Cryptocurrency: A Source Of Passive Income

In order to understand how crypto can become a source of passive income, we must first understand or define what passive income is.

What is Passive Income?

Passive income is earnings derived from a rental property, limited partnership or other enterprise in which a person is not actively involved. As with active income, passive income is usually taxable. However, it is often treated differently by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Portfolio income is considered passive income by some analysts, so dividends and interest would therefore be considered passive.

Passive income is a big step for cryptocurrency: it’s about time that people use digital assets productively. There are options that vary in time-intensity to fit one’s investor capacity and crypto needs at the same time.

Cryptocurrencies are complicated so you need to make the point that it could be very easy. It’s common knowledge that institutional investors, specifically from CME, are increasingly embracing the world of crypto. As far as passive income is concerned, institutional clients may be interested in these types of earnings in which case certain conditions are met. For example, the return on investment should be at one level or higher than the return on investment instruments in the classical market. At the same time, risk level must not exceed fiat market risks. Otherwise, investments will be deemed as risky and may be of interest only to highly speculative hedge funds that specialize in this domain.

Staking isthe simplest way to earn passive income, as the market pays you for holding cryptocurrencies for a certain period of time. It offers an investor a potential ROI which is more predictable than others and no investment in hardware is required. Technically, staking means a user stakes his coins to “forge” blocks by maintaining a wallet or node. When staking your coins, investors usually go through a lock-up period while voting — rules on this vary from project to project. After voting, investors get their coins back as well as the staking reward (up to 30% of the coins put in stack). Staking has been misrepresented as the equivalent of a bond in cryptocurrencies. In reality, it is much more of an instrument to participate in the corporate governance of a project and getting paid for it. As mentioned earlier, you don’t need mining hardware because staking is fulfilled via e-wallets.

Blockchain has two layers: application and implementation. The lightning network belongs to the implementation layer or Layer 2. The owner of lightning has the ability to quickly process a lot of transactions. This method does not offer an immediate return on investment; however, they offer transaction fees. Lightning network nodes have strong potential: they are expected to grow in demand within the market. So, if you invest in lightning nodes, your returns will increase in line with their usage maximization.

Here everything starts with setting up automated lending on a crypto exchange platform. AI is used to manage lending operations. Again, the income depends on the amount of your holdings: the more you own, the more AI works for you, and ultimately, the more your passive income is. While the process of lending is fully automated, an investor can take control of parameters — loans can be varied in size and length.

For beginners, here are a few tips to make cryptocurrency a profitable investment.

First of all, always assess the risks cold-headed. You should never invest in an asset if you have heard about or just because it is “hype”.

Secondly, rumours in the cryptocurrency market should be carefully filtered. There is no need to jump on every headline risk before properly checking the news provider and if the story has legs.

Finally, work with credible exchanges — your prudence matters a lot for your own safety and the stability of the entire ecosystem.

Psychology of Financial Markets

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Market psychology refers to the prevailing sentiment of financial market participants at any one point in time. Investor sentiment can and frequently drives market performance in directions at odds with fundamentals. For instance, if investors suddenly lose confidence and decide to pull back, markets can fall.

Greed, fear, expectations, and circumstances are all factors that contribute to markets’ overall investing mentality or sentiment. The ability of these states of mind to trigger periodic “risk-on” and “risk-off,” in other words boom and bust cycles in financial markets is well documented. Often these shifts in market behaviour are referred to as “animal spirits” taking hold. The expression comes from John Maynard Keynes’ description in his 1936 book, “The Theory of Employment, Interest, And Money.” Writing after the Great Depression, he describes animal spirits as a “spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction.”

While conventional financial theory, namely the efficient market hypothesis, described situations in which all the players in the market behave rationally, not accounting for the emotional aspect of the market can sometimes lead to unexpected outcomes that can’t be predicted by simply looking at the fundamentals. In other words, theories of market psychology are at odds with the belief that markets are rational.

