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[Disclaimer: I own Bitcoin and several altcoins. This is not investment advice and is provided for information only. This considers the economic case for cryptocurrency and is not a recommendation to buy. Do your own research and consult a financial advisor.]

A crypto bear market is brutal.

According to Glassnode, they last anywhere between 227 and 435 days with bitcoin drawdowns of between 75% and 84%.

In bear markets altcoins tend to fall even more, often up to 95%.

In all other markets, a bear market is normally defined as a decline of 20% or more.

However, crypto is so volatile that it can fall 20% even in a rising market. For crypto that is just a really healthy bull market correction.

Instead, for crypto, my preferred definition of a bear market is a fall below the 200 day moving average. This is a common technical analysis indicator and is a good reflection of the long term mean.

A fall below the 200 day moving average for a prolonged period of time is known as a crypto winter and, so far, these have been predictable and cyclical phenomena.

Bitcoin 200 day moving average

Anyone can make money in

An exchange is the worst place in the world you can keep your cryptocurrency. Cold storage is the best.

I would know.

Between 2014 and early 2017 I dollar cost averaged into a nice Bitcoin position.

I had a hot wallet with a little bit of Bitcoin in it. But I kept the majority on the exchange. It seemed convenient and, while I understood there was risk, it seemed such a small amount of money at the time. So I was lazy with security.

I had meant to move the funds to my wallet but had put it off because I was busy. I was changing jobs and moving cities. Custody of my Bitcoin was not high on my priority list.

When I finally got around to moving the Bitcoin from the exchange to the wallet, I logged onto the exchange and my coins were frozen. I couldn’t withdraw. Not long after the exchange disappeared.

This was the most expensive mistake of my life.

I don’t want you to make the same mistake as I did. So let me explain why you need a cold storage wallet for your cryptocurrency and why you should never keep large amounts on an exchange for any significant length

There are times in history where the government reluctantly accepts that state money has failed and the market’s money has proven superior.

One such example was in Ming China.

The government had initially banned silver and decreed that the citizens should use devaluing paper currency. Unfortunately for the authorities, the citizens continued to use silver and refused to use the paper money. Eventually the government was forced to recognise this reality and accepted that their money had failed. Ming China then went onto a silver standard.

The parallel to the present day is striking.

We live in a society with a rapidly devaluing fiat currency. There is also a rapidly rising alternative currency called Bitcoin.

We haven’t reached a tipping point yet where society at large rejects the fiat currency, but this is coming. Unless soundness and faith is restored to fiat currency, it is likely to be rejected sometime in the future.

The only questions are, when will it happen, how much of a fight will governments put up, and what money will the market turn to instead?

Like the Ming, we have silver. But we also have gold and Bitcoin. There is a strong case that Bitcoin’s superior qualities means it

Sir John Templeton is one of the world’s most successful investors

Although sadly he is not as well known as others such as Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham.

What John Templeton is most well known for was his September 1939 investment play where he took big positions on undervalued companies just as World War Two was breaking out in Europe.

Templeton used borrowed money to buy $100 worth of every stock on the US exchanges that was selling for less than $1 per share. He held the stocks for an average of four years and quadrupled his money in the process.

John Templeton is also famous as being one of the pioneers of international investment. At a time when US investors focused mostly on US markets, Templeton was investing all over the world. He searched for bargain stocks wherever he could find them.

This list is 29 things that I learned from Sir John Templeton about investing and investment strategy.

The first 16 are my quick summaries of ideas that come directly from the man himself in a very convenient short book titled 16 Rules for Investment Success.

The remaining 13 are insights that I have picked up from Templeton’s other writing or books that have

I first became a gold investor because I learned the history of it.

I learned about the thousands of years gold has been money.

I learned about the classical gold standard, Bretton Woods and how Nixon’s actions in 1971 removed the last link between our money and gold.

I came to understand that how gold has been rising ever since Nixon took that step, or rather that the dollar has been falling against gold.

Yet I wasn’t a very good investor when I made my first gold purchase. In fact, I bought right at the peak in 2011. I knew the long term gold story and I finally had some spare cash to invest, so I bought.

It turned out to be a bad financial move. I knew it had run up but I thought it was going much higher. A lot of wise heads were saying that the government stimulus in the wake of the GFC would push gold way up.

In the short term they were wrong. It corrected and I got caught out. But I still believe in the thesis that gold will go much higher because of monetary debasement.

In hindsight I just got my timing badly wrong on my first entry

The rise and fall of the Roman Empire is a cautionary tale and one that we can draw many insights from.

