method in Gekko trading bot, also now we know that changing candle sizes can change the total profit drastically.

Do your backtesting for each coin, before you are planning to execute live trades. In fact, I would recommend backtesting at least 3 months of data. Also, I wouldn't encourage to trade with all of your capital. Play with some play money you are comfortable to lose.

Disclosure: I'm not a financial advisor and I don't give you any advice, I'm just sharing my own experience. Investments in stocks, funds, bonds or cryptos are risk investments and you could lose some or all of your money. Do your due diligence before investing in any kind of asset. 

How To Setup Gekko BTC Trading Bot on VPS (Ubuntu 16.04) with GUI (Vultr.com)

20 February, 2018 | Servers | 57 seen

Gekko is a free and open source Bitcoin TA trading and backtesting platform that connects to popular Bitcoin exchanges. It is written in javascript and runs on nodejs

For the past couple of days I've been playing around with Gekko trading bot installed on my laptop (Windows 10), I have made a few trades and experimented with a couple of strategies. First impressions are promising. See: Simple BTC Trading Bot Gekko - First Impressions

Running a trading bot on a laptop is fun, but if you are looking for a bot 24/7monitoring market and executing trades, either you should keep your PC turned on 24/7 or you could set up a cheap VPS and setup bot on it. 

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to cloud hosting companies like Linode and Vultr, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on cloud hosting sites, I will earn an affiliate income at no cost to you.

As I have a couple of VPS from Linode, my first idea was to test this setup on Linode VPS, but fortunately, I found a cool tutorial How to setup VPS on Vultr.com and run Gekko by Pushkar Nagle

As I had little clue what Vultr.com hosting is - I decided to purchase cheapest VPS (they kind of have VPS for $2.50 but at time I setup a cloud hosting at Vultr.com the cheapest I was offered was at $5/mo, still cheap)

Here is what I bought for $5/mo :

• CPU: 1 vCore
• RAM: 1024 MB
• Storage: 25 GB SSD

seems enough to run dozens of Gekko's on it

Location for server Amsterdam (Amsterdam is a great bet for European customers) and deployed Ubuntu 16.04 on it. I followed Pushkar's advice and installed GUI, and here is how:

Now you can run Gekko in UI mode or via command line. Alternatively, you can also install VNC services to access this VPS remotely. Else, default console facility of Vultr is already there.

Vultr dashboard

Follow the red arrow to launch console

Gekko launched via console

Amazing, now I don't have to worry to leave my laptop powered on - the cloud is up and running.

How to send international fax to USA using Faxapp

18 February, 2018 | Servers | 4 seen

Think fax is outdated? Think twice, fax is still popular in certain business areas, and fax is kind of popular in the United States. I believe the last time I have seen an actual fax machine in work was back in 1994. Now 24 years later at one stage I thought, it would be good if I would have a fax machine in 2018.

I had to send a fax confirming my identity to the Microsoft Corp. Keep reading to learn how to send an international fax without having a fax machine.

Turns out, there are several online apps allowing to send a fax from the web, after a quick research I decided to give it a try for Faxapp.

Faxapp

Send faxes without a landline to a "classic" fax machine. You’ll get your own local fax number. 
No software required, but available.

All received faxes are swiftly delivered to your email inbox.

Ten-day trial

• Send and receive faxes for free
• Cancelled automatically
• No credit card required

It took me some 5 minutes to open an account at faxapp, and the next thing was just to send international fax to the United States

Faxapp dashboard

In total it took me 3 attempts to successfully deliver fax to the US, for first two failed attempts I received an explanatory e-mail, the first time it was said - fax machine is not turned on, second time probably fax machine has run out of the ink, and third time - success.

Fax receipt: Error

Now, I didn't spend a dime for sending this fax in a trial mode, and after a couple of days, I received an answer from MS corp, which means faxapp is working and actually sending faxes.

I doubt I will need to use fax ever again, but as they say, you never know - and if, then faxapp is the way to go. 