THEORIES AND TRADING

Some types of trading and or investing approaches do not rely on fundamental analysis to assess opportunities. For instance, technical analysts use trends, patterns and other indicators to assess the market’s current psychological state in order to predict whether the market is heading in an upward or downward direction. Trend-following quantitative trading strategies employed by hedge funds are an example of investing techniques that rely in part on taking advantage of shifts in market psychology, exploiting signals, to generate profits.

Studies have looked at the impact of market psychology on performance and investment returns. Economist Amos Tversky and psychologist and Nobel prizewinner Daniel Kahneman were the first to challenge both accepted economic and stock market performance theories that humans are rational decision-makers and that financial markets reflect publicly available and relevant information in prices (so that it is impossible to beat the market). In doing so, they pioneered the field of behavioral economics (also called behavioral finance). Since then, their published theories and studies on systematic errors in human decision-making stemming from cognitive biases including loss aversion, recency bias, and anchoring have come to be widely accepted and applied to investing, trading, and portfolio management strategies.

PSYCHOLOGY AND CRYPTOCURRENCY

Psychology has a huge effect not only on how we use cryptocurrency but the rate of its adoption in the general marketplace. Understanding these factors can give you an edge in cryptocurrency trading.

While the psychology of traditional investments is well-known and has been comprehensively studied, there are many key differences in the emerging cryptocurrency trading. Still more psychological barriers exist for a widespread crypto adoption in the marketplace. We’ll take a look at some of these different factors, starting with investment in general.

One of the number-one pieces of investing advice you’ll ever hear is ‘don’t invest based on emotion.“ You’ve probably heard that before if you even have a passing interest in investment, but you may not have stopped to think about why.

Statistics show that the majority of people trading financial instruments in any given year lose money. But what separates them from those who consistently gain? The answer is complicated, but can be understood when you examine the psychology that affects our decision-making processes.

FEAR

Fear is one of the most powerful motivating factors in the human condition. Fear of (further) loss is what causes people to sell off during a market downturn or correction. How can you counteract that fear? One way is by not over-leveraging yourself.

That means, only trading, say, 10% of your assets at a time makes you less vulnerable to acting out of fear than if you have 50% or especially 100% of your assets tied up in one single investment.

Investing money that you can’t afford to lose also causes stress and fear to control your decision-making. Even with the best information available and a very sharp mind, you’re not going to make good decisions if you make an investment with your next month’s rent money.

Most consider investment to be a long-term strategy, but many let fear dictate their actions and sell off at the slightest hint of a downturn. Even day-traders follow strict guidelines to take emotions like fear out of the equation.

ATTACHMENT

Another emotion to avoid is attachment. If a stock or asset is performing well, it can sometimes lead you to hold onto it longer than you should. This all depends on your goals, and if that is to make a profit, then you should not get enamoured by a high value.

Remember, the value of stocks does not equate to cash. Set realistic earning targets and cash out your investments when the price meet targets. Then, take a percentage of that and reinvest if you want — but you will protect the majority of your gains.

The psychology of investing and trading financial instruments is a very complex and tricky thing to navigate. Adding cryptocurrency to the mix adds a new layer to these same concepts.

One of the most important things to remember is that you need to protect the bulk of your wealth. Having all your wealth tied up in a volatile investment will lead to decisions ruled by fear.

Focusing on the goal of a crypto-issuing company, and how it is working to achieve that goal are better ways to frame your thinking. If their goal is to build wealth, or just to see cryptocurrency succeed in disrupting the market, the way they achieve that should be the same.

Why You Should Visit Greenland in 2020

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There are multiple reasons why you should visit Greenland and this article is a brief yet extensive look at the culture and the environment that Greenland has to offer. Continue on to find out more:

Vast bands of stunning, unfenced wilderness give adventurers exceptional autonomy to wander at will, whether on foot, by ski or by dogsled. With almost no roads, transportation is expensive, but indulging on helicopter and boat rides is worth every penny. These whisk you over actually superb mountainscapes and glaciers or through some of the planet’s most remarkable fjords. Greenland also offers world-beating but charmingly uncommercialized opportunities for sea kayaking, rock climbing and salmon fishing.

