A Simple Guide to Using GCrypto

This post is to teach you how to buy and sell crypto assets using GCrypto in GCash.

Disclaimer: This post aims to educate, and not to give financial advice. Investments have different risks and it is up to the investor to do due diligence to make their own decisions regarding his money.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Investing

Investing is basically setting aside some cash to make it grow. This is different from saving. We are not just storing the money, we are making money work for us.

Before, when you needed to invest, you also needed to pay for middlemen or for services that act like middlemen before you can invest.

But now, as the Internet makes things interconnected, it also makes investments available quickly 24/7. Investing has never been as accessible as it is currently.

However, this speed has never translated easily with our fellow Filipinos. Many of our countrymen are not Internet savvy and don’t even have a credit card or a savings account to start with. What more when it comes to investment vehicles like mutual funds, stocks, real estate, or time deposits?

What is interest?

Interest is the amount charged by anyone giving a loan or doing work with money. It is usually expressed in terms of percentage or rate.

For example, there are deposit products with a 4% APR or annual percentage rate. This means that the deposits will gain 4% yearly.

However, it can be expressed differently to give a false impression, i.e., 4% APR for a certain month actually means a smaller rate because you need to divide the 4% by 12 because there are 12 months in a year.

In a nutshell,
4% = 0.04 per year / 12 months in a year = 0.0033 per month (or 0.33% per month)

So, a Php 1000 investment will only earn Php 3.30 in that particular month, less if you take account of taxes.

What is simple interest?

Simple interest is a one-time compounding of your principal with a certain rate. Usually, we can see this with credit cards or other simple loans.

Here is a more in-depth explanation:

The formula of total amount due to simple interest is:
A = P (1 + rt)

where:
A is the total amount gained
P is the principal amount (or the original amount you've invested)
r is the interest rate (or the total percentage / 100)
t is the time your money is in the investment, it can be any unit of time (years, months, days, etc)

An example is the interest in GCredit. If you used GCredit to pay 500 pesos to a merchant, and you plan to pay it off the week after. How much interest in total do you have to pay?

Given:
Principal = 500
r = 5% = 0.05
t = 7 / 30 days

So the total amount due after 7 days is:
500 x (1 + (0.05) x 7/30) = 505.83

What is compound interest?

Compound interest is the backbone of investing. This means that once you’ve provided the principal, once interest sets in, this total amount is reinvested and in turn, this makes the interest bigger. Once this goes on for a while, this can be big enough that you can even live off the interest as a type of recurring income.

Here is an in-depth explanation:

The actual formula of compound interest is:
A = P (1+(r/n))^nt

where:
A is the total amount gained
P is the principal amount (or the original amount you've invested)
r is the interest rate (or the total percentage / 100)
n is the no of times the principal is compounded per unit t
t is the time your money is in the investment, it can be any unit of time (years, months, days, etc)

As a real world example, given the annual interest rates of a certain fund is fixed at 8% and you've put in Php 1000 at the start, what's the total amount after 3 years?

t = 3 years
n = 1 as interest is compounded after every year

A = P (1+r/n)^3(n)
A = 1000 (1+(0.08/1))^3(1)
A = 1000 * 1.256
A = 1256

So after 3 years, your investment is worth Php 1256 with a gain of Php 256

What are some terms used in investing?

Most of the time, there are a lot of terms used in investing that are out of the reach of any beginner. Here are some terms encountered, and I will try to explain each as simply as I can each term:

Stocks – part ownership of a company; the stock market allows you to buy stocks of different publicly traded companies and the value of each share of stock usually also represents the value of the company as a whole
Shares – can be summarized as the smallest “part”, so shares of a stock are the smallest unit of ownership
Bonds – company-owned debt, some debts are more valuable than others; for example, big companies more often than not take responsibility to pay their debts than others
Treasuries – government-owned debt; these are considered safe investments as they are backed by the government and will likely not disappear soon
- Some treasuries include:
  - Treasury bills – short-term debt (less than a year)
  - Treasury notes – medium-term debt (more than a year, less than 10 years)
  - Treasury bonds – long-term debt (more than 10 years, may stretch to 30 years or more)
Equities – part ownership of a company; the main difference is stocks are publicly traded and the value would most likely fluctuate day-per-day, while equities are privately owned and the value is not easily computed
Securities – is an umbrella of any type of ownership or debt; it may include shares, bonds, equities, treasuries, and others
Dividends – distribution of profits shared to investors in the company, usually divided by the number of shares that investor owns; some companies invest their profits to themselves, others share dividends
Fixed-income – it means it provides a fixed amount of income per period

What are investment funds?