Simple BTC Trading Bot Gekko - First Impressions

17 February, 2018 | Servers | 35 seen

The idea of using a bitcoin trading bot comes up just shortly I decided to trade up from 0.03 to 0.05 BTC. In the past, I've been using Coinlend bot to lend free coins on exchanges and earn some little interest.

Doing a quick google search I found a few bitcoin bot traders, most come with a price, but as I wanted to test how these bots actually work I continued my searches and found free bitcoin bot trader - Gekko.  Setting up this bot will be simple for a tech-savvy person, but might be a daunting task for a novice, as bot asks to install nodejs and in fact, it took me some 4 hours to set up this bot, as there were some issues (more on that at the end of this article)

Gekko is a free and open source Bitcoin TA trading and backtesting platform that connects to popular Bitcoin exchanges. It is written in javascript and runs on nodejs.

You can either create your own trading strategy or start with the built-in example strategies. Once you have a strategy you can use Gekko to automatically run it in a few different ways:

• Backtest: You can start a simulation of the strategy over a historical data period and Gekko will tell you what would have happened (which trades would have been performed as well as overall performance and risk metrics).
• Paper trader: You can run the strategy in realtime simulate trading (trade with fake money) to see in realtime how profitable your strategy would have been.
• Tradebot: You can run the strategy in realtime and automatically execute orders based on the signals.

All the above modes can be run from the user interface, this interface will show charts and performance/risk statistics.

Installing Gekko on windows

To get Gekko running on Windows you need to do the following:

• install nodejs
• download Gekko
• install Gekko's dependencies

Learn more about steps here: Installing Gekko on windows 

Issues I faced while tried to setup Gekko on Windows

At the start I had many issues regarding sqlite database, Gekko is powered out of the box after I changed sqlite to postgresql it went smoothly.

If you are experiencing issues related to sqlite database, locate config/general.toml and change to following

After switching databases I was able to connect bot to Poloniex exchange and start live trading. But before live trades, I tested my strategies on backtesting

Backtesting on Gekko

​Gekko supports backtesting strategies over historical data. This means that Gekko will simulate running a strategy in realtime against a live market. Backtesting requires having data locally available already. After a backtest Gekko will provide statistics about the market and the strategy's performance.

As I'm not very well educated on technical analysis indicators I did a few backtests with RSI (Relative Strenght Index) for BTC/EXP pair on Poloniex

Backtesting on Gekko

Gekko backtests using a very limited datasource (only OHCL candles). This means that Gekko estimates trades (and thus profits), which depending on the liquidity and market depth might be estimated very wrong. By configuring the paper trader's fee and slippage you can better mimic trading at the real market.

In order to backtest with 100% accuracy one would need the exact state of the orderbook (spread and depth) as well as information about orders happening around the time of each advice. With Gekko we made the decision to not store all this information (to simplify importing and storing market data). In voluminous and liquid markets this shouldn't be too much of a problem, but if you are backtesting over a small market (like some altcoins) the estimation will be of poor accuracy.

Live trades

After backtesting, I tried live trades, again in BTC/EXP pair and made a small, but nice profit after couple of hours

Live trades

Despite bot said there is a 1.05% profit after the first trade when checked actual data on Poloniex, I saw a negative return (because of the fees), though, after a couple of hours and more trades, both bot and Poloniex reported positive gains.

As you can see from the picture above, the bot is a little bit glitchy, reporting strange values (see the second row in roundtrips, saying 48 years)

Ethereum (and other altcoin) mining review after 2 months in 2018

16 February, 2018 | Servers | 44 seen

February 16 marks a small 2-month anniversary since I've started to mine Ethereum and others altcoins. In today's article let's take a quick review and try to understand is GPU mining still profitable in 2018?

It all started with a FOMO back in December 2017, after successful second part of the year of investments in crypto, I decided to build a 12-GPU mining rig.

Currently, I've invested $1,661 in this mining rig and after 2 months of operations, the current ROI is 12.53% (not counting in cost for electricity). Meaning that in past two months I've mined coins worth of $208.05.

