Young Crypto Youtuber says that slow and steady investments are the way to old age

When Nicholas Merten watched an explanatory video about Crypto Bitcoin in November 2011, brushed it aside and then complained, “Unfortunately, I didn’t do the right thing.” No wonder he’s only 13 years old anyway.

Now 23 years old, he’s running DataDash, a YouTube channel with over 470,000 subscribers that is one of the largest focused on the crypto industry. There he gives trading tips and gives insightful, balanced and interesting comments on various relevant topics as well as the occasional speculation. What is remarkable about his channel is that he is almost completely free of hype and prefers moderate and calculated analysis.

Merten is also CEO of Digifox, a DeFi startup that aims to act as a one-stop shop for new crypto investors who should soon enable them to electronically deposit parts of their paychecks into the money automatically and at an average dollar cost.

Business people drop out of school

Merten started investing at the age of 13, although “I did my research beforehand,” he adds, wondering if his first words were stocks. He was quickly gripped by the business bug, and by the age of 17 he experimented with his own clothing company and personally tried to “make a relaxing drink” by building a formula with a partner company.

“It’s a nice start to understand so much about the emotional nature of markets and market cycles.”

Because of his “deep interest” in entrepreneurship, Merten, who grew up in Virginia, decided to study business administration and finance at Virginia Commonwealth University. However, he quickly dropped out of school and instead opted for an alternative education practice, suitable for students who, after a three-month familiarization period, are accepted for a six-month internship for part-time learning. Often these internships are translated into full-time positions and Merten “was really hungry for my first job”.

Merten recalls her first job as an intern in sales data management at the age of 18, “six blocks from Steve Jobs.” After that, he worked as a content manager for six months ClickUp, a project management software company that is “like a billion dollar unicorn today,” he said, highlighting the learning opportunities that come with working in a fast-growing company.

While working at ClickUp, Merten created her YouTube channel called DataDash, which he originally presented as Data Science Processing and Data Analytics. Soon after, DataDash became a crypto channel after Merten made some videos on the subject. “I got a couple of hundred views and thought to myself, ‘You know what, I’ll keep going,’” he recalls.

With the bull market in full swing in 2017, Merten decided to quit her job at ClickUp to devote herself entirely to her crypto business.

Don’t act, DCA

In 2019 he expanded by founding Digifox“The one I originally started building with in 2013.” The startup includes a smartphone wallet app that users can use to trade via a Celsius plug-in and earn interest on their crypto deposits.

In the coming weeks, Digifox will be rolling out a “crypto-paid” feature that will allow people to receive part of their crypto salary right in the app. First available in the US and later in the EU and UK, employees can simply ask their HR department to transfer part of their paychecks to a Digifox-operated bank account. “Your employer doesn’t even have to know your hard-earned cryptocurrency,” explains Merten, adding that the app charges a flat fee of 1%.

“Buy crypto, but in the US I know a lot of banks freeze transactions on debit cards or bank accounts – we look at this crypto as a last resort.”

This method of buying cryptocurrencies on a regular basis is known as Dollar Cost Averaging, or DCA, and is a popular concept in the old traditional investment world. Merten says many new investors ask him “if this is a good time to buy, priced,” and recommends DCA as a risk diversification option.

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This is because the average shopper may have no way of knowing if they are buying a temporary top. If we envision an asset growing in value continuously, an investor who previously did not have a lot of capital immediately available would be better off investing $ 1,000 a month for 12 months rather than saving for a year to 12,000 USD to invest the end. That’s why I’m getting paid in Ethereum – a deal that treated me well.

“It’s a great strategy. In this case, invest passively and don’t have to worry about the market, ”says Merten. Another useful element of dollar cost averaging is that its system tends to minimize the dreaded “panic selling” that many new investors do not tolerate after their investments have depreciated.

Unlike many other channels, Merten’s DataDash discourages its followers from trading too much or entering leveraged positions despite the potential rewards. “The first rule I say is ‘don’t day trade,’” he points out, saying that passive investors have a 95 percent chance of getting higher returns. But there is one thing that can be even more dangerous than day trading – leverage.

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According to Merten, leveraged trading is the greatest danger crypto investors face today. It is very attractive to make enormous profits in a short time with a single correct call “easy” – but with great risk. Despite his warnings, leverage is viewed by many as an integral part of crypto investing, with a large number of influencers referring to leveraged trades as “positions” to distinguish them from 1: 1 “spot” holdings.

“It’s really bad when so many people get into leveraged trading – you know they are trading on derivatives platforms, and it’s a losing game for most people in general.

Time to DeFi

With the undisputed margin trading, Merten encourages users to use their cryptocurrency to work with decentralized financial solutions or DeFi. Merten believes the app’s DeFi-like functionality is important, as high gas costs on Ethereum make on-chain transactions expensive for retail investors, even if they know exactly what they are doing. “A small investor, like a $ 1,000 investor, will have a hard time paying a 5-10% fee on their trade right away,” he said.

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Gas fees rise quickly when trading tokens or adding pairs of liquidity to decentralized exchanges like Uniswap or SushiSwap. “As great as it is for someone trading in thousands, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, it means nothing to our everyday users,” said Merten. Recently, NFT mining has been blamed for the rise in gas prices.

After the cryptocurrency has entered the Digifox wallet, users can deposit the money into a profit account, where they can earn “up to 5%” interest in the same currency.

This is done via a plug-in directly into the external Celsius platform. Similar to traditional banking, depositors’ income ultimately comes from other users who choose to borrow cryptocurrencies as collateral at Celsius. “We’re trying to say it’s like a kind of savings account,” explains Merten.

“I think this is one of the few great opportunities we have in our lives in the 21st century – where you can invest in something and actually get a substantial return on investment.“

While “Celsius doesn’t have a primary insurance policy” for the user’s cryptocurrency, which it holds while paying interest, Merten said he chose the platform after researching competitors’ security logs. Competitors include BlockFi and NEXO. He hopes that in the future, the company will enable users to earn a lower amount of interest, also known as interest, in an insured pool where “a portion of the returns they give up go to the insurance fund” to cover potential losses .

He admits it is “comforting” that Celsius is 20 billion …