The world’s biggest non-continental island has the world’s sparsest population. Nonetheless, scattered mainly along Greenland’s west coast are dozens of photogenic little villages of colourfully painted wooden cottages, plus a few small towns as well as the capital, Nuuk Town (Godthåb). In the south there’s an appealing sprinkling of emerald-lawned sheep farms.

Culturally, the unique blend of Inuit and Danish blood has produced a Greenlandic society all of its own. This sometimes-discordant mix of ancient and modern combines hunting and dogsledding with Carlsberg and kaffemiks. Sensitive visitors with a passionate but unaggressive interest in local ideas will find a fascinatingly rich culture beneath the thick facade of Greenlandic taciturnity.

With an ever-improving network of tourist offices, hotels and hostels, Greenland is no longer the sole reserve of plutocratic cruise-ship passengers. However, you travel, it’s wise to schedule a wide safety margin for unpredictable weather. Leave ample time in each destination to unwind, soak up the midnight sun, witness a glacier calving or to be dazzled by the magic of the aurora borealis.

Culture in Greenland:

Today’s culture in Greenland is a fascinating combination of old and new. Only 30 years after the 1982 debut of the territory’s first television station, Greenland is a place where cell phones outnumber people and where nearly 93 percent of its population has regular internet access. Despite these modern conveniences, locals still use traditional hunting knives, called ulo, to cut freshly caught meat and travel by dogsled or sea kayaks called qajaq.

Despite centuries of isolation from the outside world, most of Greenland’s people are friendly and welcoming to visitors, especially those who come to their traditional Kaffemik coffee gatherings. Drum dances and tupilak sculptures carved from reindeer antlers, narwhal or walrus teeth have remained important art forms. Crafts workshops where local artisans work and sell their creations are found in virtually all communities.

Use XcelToken Plus on XcelTrip to plan your vacation to Greenland and make memories that lasts a lifetime.

Introduction to Financial Risk and Financial Risk Management.

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Financial risk is a term that can apply to businesses, government units, the financial marketplace as a whole, and the individual. This risk is the risk or likelihood that shareholders, stakeholders, or other fiscal stakeholders will lose money.

There are numerous specific risk factors that can be considered as a fiscal risk. Any risk is a threat that produces damaging or unwanted results. Some more shared and diverse financial risks include credit risk, liquidity risk, and operational risk.

The Basics of Financial Risk

Financial risk is a type of risk that can affect the loss of capital to interested parties.

For governments, this can mean they are incapable to regulate economic policy and default on bonds or additional debt issues.
Corporations also face the likelihood of default on debt they undertake but may also experience failure in an undertaking the causes a financial weight on the business.
Individuals face financial risk when they make conclusions that may endanger their income or capacity to pay a debt they have assumed.
Financial markets face financial risk due to numerous macroeconomic forces, changes to the market interest rate, and the possibility of default by sectors or large corporations.

Financial risks are ubiquitous and come in many different sizes, affecting everyone. You should be aware of all financial risks. Knowing the risks and how to guard yourself will not remove the risk, but it will mitigate their harm.

Financial Risks for the Market

Several types of financial risk are tied to financial markets. As mentioned earlier, many circumstances can impact the financial market. As demonstrated during the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, when a critical sector of the market struggles it can impact the monetary wellbeing of the entire marketplace. During this time, businesses closed, investors lost fortunes, and governments were forced to rethink their monetary policy. However, many other events also impact the market.

Volatility brings uncertainty about the fair value of market assets. Seen as a statistical measure, volatility reflects the confidence of the stakeholders that market returns match the actual valuation of individual assets and the marketplace as a whole. Measured as implied volatility (IV) and represented by a percentage, this statistical value indicates the bullish or bearish — market on the rise versus the market in decline — view of investments. Volatility or equity risk can cause abrupt price swings in shares of stock.