I have experimented both with different GPU cards and different coins. Here are coins I've mined so far: ETH, SC, ETC, and EXP

Mined coins

Currently, the rig consists of 4 GPU's:

• Mining with SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon™ RX 560 4GD5 Review
• Mining Ethereum With EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5 Review
• Mining Ethereum With ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition Review
• Mining Ethereum With Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition Review

Thanks to the open-minded crypto community I've learned a lot about how to overclock these cards and boost a little bit total income from GPU mining.

By building this GPU mining rig I'm using dollar cost averaging adding new cards time after time (originally I had a plan to add one card per month, but in the past 2 month's I've added 2 cards per month). Each time I add a new graphics card I make a brief recap on mining profitability, see:

• I'm Making $0.98 Per Day By Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I want MORE!
• I'm Making $2.44 Per Day By Dual Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I'm NOT HAPPY YET!
• Simple GPU Overclocking Boosts Ethereum Mining Profitability by 20.65% - Now Making $2.66 Daily
• With Rising Ethereum Price I'm making $5.22 daily by Mining Cryptos - And I Definitely Want MORE!
• Mining Ethereum @ ~53 MH/s and Siacoin @ ~310 MH/s Earns me $5.53 Daily - And It's Time to take a Pause

Indeed, daily earnings from mining depend on cryptocurrency exchange rates, with current mining speed and exchange rates my mining rig if mining Ethereum would make about $4.35 daily, which is about 20%decrease if compared to the end of January exchange rates.

That's the reason I started to explore options to mine other coins:

• How To Mine ETC (Ethereum Classic) with SimpleMining OS
• How To Mine EXP (Expanse) with SMOS

During the past 2 months a lot of have happened - after bulls run at the end of 2017, the crypto market tanked at the start of 2018, making it longer to reach a positive ROI for investments in a mining rig. 

It seems Siacoin is no longer profitable for GPU mining starting 2018. See: Is It Profitable Mining Siacoin (SC) in 2018?

Last but not least, the so-called hard/soft forks happens not only for Bitcoin chain, but also for other coins, and currently, there is a planned Callisto airdrop planned for ETC coin. See: How to Prepare for Upcoming Callisto Airdrop (Ethereum Classic)

How To Mine EXP (Expanse) with SMOS

15 February, 2018 | Servers | 15 seen

A couple of days ago I shared a quick tutorial on how to mine ETC (Ethereum Classic) with SMOS (Simple Mining OS), as there is an upcoming ETC Callisto airdrop happening, the idea to pre-mine couple of ETC's sounded tempting to me. 

Now, as I've been using a mixed AMD + NVIDIA mining rig, to get most of it, I'm left using Claymore's dual miner, which just recently released version 11.0 , and I decided to test it with some new coin, after a quick google search I found a quite a few Ethash based coins (good for Claymore's miner) and this time my attention got the EXP (expanse) coin. Reason is quite simple, EXP is listed on Poloniex.com exchange, which means following - I don't need to look for a wallet (I should but for the purpose of this experiment I don't), and since the coin is already listed on a well-known exchange - there shouldn't be problems to exchange EXP to BTC.

As I had some nice ZEC/BTC trade on Poloniex, I exchanged some small amount of BTC to EXP, before going deeper.

Now, before getting into technical stuff on how to mine EXP with SimpleMining.net, let's find out more what do we know about EXP.

In short - EXP is known as being first stable fork of Ethereum

Expanse.Tech™ was created as the first stable fork of Ethereum. Expanse was built as a community-based project without an ICO, (Initial Coin Offering), and is blockchain agnostic. The idea is to use cutting-edge blockchain technology to build anything the community and team can imagine—using a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, (DAO), with a self-funded design to keep it truly decentralized. This way, the Expanse community can evolve and grow while rewarding holders, partners, and investors.

