11 years of finance content. 2 Millions Community Founder of SmartViewAI. No. 1 at Binance Blockchain Awards 2025. Crypto, stocks, money habits. Not advice.
Gold hit $5,608 an ounce in January. Today it is around $4,200, about 25% below that peak.
Bitcoin hit $126,198 last October. Today it is around $83,000, about 34% below that peak.
Every week someone asks me: gold or Bitcoin? After this year, I think it is the wrong question.
Both are in a drawdown. Both are called safe havens, and both fell while the 10 year yield climbed above 5%. Both are still far above where they were three years ago.
The right question is: what job do you want each one to do?
Gold is the slow one. It protects purchasing power over decades, it does not care about your timeline, and it will never 10x.
Bitcoin is the fast one. It carries the same scarcity idea with far more volatility, far more upside, and the real possibility of a 50% drawdown in any given year.
In my own allocation they do different jobs, so they do not compete. The mistake is holding either one with the expectations of the other.
Which one do you hold, and what job did you give it?
Why does a decision taken in Washington move Nifty in Mumbai and Bitcoin everywhere, within the same hour?
One word: liquidity. But let me unpack it, because the mechanics matter.
When the Fed raises rates, a US government bond pays more. The 10 year is above 5.3% today, the highest since 2002. For a global fund, that is a risk free 5% in dollars. Every other asset in the world now has to beat it, after currency risk.
So the fund sells what it considers risky and far away. Emerging market stocks and crypto are usually first in line. That is the 4 lakh crore of foreign selling in Indian stocks this year, and the quiet ETF flows in Bitcoin, coming from the same decision.
The rupee feels it too. Dollars leaving India mean a weaker rupee, which makes imports and oil costlier, which keeps Indian inflation sticky, which limits what RBI can cut. One decision, three markets.
It cuts both ways. When the Fed pauses or cuts, the same money comes back, usually faster than it left.
This is why I watch the Fed even though I do not hold a single US bond. Its decisions set the price of money, and everything I own is priced in money.
The next decision is on Oct 28, nine days away. Last week's CPI and the bank earnings are what the market is pricing right now.
Do you follow the Fed, or do you think it is only for US traders?
DCA, dollar cost averaging, is the most recommended strategy in crypto and the most misunderstood.
What it is: buying a fixed amount at a fixed interval, no matter the price. 5,000 rupees of Bitcoin every month, on the 5th, for years. The point is to remove timing, and your emotions, from the decision.
What it is not: a way to buy the bottom. A DCA buyer bought at $126K last October, at $58K this spring, and at $83K now. The average is the whole idea. If you pause when it is red and double when it is green, that is not DCA, that is trading with extra steps.
Where it fails: 1. On the wrong asset. Averaging down into a coin that goes to zero just means you lost money more regularly. 2. Without a time horizon. DCA needs years, not weeks. Over 3 months it is just a few random buys. 3. Without a life stop. If the money is needed for rent, the plan is wrong, not the market.
DCA into things you would be happy to hold through a 50% drop. That rules out most coins, and that is the point.
Do you DCA, and into what? Curious how many are doing it with something other than Bitcoin.
A founder note, because this is why I built what I built.
A few years ago my portfolio looked great on the exchange app. Big green number. I felt rich.
Then I did the exercise I now recommend to everyone. I added up what the number did not show: unrealised losses in coins I had stopped looking at, 1% TDS locked with the tax department, the 30% tax due on gains, trading fees for the year, and the coins sitting on exchanges I no longer trusted.
My real number was a lot lower than the screen. Nothing had crashed. I had simply never looked.
That was the day SmartViewAI started, first as a spreadsheet for myself, then as a tool for the people who kept asking me the same question: what am I actually worth after all of this?
Three questions get you most of the way without any tool: 1. What is my portfolio worth after tax and fees, not before? 2. How much of it sits in things I could not explain to my family? 3. If I could not log in for 30 days, what would break?
Your real number is rarely the one on the screen. Knowing it is the start of every good decision after it.
Have you ever calculated your after tax, after fee number? What did you find?
The Fed is now in its blackout period before the Oct 27 and 28 meeting. No speeches, no hints. The market has to price the decision from the data it already has: a September hike, a weak jobs report, and Wednesday's CPI.
Tuesday is Dussehra. Indian markets are closed, so Nifty gets a day off while the rest of the world trades. A gap on Wednesday morning is possible if something big happens on Tuesday.
Tuesday evening Netflix reports, Wednesday Tesla. Big tech earnings set the mood for risk assets for the next two weeks, and Bitcoin has traded closely with the Nasdaq this year.