Investment funds are funds that are pooled (or bunched together) from different investors and professionally managed by a manager or company. Each investor gets a share of the pool (or bunch), and each value of this share is usually called a NAVPU (Net Asset Value Per Unit), which represents his part of the investment. These funds come in many forms:

Mutual Funds – funds that consist of stocks and bonds, usually managed by a company
Unit Investment Trust Funds (UITFs) – funds that contain stocks, bonds, and securities (similar to mutual funds) but these are often provided by banks
Index Funds – funds that represent a certain segment of a market, usually the stock market
Feeder Funds – funds that manage other types of investments; usually these investments are hard to get into (for example, overseas stock markets or hedge funds)
Hedge Funds – funds that employ alternative strategies to earn high returns, usually exclusive for high net worth investors

So when a fund appreciates in value, the NAVPU also goes up. When an investor sells his share, then the difference between the NAVPU price he bought and when he sold consolidates to become a profit for him. On the downside, if an investor sells his share when the NAVPU is below the price he bought it, then it becomes a loss.

What are the different types of investments in mutual funds?

Mutual funds are managed by a company. How they make different types of mutual funds depends on the mixture of different investments:

Bonds – basically a loan of a large known company that pays out a fixed income over time
Stocks – units of ownership of a public company; you can buy and sell these in the stock market
Government Securities – loans owed by the government

How safe are government securities?

Government securities are some of the safest, most conservative investments because these are backed by the government, and governments don’t just disappear overnight. They also do their best to pay off their dues even if it means they’ll print cash to do it.

How safe are bonds?

Bonds are also conservative investments because these are often loans by large, stable (“blue chip”) companies – they need cash to fund their expansions and projects so this is where they source their funds. These are usually also backed by big banks, so it is in their best interest to pay these loans.

How safe are stocks?

Stocks are considered aggressive investments because the price of the stock is based on the market. And the market represents people buying or selling, often based on their feelings and short-sighted information. Unfortunately, feelings are not logical and information can also originate from hearsay and rumor. This fuels its unpredictability with really high gains, but also very high losses. This also makes it profitable with the right mindset at the right timeframe (like 7 years or more).

One big difference between stocks and bonds is the ownership factor – if things go bad financially, the lenders are the first to be paid, as obligated by law. Last are the shareholders.

How do these investments factor into different types of mutual funds?

Since different investments have different risks, mutual fund companies combine one or more of these to form a mutual fund that leverages different mixtures of these different types of risks.

For example, there are mutual funds that are low risk, and these usually consist of bonds and government securities. There are funds that are balanced, and these are usually stocks mixed with some bonds. There are also funds that are high risk and typically these mainly consist of stocks.

Current State of Cryptocurrencies

I’ve talked about cryptocurrencies before. And I’ve always argued that cryptocurrencies have a place in one’s own portfolio. Even if you have a few tokens, and even if we tend to forget we have them, as long as the coin/token has utility it has the potential to become valuable in the future.

I’m not talking about the tokens that rely on hype to shoot their value up to the moon. I mean we should buy coins or tokens that have stood the test of time and have a valid use case to prop up their price. There is an argument that currently the safest cryptocurrencies to invest in are Bitcoin and Ethereum only.

With the boom of decentralized finance last 2022, it seems that there are ways to invest your assets into different investment smart contracts, with higher yields than your normal digital bank rates.

Unfortunately, this “crypto winter” seems to be specifically long and arduous, ever since the crash of the LUNA token and the FTX Exchange, and we have encountered many other events lately that make the average crypto investors go away.

Now it is best to keep on investing via cost averaging with select coins or tokens we are sure to have utility during this winter season and especially after.

What is GCrypto?

GCrypto is a cryptocurrency trading product built into GCash. It allows you to buy and sell supported coins/tokens and build up your portfolio from within GCash itself.

Despite the current bearish environment, GCash has not let out one bit and has decided to work with PDAX to push for this GCrypto product. I had written a post before about how to buy and sell coins in PDAX and now since they’ve partnered directly, it makes onboarding users and handling transactions easier.

My recommendation on using GCrypto is you can use this to buy and sell crypto assets, but you should have your own separate crypto wallet. Centralized exchange wallets like PDAX do not have your ownership. If something goes wrong with the exchange, there is no recovery of your assets.

What are the requirements for opening a GCrypto account?

You need to be at least 18 years of age, have fully verified with GCash, and have an active email account.