The Expanse platform now has a two-year history of consistent growth and stability. Starting out small, but with big ideas, the team is growing and other projects are now coming on board to help make the dream a reality—limited only by the imagination and talent of all the diverse people around the world involved in the journey. Each new community member and partner brings new ideas and visions for the future. Expanse.Tech plans to be one of the top blockchain projects in the world.

Goals for Expanse are to create the most advanced forms of identity, governance, charity, commerce, and equity. All the services Expanse create will work together to form the EXP.DAO. Each DAO module can also act as an individualized service. 

Learn more at https://www.expanse.tech

How to mine EXP coin with SMOS (SimpleMiningOS)

Things you will need:

• Account  at Simplemining.net (just obliviously you will need to have a mining rig)
• EXP address (You could get one from Poloniex.com)

Now, once you are ready, log in to SimpleMining.net, from the left pane choose Rig Groups - > Add group

Give it a nice name, for example, EXP miner, select claymore-eth-v11.0 and in the options box fill in following:

Make sure to change <Your_EXP_Address>> with your actual EXP address

Save the group and reload the miner. Check if everything is fine here like you can see mining speed, temperatures and so on. 

Next, visit https://expmine.pro and paste your EXP address into the search bar to check your actual mining stats:

Mining EXP coin

Cool, seems everything is working and now let's see how much we could actually make by mining EXP. To get some rough estimate I will use an online calculator from WhatToMine

​

EXP mining profitability calculator

If there is some valuable lesson I've learned in the short time I've been into mining - these calculators are nice estimates, but it's not advisable to make any future forecasts (longer than a week) based on results you get from them. Crypto space is volatile, prices go up and down, so does mining difficulty. But yes, for rough estimates - they are great.

Now, it doesn't look very profitable mining $36/mo with ~60MH/s (current cost for my mining rig is $1,661), and if using rough estimates, to get back ROI from EXP mining it would take me 46 months (that's little less than 4 years), while mining Ethereum with the same hash power would give me ROI in about 19 months. Now as stated these calculators doesn't mean much, just to give you some basic understanding. 

See: To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018

If you are for a quick buck EXP won't make you very rich overnight, but if you are willing to experiment, probably to mine some EXP in the hopes that in the future it could appreciate in value, sure go for it. 

Why I'm Investing in Baltic Horizon Fund (NHCBHFFT)

11 February, 2018 | Investments | 12 seen

Baltic Horizon Fund has been on my radar since the August 2017. Actually first spotted in March 2017, while doing a quick research on Top Dividend Paying stocks in the Baltics. 

Despite being listed on Nasdaq Tallinn (aka Nasdaq Baltics) I was not able to purchase fund units from my existing brokerage account. After I sent a short message both to the fund managers and my current broker, informing about the problem I was facing (and I believe a dozen of other customers with a brokerage account in Latvia) the problem was solved and I was able to purchase Baltic Horizon Fund units. Sometimes all it asks is just a brief message.

Disclosure: I'm not a financial advisor and I don't give you any advice, I'm just sharing my own experience. Investments in stocks, funds or bonds are risk investments and you could lose some or all of your money. Do your due diligence before investing in any kind of asset. 

Now, there is one bold reason I like this fund, quarterly dividend payments (at least in 2017, and hopefully in 2018), the yield is around 7-9%, which is among the highest yields in the Nasdaq Baltics, on the other hand,Baltic Horizon Fund is kind of like the first REIT in the Baltic's and shouldn't be viewed as a dividend stock. But I will. Because that's what it's doing - paying a fat 7-9% yield (or at least that's what the fund did in the past)

As this fund is relatively new, established just in 2016, the track record for dividend payments is little more than just one year, but from observations on Nasdaq Baltics, Baltic Horizon fund in 2017 made dividend payments in February, May, August and November. If the quarterly schedule is kept - I'm a happy hippo, because right now 3 out of 4 from these months for me are almost empty in terms of dividend income.