Default and changes in the market interest rate can also pose a financial risk. Defaults happen mainly in the debt or bond market as companies or other issuers fail to pay their debt obligations, harming investors. Changes in the market interest rate can push individual securities into being unprofitable for investors, forcing them into lower paying debt securities or facing negative returns.

Asset-backed risk is the chance that asset-backed securities — pools of various types of loans — may become volatile if the underlying securities also change in value. Sub-categories of asset-backed risk involve prepayment — the borrower paying off a debt early, thus ending the income stream from repayments — and significant changes in interest rates.

Financial Risks for Individuals

Individuals can face financial risk when they make poor decisions. This hazard can have wide-ranging causes from taking an unnecessary day off of work to invest in highly speculative investments. Every undertaking has exposure to pure risk — dangers that cannot be controlled, but some are done without fully realizing the consequences.

Liquidity risk comes in two flavours for investors to fear. The first involves securities and assets that cannot be purchased or sold quickly enough to cut losses in a volatile market. Known as market liquidity risk this is a situation where there are few buyers but many sellers. The second risk is funding or cash flow liquidity risk. Funding liquidity risk is the possibility that a corporation will not have the capital to pay its debt, forcing it to default, and harming stakeholders.

Speculative risk is one where a profit or gain has an uncertain chance of success. Perhaps the investor did not conduct proper research before investing, reached too far for gains, or invested too large of a portion of their net worth into a single investment.

Investors holding foreign currencies are exposed to currency risk because different factors, such as interest rate changes and monetary policy changes, can alter the calculated worth or the value of their money. Meanwhile, changes in prices because of market differences, political changes, natural calamities, diplomatic changes, or economic conflicts may cause volatile foreign investment conditions that may expose businesses and individuals to foreign investment risk.

What is Risk Management?

Risk management occurs everywhere in the realm of finance. It occurs when an investor buys U.S. Treasury bonds over corporate bonds, when a fund manager hedges his currency exposure with currency derivatives, and when a bank performs a credit check on an individual before issuing a personal line of credit. Stockbrokers use financial instruments like options and futures, and money managers use strategies like portfolio and investment diversification to mitigate or effectively manage risk.

Inadequate risk management can result in severe consequences for companies, individuals, and the economy. For example, the subprime mortgage meltdown in 2007 that helped trigger the Great Recession stemmed from bad risk-management decisions, such as lenders who extended mortgages to individuals with poor credit; investment firms who bought, packaged, and resold these mortgages; and funds that invested excessively in the repackaged, but still risky, mortgage-backed securities (MBS).

Risk management is the process of identification, analysis and acceptance or mitigation of uncertainty in investment decisions.
Risk is inseparable from return in the investment world.
A variety of tactics exist to ascertain risk; one of the most common is standard deviation, a statistical measure of dispersion around a central tendency.
Beta, also known as market risk, is a measure of the volatility, or systematic risk, of an individual stock in comparison to the entire market.
Alpha is a measure of excess return; money managers who employ active strategies to beat the market are subject to alpha risk.

Risk Management and Psychology

While that information may be helpful, it does not fully address an investor’s risk concerns. The field of behavioural finance has contributed an important element to the risk equation, demonstrating asymmetry between how people view gains and losses. In the language of prospect theory, an area of behavioural finance introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1979, investors exhibit loss aversion: They put more weight on the pain associated with a loss than the good feeling associated with a profit.

Often, what investors really want to know is not just how much an asset deviates from its expected outcome, but how bad things look way down on the left-hand tail of the distribution curve. Value at risk (VAR) attempts to provide an answer to this question. The idea behind VAR is to quantify how large a loss on investment could be with a given level of confidence over a defined period. For example, the following statement would be an example of VAR: “With about a 95% level of confidence, the most you stand to lose on this $1,000 investment over a two-year time horizon is $200.” The confidence level is a probability statement based on the statistical characteristics of the investment and the shape of its distribution curve.