How to create a GCrypto account?

Currently, GCrypto isn’t released in full to the public, but there are some users who are allowed to open accounts in phases. Once it is available you will be able to proceed with account opening.

Registering in GCrypto

From the main GCash page, click on View All. Then scroll down to the Enjoy section and select GCrypto.
On the opt-in page, click on Agree. Once you’re eligible to open a GCrypto account, you will be able to click on “Get Started”.
The registration page is short as you only need to input some details and investment experience.
The last page is the Terms and Conditions page which you need to agree with to proceed.
Once done, you will be able to see the GCrypto main page.

How do I top-up or withdraw my GCrypto wallet?

GCrypto works as an exchange, so you first need to top-up funds to be able to buy your crypto assets. Unlike GStocks and GFunds though, you can top-up and withdraw your funds immediately.

Topping up your GCrypto Wallet

From the GCrypto main page, click on “Top-Up Your Trading Wallet”.
On the top-up page, enter your amount and click continue. This will lead you to the payment page where you need to confirm.
Once confirmed, your trading wallet will be officially topped up.

Withdrawing from your GCrypto Wallet

From the GCrypto main page, click on Withdraw.
On the Withdraw page, enter the amount to be withdrawn and click Continue.
You will be receiving an OTP in your email. Enter the 6-digit number and click on Submit Code.
Once a withdrawal is successful, you will be seeing a success page.

Wallet and Transaction Limits

This also covers most of the limits of all cash-in channels, including over-the-counter, machine, online, Paypal, Payoneer, and remittances.

Additionally, the outgoing limit also applies to financial services like GSave, GInvest, and GInsure, as you are putting money into investments and/or insurance.

Detail	Basic	Fully Verified	Fully Verified with Linked Accounts (GCash Plus)	Fully Verified Minor (GCash Jr)	Platinum ( enrolled in a Globe Platinum Plan)
Wallet Size	Php 10,000	Php 100,000	Php 500,000	Php 50,000	Php 1,000,000
Daily Incoming Limit	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Monthly Incoming Limit	Php 5,000	Php 100,000	Php 500,000	Php 10,000	Php 1,000,000
Daily Outgoing Limit	N/A	Php 100,000	Php 100,000	Php 10,000	Php 500,000
Monthly Outgoing Limit	Php 5,000	N/A	N/A	Php 10,000	Php 1,000,000
Yearly Outgoing Limit	N/A	N/A	N/A	Php 100,000	N/A

The linked accounts here pertain to BPI, UnionBank, and Payoneer accounts, with GSave and GInvest placements.

If you encounter GCash limit exceeded errors, you will need to wait for next month for your limits to reset.

How do I buy or sell crypto assets in GCrypto?

In GCrypto, each crypto asset also has its own wallet. After topping up, you can now easily buy or sell supported cryptocurrencies within GCrypto as you have a crypto wallet for each asset.

GCrypto/PDAX supported crypto assets

To explain in a nutshell, the difference between “coin” and “token” is that coins are the main units of information in a blockchain. Any transaction or information is tracked by coins. Tokens, on the other hand, are real-world applications that are used on top of a blockchain, and they are supported by the coins in that chain.

Tokens are created so that projects don’t need to build a new blockchain from scratch to keep track of transactions and information. They can just ride on existing blockchains.

In the table below, if the crypto asset has the same name as the blockchain, it is a coin of that blockchain. Otherwise, it’s a token.