Baltic Horizon Fund Historical Trading Chart

Since being listed on Nasdaq Baltics (around July 2016) the fund's unit price has lost value for -2,19%, as you can see from the graph above, most of the history it has been up and down by a few percents. Currently, fund is traded at EUR 1.28, which IMHO is cheap price to buy this REIT, 

There are a couple of things worrying me about this purchase - investments in developing economies. The economies of Baltic states right now seems are experiencing growth. Or, let's say - we are in the bull market, but what will happen during upcoming bear market? 

As I've been investing in Baltic equity market since April 2017, currently (2018) my capital has been exposed to some 16 great companies listed on the Nasdaq Baltic stock exchange giving a combined dividend yield on cost 5.00%. I'm happy to add Baltic Horizon Fund to my portfolio to diversify even more. Well, if you can say so - If things will go South in the Baltics, most probably most stocks and funds will follow. 

Top Dividend Paying Stocks In Nasdaq Baltic I'm Planning to Acquire in 2018

Baltic Horizon Fund units are available for trading on Nasdaq Tallinn Stock Exchange. The Fund is a public fund with no particular lifetime (evergreen). Units of the Fund are made available to the public in accordance with the Fund rules and applicable laws. 

Investment Strategy

Baltic Horizon’s primary focus is to invest directly into commercial real estate located in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with a particular focus on the capitals – Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius.

The Fund will focus on established cash flow generating properties with the potential to add value through active management within retail, office and logistic segments in strategic locations and strong tenants or quality tenant mix and long leases. Up to 20% of the Fund’s asset may be invested into forward funding development projects.

• The Fund aims to use 50% long term leverage strategy. At no point in time may the Fund’s leverage shall exceed 65%.
• The Fund aims to continuously diversify the risks geographically, across real estate segments, across tenants and debt providers.

Investing principles

As an international asset manager Northern Horizon Capital is dedicated to good corporate governance principles. Baltic Horizon has an independent boards and we strive to have a transparent, fair and professional dialogue with our investors.

All our investments are guided by the following principles:

• We only invest in properties where our investors can expect a steady income stream and have a good chance of a medium-term capital gain.
• We are actively focusing on minimizing and managing any potential downside risks while protecting the full upside potential of our investments.
• We will refuse any investment opportunity which challenges our integrity or is in conflict with our mission statement and core values.
• Each individual property is assessed upon acquisition as well as on an annual basis by independent valuators in compliance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and local valuation methods.

Learn more at www.baltichorizon.com

How to Prepare for Upcoming Callisto Airdrop (Ethereum Classic)

10 February, 2018 | Servers | 70 seen

Now, this is huge and exciting for ETC holders - Ethereum Classic development team recently announced the Callisto Network Project which will result in a 1:1 CLO airdrop for ETC holders.

As a holder of ETC, and in fact as a miner of ETC (How To Mine ETC (Ethereum Classic) with SimpleMining OS) I find this very exciting and decided to look - how to prepare for this upcoming "fork" to get most out of it. But before digging into technical details on how to profit from this Callistio Airdrop, let's familiarize with this project a little better.

According to the update:

Callisto is a separate blockchain that is based on Ethereum protocol with its own cryptocurrency (CLO). Callisto has a fixed cap monetary policy similar to ETC. Unlike ETH, ETC is posing itself as a value storage. It should be noted that the ETC does not have any incentives for coin holders. The whole emission is completely controlled by miners and their influence grows with the growth of the network. Callisto introduces a Cold staking protocol that rewards coin holders for being a network participants.

Cold staking is a smart-contract based process that allows CLO holders to earn interest in a total CLO emission when they hold CLO coins at their balances for long enough period of staking time (1 month by default).

Cold stakers are not required to run a node to participate in cold staking process. Cold stakers are not validating transactions and the whole system can remain fully POW which is important since ETC adheres to POW consensys. It is only necessary to call the “Staking contract” to become a cold staker.