Of course, even a measure like VAR doesn’t guarantee that 5% of the time will be much worse. Spectacular debacles like the one that hit the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 remind us that so-called “outlier events” may occur. In the case of LTCM, the outlier event was the Russian government’s default on its outstanding sovereign debt obligations, an event that threatened to bankrupt the hedge fund, which had highly leveraged positions worth over $1 trillion; if it had gone under, it could have collapsed the global financial system. The U.S. government created a $3.65-billion loan fund to cover LTCM’s losses, which enabled the firm to survive the market volatility and liquidate in an orderly manner in early 2000.

Risk Management In The Cryptocurrency Space

Risk Management, as with all organisations, plays a vital role in meeting and exceeding objectives whilst providing resilience and stakeholder confidence. Exchanges and companies that are raising/have raised ICO’s should ensure that Risk Management is part of their business. Identifying risks and opportunities, assessing them and implementing response plans should be standard. Cyber risks, reputational risks, operational risks, system risks and strategic risks should all be considered and prepared for, which would minimise market disruption and reduce the likelihood of financial ruin. At the very least they owe it to the investors who have funded them.

For investors, with volatility so high, the rewards are great but so are the risks. Investors should ensure that they only invest what they can afford to lose, do their due diligence on their investments which includes understanding the technology, the team and look for a prototype rather than a wild concept. Additionally, investors should always be on the lookout for phishing scams and suspicious emails.

Finally, even the most optimistic investor should at least consider that cryptocurrencies are a speculative bubble that could burst.

PEER-TO-PEER NETWORK EXPLAINED

Peer-to-peer, or P2P in its abbreviated form, refers to computer networks using a distributed architecture. In P2P networks, all the computers and devices that are part of them are referred to as peers, and they share and exchange workloads. Each peer in a peer-to-peer network is equal to the other peers. There are no privileged peers, and there is no primary administrator device in the centre of the network.

In a way, peer-to-peer networks are the most egalitarian networks in the computer world. Each peer is equal to the others, and each peer has the same rights and duties as the others. Peers are both clients and servers at the same time.

In fact, every resource and each asset that’s available in a peer-to-peer network is shared among peers, without any central server being involved. The shared resources in a P2P network can be things such as processor usage, disk storage capacity, or network bandwidth.

History of P2P (peer-to-peer) networks

The precursor of peer-to-peer networks appears to be USENET, which was developed in 1979. It was a system that allowed users to read and post messages/news. It was a network system similar to the online forums today, but with the difference that USENET did not rely on a central server or administrator. USENET copied the same message/news to all the servers found in the network. Similarly, peer-to-peer networks distribute and use all the resources available to them.

The next big thing in the history of P2P was the year 1999 when Napster came to life. Napster was file-sharing software that was used by people to distribute and download music. The music shared on Napster was usually copyrighted and thus illegal to distribute. However, that did not stop people from getting it. Although Napster was the one that got P2P into the mainstream, Napster ultimately failed and was shut down by authorities because of all the content that was shared illegally on it. Nowadays, P2P remains one of the most popular technologies for sharing files over the internet, both lawfully and unlawfully.

What is P2P used for?

The primary goal of peer-to-peer networks is to share resources and help computers and devices work collaboratively, provide specific services, or execute specific tasks. As mentioned earlier, P2P is used to share all kinds of computing resources such as processing power, network bandwidth, or disk storage space. However, the most common use case for peer-to-peer networks is the sharing of files on the internet. Peer-to-peer networks are ideal for file sharing because they allow the computers connected to them to receive files and send files simultaneously.

Example: you open your web browser and visit a website where you download a file. In this case, the website works as a server, and your computer acts as a client receiving the file. You can compare it to a one-way road: the file that you download is a car that goes from point A (the website) to point B (your computer).

When you download the same file from a peer-to-peer network, using a BitTorrent platform as a starting point, the download is performed differently. The file is downloaded to your computer in bits and parts that come from many other computers that also connected to the same P2P network and already have that file or at least parts of it. At the same time, the file is also sent (uploaded) from your computer to other devices that are asking for it. This situation is similar to a two-way road: the file is like multiple small cars coming to your PC, while also leaving to others when it is requested.