Crypto specific: ETF flows were negative for most of the first half of October, and Mt. Gox has until Oct 31 to finish repaying creditors. Both known, both priced in some way, neither a surprise.
My plan: fewer trades, more reading. The Fed decision is nine days away and the market usually drifts into it rather than trends.
Happy Dussehra in advance. What is the one event you are watching this week?
Three questions I ask before buying any coin. If I cannot answer all three in plain words, I do not buy. Simple as that.
1. Who needs this, and what do they pay for it? If the only answer is "people who want the price to go up", the coin has no customers, only traders. That works until it does not.
2. Who is selling to me, and when? Check the unlock schedule, the team allocation, and the FDV. If 70% of supply is still locked, I am not early. I am exit liquidity with a delay.
3. What would make me sell? A price, a time, or a change in the story. Written down before the buy, not decided during a 30% candle.
Nine out of ten coins fail question one. Most of the rest fail question two. The ones that pass all three are rare, and even then I size as if I could be wrong, because I often am.
It is not a formula for finding winners. It is a filter for avoiding the obvious losers, and in crypto that is most of the game.
Which question do you skip most often? For me it was always number three.
Two friends, same fund, same amount: 10,000 rupees a month at 12% a year.
Rahul starts at 25 and stops at 35. Ten years of SIPs, then nothing. He invested 12 lakh in total.
Amit starts at 35 and goes until 60. Twenty five years of SIPs. He invested 30 lakh in total.
At 60: Rahul has roughly 4.6 crore. Amit has roughly 1.9 crore.
Rahul invested less than half the money and ended with more than double. The only difference is the ten years his money spent compounding before Amit even started.
I am not saying stop at 35. I am saying the most expensive thing in investing is the year you did not start. Not the fund you picked, not the expense ratio, not the entry price.
The same math runs in crypto. A small monthly Bitcoin buy started in 2020 beat almost every clever trade made since.
"I will start when I earn more" is the sentence that costs the most. Start with 500 rupees if that is what you have. The amount can grow. The lost years cannot come back.
What age did you start, and what would you tell your younger self?
Past returns do not promise future returns. Education only, not financial advice.
Before your first SIP, before your first Bitcoin, two things come first. Neither will ever make you money, and both decide whether your investing survives.
Term life insurance. Pure cover, no investment mixed in. Rule of thumb: 10 to 15 times your yearly income, running until your dependents no longer depend on you. A healthy 30 year old can usually get a 1 crore cover for roughly the cost of two restaurant dinners a month.
Health insurance. Your own, even if your employer gives you one, because that one disappears with the job. A 10 lakh base cover with a top up is the common starting point for a family, and it costs far less than people expect.
Why first: one hospital bill without cover does not come out of your savings account. It comes out of your investments, at whatever price the market is at that day. I have seen people sell Bitcoin at the bottom to pay a hospital. Insurance is what stops that sale.
Skip the plans that mix insurance with investment. Keep the two jobs separate and both get done better.
Do you have your own health cover, or only the one from work?
Education only, not financial or insurance advice.
Morgan Housel wrote that wealth is what you do not see. The car not bought, the upgrade not taken, the trade not placed.
I think about this line every time a market rallies.
In a bull run, everyone can see the Lamborghini posts. Nobody can see the person who sold 20% into strength, paid off a loan, and kept the rest in an index fund. That person does not post. They do not need to.
Being rich is visible income. Being wealthy is invisible options: the ability to say no to a job, a client, or a trade, because you do not need the money this month.
The strange part is that the invisible one is what most people actually want when they say they want to be rich.
My rule since reading that book: every big win gets split. Some goes to the future me who cannot see it yet. Then I spend the rest without guilt.
What is one thing you chose not to buy this year, and do not regret?
Chainalysis released its 2026 adoption index earlier this month and one number stood out to me.
Between July 2025 and June 2026 the crypto market lost roughly half its value. On chain economic activity in that same period slipped from $9.5 trillion to $9.4 trillion. A 1.6% dip.
Prices crashed. Usage did not.
What grew: cross border stablecoin transfers were up 77% to about $220 billion, and the average transfer was around $3,000 in size. That is not hedge funds. That is people sending money home, paying suppliers, and saving in dollars.
India dropped from first to sixth in the overall index after three years at the top, but still ranks second in the world for total flows through services and third for on chain balances. The activity did not leave. Other countries grew faster.