Cold staking is a step towards the goal of turning the desired cryptocurrency into a value storage currency because this significantly increases a total demand to hold for stake holders. Further protocol improvements would be described at this open document. It may take years to propose any changes to ETC protocol and achieve a consensys on whether we need to implement it or not. As the result it was decided to launch a separate network to implement the protocol. If the reference implementation will succeed then we can implement the protocol changes on ETC as well.

Cold staking protocol could be an intermediate step of automated on-chain governance system implementation.
Callisto whitepaper will be released soon.

Callisto Initial Distribution

It was decided to distribute the initial stake of CLO between current ETC holders. We will make a snapshot of ETC blockchain at block 5500000 (approximately 5 March, 2018. This depends on ETC block time and ETC hashrate changes). Then we implement the initial balance of each ETC holder in the Callisto network genesis block, so each ETC owner will receive CLO coins automatically in a 1:1 ratio to the amount of ETC that he had at block 5500000.

How to get free CLO 

As I've experienced a quite few hard and soft forks in the past, there is one valuable lesson I've learned - don't store your coins on exchanges. For this upcoming airdrop, I've decided to go with MyWtherWallet

In general, you could choose among:

• MyEtherWallet
• or ClassicEtherWallet

As I've been using MyEtherWallet in the past, I decided to stick with it for this "fork" as well. Here is a simple guide on how to transfer ETC to MyEtherWallet: How to Send Ethereum Classic (ETC) via MyEtherWallet

In order to see your ETC and interact with the ETC chain, you must first be on an ETC node.

In order to switch back to ETH, simply change the node back to an ETH node in the upper right corner.

To test this setup I transferred a bit of ETC from Poloniex, and once I saw it's working I directed my GPU mining rig to mine ETC with following MyEtherWallet address (why not mine some,to get more free coins?!)

How To Add a Custom Token Balance in MyEtherWallet.com

Recommended reading: Ethereum Classic (ETC) Callisto (CLO) Airdrop Announcement Leads to Price Surge and Stability

How To Mine ETC (Ethereum Classic) with SimpleMining OS

9 February, 2018 | Servers | 75 seen

For the past couple of weeks I've been experimenting with crypto mining and started with Claymore's dual miner to learn that I can dual mine both Ethereum and Siacoin out of the box, I put my mining rig as it is and let the machine to mine coins for me. See: I'm Making $0.98 Per Day By Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I want MORE!

Meanwhile, in crypto space, a lot has happened, and I decided to explore my options to mine some other coins using SimpleMining OS, which IMHO is awesome.

At the end of January, it started to look that mining Siacoin is not any more profitable with gpu's (Is It Profitable Mining Siacoin (SC) in 2018?) and I went solo mining Ethereum only, also I decided to pause adding new graphics cards to the mining rig before reaching ROI at least 20% - Mining Ethereum @ ~53 MH/s and Siacoin @ ~310 MH/s Earns me $5.53 Daily - And It's Time to take a Pause

Now, I decided to explore my options mining other altcoins, at start I wanted to test mining Monero, but as I have  a mixed AMD + NVIDIA mining rig, seems Simplemining is not yet supporting both cards for Monero, and it looks like just Ethereum and Ethereum Classic is supported with mixed cards on Simplemining, that's how I ended setting up ETC mining rig.

Things you will need:

• Account Simplemining.net (just obliviously you will need to have a mining rig)
• ETC address (You could get one from Poloniex.com)

Now, once you are ready, log in to SimpleMining.net, from the left pane chose Rig Groups - > Add group

Adding a group in Simplemining

Give it a nice name, for example, ETC miner, select claymore-eth-v10.6 and in the options box fill in following

Make sure to change <Your_Ethereum_Address> with your actual ETC address

Save the group and reload the miner. Check if everything is fine here like you can see mining speed, temperatures and so on. 