Why are peer-to-peer networks useful?

P2P networks have some characteristics that make them useful:

It’s hard to take them down. Even if one of the peers is shut down, the others are still operating and communicating. For a P2P (peer-to-peer) network to stop working, you have to close down all its peers.

Peer-to-peer networks are incredibly scalable. Adding new peers is easy as you don’t need to do any central configuration on a central server.

When it comes to file-sharing, the larger a peer-to-peer network is, the faster it is. Having the same file stored on many of the peers in a P2P network means that when someone needs to download it, the file is downloaded from multiple locations simultaneously.

Introduction To Cryptoeconomcs

We often see Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like the Wild West: no rules, no social norms, only greed, selfishness and mining. This professed lack of law and order makes the crypto world scary to many people. Nevertheless, in reality, there are rules that govern decentralized peer-to-peer (p2p) networks such as Bitcoin. These rules are coded into procedures and deliver the framework for how contributors of a network interact with each other. They help us create a secure, trustworthy and valuable system, just like laws deliver a framework for a better society. Cryptoeconomics asks the question of how we can design these rules and incentives, so that the networks stay secure and create value for everyone. Cryptoeconomics uses cryptographic tools, game theory and economic incentives to achieve this goal.

The Two Pillars of Cryptoeconomics

Cryptography: techniques that keep messages secure

Economic incentives: rules and rewards that encourage you to add value to the network

In this blog we will specifically be talking about the economic tools of Cryptoeconomics.

Economic tools are incentives that encourage and discourage certain behaviour amongst network participants.

The most basic economic tool is the use of tokens and consensus mechanisms.

Tokens

Tokens are exchangeable goods within the decentralized p2p network. The most famous token in the crypto world is Bitcoin.

Beyond Bitcoin, tokens can be exchanged for a variety of goods and services. For example, you can rent out your excess CPU/GPU cycles via the Golem Network and get paid by the GNT (Golem Network Token) as a reward for your service. The presence of tokens creates a shared value amongst network participants, which makes decentralized p2p networks more like separate economies or ecosystems.

Now let’s see how tokens are used to incentivize desirable behaviour in the Bitcoin network.

Block rewards

Let’s say you are a node that creates a new block to be included in the Bitcoin blockchain. You are rewarded for your work by being allowed to include a special transaction (coinbase transaction). This transaction allows you to send a block reward to your own address. Currently (June 2018) miners receive a block reward of 12.5 bitcoins.

You will only be able to reap the reward if the new block is accepted by the rest of the network. Other nodes express their acceptance by including your new block’s hash in the next block they create. This incentivizes them to only include blocks with valid transactions. Because you believe they won’t accept your new block if you include faulty transactions, you are incentivized to include only valid transactions if you want the block reward.

Transaction fees

As I mentioned above, the block reward for creating new blocks decreases at a set rate, which means that there is a finite amount of bitcoins. But what incentivizes participants to continue building the Bitcoin blockchain and to execute transactions if they don’t get rewarded by being able to mine new bitcoin? Simple: they receive transaction fees for each transaction they include in their block.

Transaction fees also disincentivize participants from slowing down the network by sending transactions from and to their own accounts.

Consensus Mechanisms

Participants in a decentralized p2p network need to agree — they need to reach consensus — about the state of the network and about what blocks and transactions to include on the blockchain. We need a mechanism that helps eliminate issues that arise from decentralization and the possible presence of adversaries.

A consensus mechanism is a protocol on top of the blockchain that takes each node’s proposed block as an input and selects a valid block as an output.

Let’s take a look at Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism. Simply put, miners must expend a great amount of computational power to prove they have “skin in the game” and then they are allowed to propose a new block. They expend this computational power by solving hash puzzles that are based on the properties of hash functions I’ve mentioned earlier. I’m not going to dive into the technical details of these hash puzzles but you can read more on pages 64–67 of the Princeton Bitcoin book. From a cryptoeconomics perspective, it is important to note that miners must expense fiat currency to buy computing power (nowadays in the form of highly specialized and high-performance ASIC chips). With that, they have expensed significant resources that they would lose if their block wouldn’t be included on the blockchain.