It’s quite natural that we look at the story of Ancient Rome and draw comparisons to our American dominated world and wonder whether a similar story will play out for us.

As Glen Bowersock wrote of the Roman Empire:

“We have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears.”

For investors in particular there is a lot to learn from the inflation in Rome that ravaged the empire towards the end.

There are parallels we can draw between the debasement of the Roman coinage and the debasement of modern fiat currencies.

We wonder, where along the curve are we?

Are we at the beginning, are we towards the end and what are the consequences going to be?

Will we go down with civil war, economic chaos and foreign invasion and into a long period of civilizational decline, like the Romans?

Or will it be more like the recent example of the British Empire, where financial and military power recedes and yet the nation remains a significant player in the

The economic problems caused by unsound money are well known and well discussed amongst financial commentators who understand the problems in our monetary system.

What is not discussed quite so widely is the social harm.

Unsound money or fiat money causes distortions in the economy and gives us the boom-bust cycle.

The steady debasement of our currency is a transfer of wealth from savers and wages earners to those who own assets. It destroys the middle class.

But it also inflames consumerism, reduces the length and quality of life, elevates the state at the expense of the family and creates a generational and class divide.

I think the reason the social harm of unsound money isn’t discussed as much is because it is not as immediately obvious as the economic harms.

It is also less fun to talk about because you can’t make investment gains from it. Talking about the economic cost of unsound money is exciting if you are making gains hand over fist in Bitcoin.

I’ve even seen people gloating on Twitter about how much they enjoy high inflation because it’s good for their portfolio.

Talking about the social problems can sometimes just be plain depressing.

However, this is something I care deeply

Benjamin Graham’s value investing principles are timeless.

I first read Graham’s book The Intelligent Investor in 2017, after seeing it recommended by several commentators and newsletter writers that I followed.

I’m glad I read it when I did, as at least I had some investing experience by then. I think it did more good for me then than if I had been a total beginner, where some of it would have been lost on me.

I wouldn’t say I was completely blown away. But I think that was primarily because many of the the investors and commentators that I followed subscribed to Graham’s philosophy, so I had already imbibed much of that thinking.

Still, it did have a profound impact on me and crystallised some important concepts.

There is something about taking the time to read a book over a number of days or weeks that helps important ideas settle deep within your psyche, rather than the cursory exposure you get from reading a short article such as this.

Nevertheless, here are the key things I learned from Benjamin Graham about value investing in a quick and easy to read format.

But seriously, read The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis if you want to

Hard asset stocks are a convenient way to get exposure to the underlying asset and can be either defensive or a great speculation.

What you are looking for are equities that own a lot of tangible assets and whose valuation is primarily composed of that hard asset exposure.

This is significantly different from something like tech stocks, which often have little in the way of hard assets.

Hard assets are things like real estate, farmland, gold and silver, infrastructure and transportation. There is some tangible physical wealth that you can touch and feel with intrinsic value.

Stocks on the other hand are paper assets or soft assets. Buying stocks does not allow you to hold tangible wealth in your hands.

They are tradable financial instruments that merely represent a claim of ownership; they don’t have any other functionality.

So if you want genuine hard asset protection, you should buy hard assets.

For example, it is always recommended to build a position in physical gold before you start considering purchasing shares in gold mining stocks.

However, if you are happy with how you are positioned in hard assets you might consider investing in stocks with hard asset exposure.

Even though you are buying a paper claim, you are in

The assignat of the French Revolutionary period is one of the worst paper money disasters in history.

It started with the failure of the state’s finances.

In 1789, the French monarchy found itself in a perilous financial position.

In the preceding decades attempts to bring the state’s financial position under control had failed and France had a crushing debt and a massive deficit.

A deficit of 41.7 million livres in 1781 exploded to 116.1 million livres in 1789.

Given that the French monarchy did not have fiat money, they could only increase their revenue through taxation or borrowing.

Tax reform was needed to save the monarchy but because of political gridlock it didn’t happen. Throughout the squabbling of the 1780s the government continued to borrow. That is until they exhausted their ability to borrow any more.

With no ability to raise new taxes and public pressure ruling out the option of bankruptcy, the Crown’s only remaining option was to turn to paper money.

Better financial management, or rather a willingness to confront the difficult political decisions that better financial management would entail, would have restored confidence and perhaps avoided the subsequent events that became the French Revolution.

But sadly good financial sense did not prevail.

Unable to solve the financial