Next, visit https://etc.ethermine.org and paste your ETC address into the search bar to check your actual mining stats:

Mining ETC with ethermine.org

Cool, seems everything is working and now let's see how much we could actually make by mining Ethereum Classic. To get some rough estimate I will use an online calculator from CryptoCompare

​

ETC mining profitability calculator

If there is some valuable lesson I've learned in the short time I've been into mining - these calculators are nice estimates, but it's not advisable to make any future forecasts (longer than a week) based on results you get from them. Crypto space is volatile, prices go up and down, so does mining difficulty. But yes, for rough estimates - they are great.

Now, it doesn't look very profitable mining $34.23/mo with 55MH/s (current cost for my mining rig is $1,661), and if using rough estimates, to get back ROI from ETC mining it would take me 48 months (that's 4 years), while mining Ethereum the same hash power would give me ROI in 2 and a half years. 

See: To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018

If you are for a quick buck ETC won't make you very rich overnight, but if you are willing to experiment, probably to mine some ETC in the hopes that in the future it could appreciate in value, sure go for it. 

With cryptomarkets tanked at the start of 2018, and my idea to take a pause before adding more graphics cards to mining rig (before reaching ROI 20%), I've decided to experiment with some other coins to mine and ETC is among one of them (the others - Monero, Zcash). I'm not saying no to Ethereum mining, I'm saying - switching between ETH and ETC like once in a day (in a couple of days) or week. 

I believe ETC still has some potential for the future, and most probably after Ethereum POS the most hash power will go to Ethereum Classic - I would love to have some coins mined already by that time.

Deep in The Forest (Winter Edition)

8 February, 2018 | | 8 seen

It was on some February's (2018) afternoon, we decided to make a simple hiking in very familiar to us Latvian forests, unfortunately, the temperature outside was way too freezing and our hiking ended after some 15 minutes, fortunately, I managed to capture some HDR's here.

Followers of Piece of Life series will recognize this forest from Deep in the Forest or Wandering In The Woods B&W Photography series. 

Winter in Latvia

No mushrooms or will berry this time of the year.

Marvelous golden hour in forest

Rixwell Elefant Hotel Riga Review

7 February, 2018 | Hotel reviews | 17 seen

Rixwell Elefant Hotel is a 4-star superior hotel and it is conveniently located between Riga International Airport, which is a 5-minute drive away, and the city centre. Shopping center Spice is within walking distance from the hotel and 10 km away is the famous water park Livu Aqua Park in Jurmala.

Rixwell Elefant hotel in Riga is among the cheapest 4-star hotels I've stayed so far, both in Riga and elsewhere, in total for a one night stay here we paid EUR 46, which is decent for a 4-star hotel in this part of Europe. Click here for more Riga hotel reviews. 

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to Booking.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a reservation on Booking site, I might earn an affiliate income from that at no cost to you.

The rooms are bright and modern. All rooms come with a flat-screen TV with cable channels, a minibar, tea and coffee making facilities,a safety deposit box and ironing facilities, as well as a direct dial telephone. The private bathrooms also come with free toiletries and a hairdryer.

Rixwell Elefant hotel Riga

A breakfast buffet is available in the mornings. Guests are welcomed to dine in the on-site restaurant - Rixwell Elefant Restaurant. A kids menu is also available.

Breakfast at Rixwell Elefant hotel Riga

Not my best shot, but hopefully you got the meaning - breakfast is good here.

Rixwell Elefant Hotel offers guests access to a fitness centre free of charge. Guests have access to a computer with internet connection in the lobby. Friendly front desk staff are available 24 hours a day and provide tourist information. For guests convenience there is an ATM on site, as well as concierge service. Parking is possible on site at an additional fee.

Rixwell Elefant Hotel offers a wellness center, where guests can relax and take advantage of various treatments - all at an extra cost.

View to the petrol station

Despite Rixwell Elefant hotel is called a 4- star hotel, I got a feeling of staying at a decent American style motel, see for example La Quinta Inn & Suites Secaucus Meadowlands

January 2018 Dividend Income Report - $100.95

2 February, 2018 | Investments | 11 seen

Welcome to the ninth (#9) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend-paying stocks, peer to peer lending (both fiat and cryptocurrencies) in January 2018. 