Another popular consensus mechanism is Proof-of-stake. Generally, this consensus mechanism works by having a set of validators take turns proposing and voting on the next block, and the weight of each validator’s vote depends on the size of their staked deposit. They lose their stake if the block is not included in the blockchain and are therefore incentivized to vote on blocks that include only valid transactions. If you want to read more about Proof-of-Stake, I suggest perusing the writings of Vlad Zamfir and Vitalik Buterin, who are championing PoS for Ethereum (which currently runs on PoW).

6 Reasons To Visit Cyprus

From hosting some of the world’s most historic sites to the vibrant Mediterranean culture, the many charms of Cyprus make it an irresistible destination. Here are 6 reasons why you need to include this warm island on your travel bucket list.

Seaside activities

Cyprus is known for its beautiful sandy beaches with clean waters — the European Environment Agency recognises Cyprus’s beaches as the cleanest in Europe. For swimming and other water sports, the island boasts over 40 official blue flag beaches. From each city, you can enjoy a part of the Mediterranean Sea, with the most expansive coastlines being Larnarca, Famagusta, Aiya Napa, Kyrenia, Limassol and Paphos.

Weather

Cyprus enjoys mild winters, longer summers and short autumn and spring periods. This typical Mediterranean climate is attractive, especially to Europeans wishing to escape bad weather in their home countries. There are generally at least six hours of bright sunshine every day, even in the middle of winter, giving visitors a truly pleasant climate all year round.

The Food

Food in Cyprus is situated at the crossroads of three continents — as a result, its cuisine is a mixture and refinement of a variety of Southern European, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian influences. Locals are known to love vegetables, and this is reflected in the number of vegetable dishes served — whether fried or eaten raw, served cold in cream or with yogurt, or first dried and then cooked, the choice is yours. For a truly local experience, try the much-loved traditional meat or vegetable wraps fillings such as dürüm (Turkish wrap). A holiday in Cyprus wouldn’t be complete without the traditional sweets. Both the Turkish Cypriots and the Greek Cypriots delight in making desserts by dipping a string of walnuts or almonds into fruit juice — mostly grape — with honey, before then being left to dry in the sun. These and other easy-to-make syrupy sweets are often served with coffee or tea.

Laidback Lifestyle

With the world becoming increasingly impatient, stress-filled and anxious, we all need to take a moment to relax and enjoy life. Cyprus offers you once in-a-lifetime carefree and slow-paced days to enjoy long walks by the beach, or to take a ride through the mountains or forests surrounded by flowers and plants.

Great for Nature lovers

If you care about Mother Nature, you can enjoy agro-tourism holidays in the heart of Cyprus. Agro-tourism holiday options offer visitors a chance to enjoy the Cypriot culture and rural life like a local. You are free to try your hand at bread making, olive picking or milking the sheep among numerous other activities. If you wish, you can also learn a craft or observe locals as they create artefacts from scratch.

You Can Cover The Island Within A Short Time

Cyprus is relatively a small island — most distances from one city to another can be covered by car, giving visitors the chance to see the island in a short time. How would you like waking up to a traditional Turkish Cypriot breakfast in North Cyprus, devouring lunch at one of the border towns after a visit to theWalls of Nicosia, then later on, enjoying the evening sea-breeze from your beach hammock overlooking the extensive Mediterranean Sea in South Cyprus as you wait for your fresh fish to bake? It’s all possible here. Cyprus, also known as the playground of the gods in mythology, is a land of plenty. Her people are warm, and their friendliness rubs off on visitors. The sun shines almost every day of the year, and the beautiful sandy beaches with clean waters makes it a perfect destination. Moreover, there is a variety of unique and healthy cuisines to pick from.

Use XcelToken Plus on XcelTrip to travel to Cyprus and make memories that lasts a lifetime, if you like our content make sure to follow us on Instagram, for more travel inspiration.