Why this matters for anyone holding through a correction: price is what speculators think today. Usage is what the network is worth tomorrow. When the second keeps rising while the first falls, the gap usually closes one way or the other.
I do not know when. I just know which side of that gap I would rather be on.
Does on chain data change how you see this correction, or is price the only signal you trust?
Two numbers I check before I even open the chart of a coin: market cap and FDV.
Market cap: price times the coins that exist today. FDV, fully diluted valuation: price times every coin that will ever exist.
Why it matters: if a coin has a $500 million market cap and a $5 billion FDV, 90% of the supply has not hit the market yet. Those coins are coming, through unlocks, team vesting and emissions. Each one is future selling pressure that the chart cannot show you.
A quick read I use: Market cap close to FDV: most supply is out, the price reflects reality. Market cap under 30% of FDV: you are early, and so are the sellers who get coins for free later.
This is why so many low cap gems go up 3x and then bleed for a year. The price was fine. The supply was not.
Check it on any tracker in ten seconds. It will not pick winners for you. It will save you from a few obvious losers.
Do you look at FDV before buying, or just the price and the chart?
The 50/30/20 rule is the simplest budget I know. Here is how I adapt it for someone who also holds crypto.
50% needs: rent, food, EMIs, insurance, transport. If this crosses 60%, the problem is not your investing, it is your fixed costs.
30% wants: eating out, travel, gadgets, subscriptions. Guilt free, as long as it stays inside the line.
20% future: this is where the twist comes in.
Out of that 20%, I split it like this: 10% to boring compounding: index funds, EPF or PPF, SIPs. 5% to Bitcoin and large caps, bought monthly, no timing. 5% to the emergency fund until it reaches 6 months of expenses, then to whichever bucket needs it.
Altcoins and trading do not get a budget line. They come out of the 30% wants, because that is what they are for most people: entertainment with a chance of profit.
Harsh, maybe. But it keeps one bad month from touching the money that actually builds your life.
What does your split look like right now, honestly?
Since June you can trade tokenized US stocks on Binance. They are called bStocks. A quick, honest explainer, because I get asked about them every week.
What they are: BEP-20 tokens on BNB Chain, each backed 1:1 by real shares held with a regulated custodian. Nvidia, Tesla, Micron, Circle and SanDisk were the first five. You can buy a fraction from about $5, trade 24 hours a day, and even hold them in your own wallet.
What they are not: shares. You do not own the stock, you own a token that tracks it. No voting rights. Dividends and splits are handled as adjustments to the token, not as cash in a brokerage account.
Where it gets interesting: a stock that trades 24 hours a day reacts to news on a Saturday night. That is a feature if you want to react, and a risk if you were hoping to sleep through the weekend.
Where it needs care: availability depends on your country and the exchange's rules, and the tax treatment of a token that tracks a stock is not the same everywhere. Check both before you touch it.
I am watching this closely because it quietly merges the two worlds my audience lives in: stocks and crypto.
Would you hold a tokenized stock, or do you want the real share in a demat account?
Every six months S&P publishes a scorecard called SPIVA. It asks one simple question: how many professional fund managers beat the plain index?
Latest numbers:
In the US, 67% of large cap active funds trailed the S&P 500 in the first half of 2026. Over 10 years it is 83%. Over 15 years it is 90%.
In India, 73% of large cap funds underperformed their benchmark over 10 years.
These are full time professionals with teams, data terminals and access to management. Nine out of ten lose to a fund that simply buys everything and sits still.
What I do with this: the core of my stock money sits in index funds. A small satellite portion is for picking stocks, because I enjoy it and because I accept that it is a hobby with a cost.
Core and explore. Boring core, small explore.
Crypto has its own version of this: most altcoin portfolios lose to simply holding Bitcoin over a full cycle.
Are you a core and explore person, or all in on picking?
How often you open your portfolio app tells you more about your plan than your returns do.
Every few minutes: you are not investing, you are watching a slot machine with your own money inside. Every tick feels like information. Almost none of it is.
Several times a day: you have positions you are not sure about. If you were sure, you would not need to check.
Once a day: fine for an active trader with a journal and a plan. Dangerous for a long term investor, because roughly half of all days are red, and each one invites a bad decision.
Once a week: the sweet spot for most people. Enough to rebalance, catch a mistake, and notice news that matters. Not enough to panic.
Once a month: what my index funds get. They are doing fine without me.
When I built a tracker for my own portfolio, the feature I used most was not the chart. It was the one that showed how many times I had opened the app that day. The number was embarrassing. It went down after that.
How many times did you check today? Honest answers only.