Crypto Asset	Blockchain	Description
Ethereum (ETH)	Ethereum	The pioneer for computing blockchains and it is the most used one; a lot of tokens ride on top of this
Bitcoin (BTC)	Bitcoin	The pioneer for all crypto assets; its coin is used mainly as a currency and is the most well-known and mainstream asset
Solana (SOL)	Solana	A blockchain alternative to Ethereum and is known for very high-speed transactions
Avalanche (AVAX)	Avalanche	A blockchain alternative to Ethereum and known for speed and security
USD Coin (USDC)	Ethereum	A USD stablecoin token in Ethereum, meaning its value is pegged to the US Dollar
Tether (USDT)	Ethereum	Another well-known USD stablecoin token in Ethereum
Binance Coin (BNB)	BNB	A coin that is tied with Binance, the largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange; known for its speed and enables Binance users to utilize their platform in many inventive ways
Cardano (ADA)	Cardano	A blockchain alternative to Ethereum and seeks to improve on Ethereum’s issues
Polkadot (DOT)	Polkadot	A blockchain alternative that uses mini-blockchains to facilitate scaling
Litecoin (LTC)	Litecoin	An original fork (“copy that diverged from”) to Bitcoin, and is the silver to Bitcoin’s gold; generally cheaper and faster than Bitcoin
Uniswap (UNI)	Ethereum	A decentralized finance (de-fi) platform mainly used as a decentralized exchange; you can “swap” tokens with other tokens in the ETH blockchain
Polygon (MATIC)	Ethereum	This project aims to interconnect different blockchains within the ETH ecosystem; basically having other chains with their own governance and functions
Chainlink (LINK)	Ethereum	Implements oracles, or systems that track data outside of the blockchain; examples are financial data, sports data, etc
Stellar (XLM)	Stellar	A blockchain that is known for very, very low fees and is good for micropayments
Bitcoin Cash (BCH)	Bitcoin Cash	A fork of Bitcoin itself when there was a disagreement about handling how transactions were validated; still works mostly similarly to Bitcoin but is not as popular
Axie Infinity (AXS)	Ronin	The Ronin sidechain is a blockchain built on top of ETH to easily support the Axie Infinity game
AAVE	Ethereum	This is a de-fi platform or lending and borrowing assets in the ETH platform
The Graph (GRT)	Ethereum	Allows to get data across all projects inside the ETH ecosystem; makes searching data easier as different projects are usually silos in themselves
Basic Attention Token (BAT)	Ethereum	Aims to democratize attention sharing; the main objective is to distribute advertising money efficiently across readers and publishers
Enjin (ENJ)	Ethereum	Makes management of virtual goods easier; known for making non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and game-related goods and collectibles
Sushiswap (SUSHI)	Ethereum	Another popular de-fi decentralized exchange; a fork of Uniswap that has different features from its parent
Smooth Love Potion (SLP)	Ronin	The in-game currency of the Axie Infinity game; allows you to breed Axies which is a core part of the game itself

Here is the list of crypto assets in GCrypto

Buying a crypto asset in GCrypto

From the GCrypto main page, look for the asset you plan to buy and click on it.
From the asset page, click on Buy at the bottom. You will be taken to the Buy page.
On the Buy page, input either the peso amount or the AVAX amount you are planning to buy. Click on Get Quote button to get the quoted price. Take note that this price is held for 10 seconds only. If you take too long, you will need to get another quote. Click on the Buy button.
You will see that your Buy Order is successful. When you go back to the GCrypto main page your assets will update.

Selling a crypto asset in GCrypto

From the GCrypto main page, look for the asset you plan to sell and click on it.
From the asset page, click on Sell at the bottom. You will be taken to the Sell page.
On the Sell page, input either the peso amount or the AVAX amount you are planning to sell. Click on Get Quote button to get the quoted price. Take note that this price is held for 10 seconds only. If you take too long, you will need to get another quote. Click on the Sell button.
You will see that your Sell Order is successful. When you go back to the GCrypto main page your assets will update.

How do I send or receive crypto assets in GCrypto?

In GCrypto, as each crypto asset also has its own wallet, you can also send and receive assets in their designated wallets.

Take note that sending and receiving crypto assets has its own risks:

You need to get the address right, as there’s no way to get it back.
You also need to make sure you’re using the proper blockchain to send or receive assets.
You should take into account the transaction fees as they can eat into your asset value. Ethereum is notorious for having high transaction fees.
Lastly, transaction time differs greatly between blockchains. One of the slowest blockchains currently is Bitcoin as a transaction can take 1-1.5 hrs to validate.

Sending crypto assets to another wallet from GCrypto

Go to the crypto asset page from within GCrypto. Click on the Send button.
On the next page, input the amount of crypto asset you are planning to send. It has a corresponding PHP Value below the field.
Enter the address of the recipient, better use the scanner to scan the QR code of the address to minimize mistakes.
Tick on the disclaimer and click Send. On the next page, review the data and confirm.
As the last step, you will need to doubly confirm by inputting the OTP from your email address. Once done, the sending should succeed.

Receiving crypto assets in GCrypto

Receiving is easier as you only need the QR code or the address to receive assets. Take note that the sending leg of the transaction needs more effort and care. Once the transfer is done, you can wait for the assets to arrive in your specific crypto asset wallet.

How can I check my Transaction History in GCrypto?

You can check all your transactions, even send and receive ones in the Transaction History. It’s at the bottom part of the GCrypto main page.

Summary

I talked about the different features of GCrypto and how you can top-up and withdraw from your wallet, as well as buy, sell, send, and receive crypto assets from their respective wallets.