Surprisingly, but January 2018 turned out much better I thought before, an unexpected dividend payment from Silvano Fashion Group boosted total earnings in January, and I was able to generate $100.95 income in a very passive way. Silvano Fashion Group have been in my portfolio since the July of 2017, I literally chased to buy this stock for a couple of days back then.

As usual, I was doing nothing much, just investing in great companies, playing a little bit with cryptocurrencies and lending out money via peer to peer marketplace. Most of the January was on autopilot, just at the start of the month I deposited some chunk of money to Mintos.com peer to peer lending marketplace, bought Lietuvos energijos gamyba and ENERGIJOS SKIRSTYMO OPERATORIUS  stocks at Nasdaq Baltics.

See a complete list of things going on behind the scenes and my investment plans for 2018: 2017 in Review and Financial Goals for 2018

Additionally I continued to experiment with cryptocurrency mining, adding new gpu's to my custom built ethereum mining rig, and investing in Hashflare.io cloud mining contracts, but for right now these mining operations don't fit in my philosophy of a true passive income, I'm not planning to add earnings made in crypto mining to these monthly dividend income reports. On the other hand, right now cryptocurrency mining operations make me about $6 - $7 daily if combined and I want more, way more.

See: HashFlare.io Review After 1 month Bitcoin Cloud Mining Experiment

HashFlare.io (Affiliate link here - if you will click, register and decide to invest, I might earn 10% commission from that) - Estonia based cloud mining company

Please note - I'm not a financial advisor, services mentioned in this article use at your own risk and remember your capital is at risk, you could lose some or all of your money.

Also, It should be noted - to finance a purchase of Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba stock I used earnings made on Mintos.com platform in 2017. See: Mintos.com Review After 12 Month of Investing in Peer to Peer Lending

Both individuals and entities can invest through Mintos. Individual investors must be at least 18 years old, have a bank account in the European Union or third countries currently considered to have AML/CFT systems equivalent to the EU, and have their identity successfully verified by Mintos. At the moment, US citizens or taxpayers cannot register as investors at Mintos.

Affiliate link here: Sign up to Mintos.com here. By using this affiliate link for registration both you and I will receive — 1% of your average daily balance which should be paid in 3 installments for the first 90 days.

Remember - investments are risky, never invest more you can afford to lose.

Interest income in January 2018

From investments in stocks, peer to peer lending marketplace Mintos.com and from cryptocurrency lending on Poloniex.com I got following income last month:

• Vilniaus baldai : EUR 5.73
• SILVANO FASHION GROUP AS: EUR 37.8
• Mintos.com: EUR 42.22
• Poloniex.com: EUR 1.63

Total: EUR 87.38 / USD 100.95

Monthly income to the date

January 2018 marks the one-year anniversary since I started this road to the million dollars in savings account journey. Unfortunately, a year ago, the first months of the year didn't generate me much. Just starting with March, April and May the journey started to roll. 

Monthly Income chart as of January 2018

Technically speaking in January I've reached one of my smaller goals - Investment Goal #1 - $100/mo from Dividend Payments

Last January also has been third in terms of dividend income with December 2017 and July 2017 being first and second.

It looks like I won't reach $100/mo at least till April/May, on the other hand, I keep wondering will I make more than 200$/mo in 2018? If, then most probably July and/or December.

About investments and return 2018

In January I've invested a total of $1,586.53 what is about 14.8% of the total $10,700.18 planned investments in 2018. Also, I've reached 1.61% in value for my planned 1 million dollar savings account by 2045.

YTD value at the end of January is down by - 8,29% but still positive since the begging in 2017 with a positive 18.31% value growth.

Investment portfolio structure January 2018

Most up and downs in the portfolio are because of the crypto investments. YTD value for investments in cryptos at the end of January was -29.30%. I'm still positive on cryptos in the long term, and this, I would even say, HUGE, very bearish drop for crypto holdings in January, doesn't concern me much. Let's say I see this as a great opportunity to buy the dips.