Diary of a Crypto Curious: Taking the Leap
Confession One: I have no idea what I’m doing. But I like to think I’m pretty good at research, and the idea of cryptocurrency intrigues me. I mean, something created from nothing that apparently has no inherent value but is now worth billions of dollars? Who wouldn’t be at least a little bit curious?
So I’ve taken the leap into the cryptocurrency world, started learning some stuff, and figure I’m in it for the long haul — wherever it leads. And as long as I’m learning, why not share?
Disclaimer One: I am clearly not an expert and this is not financial advice. Do Your Own Research (DYOR: one of many acronyms floating around the crypto world). I post this information to share what I’ve learned, not to tell you what to do.
Disclaimer Two: If you’re a seasoned crypto expert, this post is not for you. You’re going to think I’m weird, at best cute, but you’re probably not going to learn anything. But if you’re a newbie, or ‘Crypto-Curious’, as I like to call myself, read on.
First purchase
Back in September 2020 my partner bought about a third of a bitcoin. At the time I thought he was cool getting into crypto, but I had no idea about any of it and not a lot of spare cash, so I let him be the pioneer. He’s the type of guy who loves research even more than me. He figured out the exchanges and wallets and stuff, and before long he was my very own crypto expert.
Come January 2021 and I’d been taking some notice, particularly since the value of my partner’s bitcoin seemed to increase every day. I decided I wanted in. But I had a smaller amount to invest, and the mathematician in me likes round numbers so I wanted a whole coin. A whole bitcoin was clearly out of the question, so I bought one ether (ETH). That’s Ethereum’s coin, if you’re even newer than me.
Of course I had no idea how to make such a transaction. Enter my resident hero, bitcoin-man, with his newly-purchased wallet. I gave him the money and he bought me the coin — that sounds like some sort of back-alley trade from a cheap hustler movie, but it really wasn’t like that — and bingo, I was the proud owner of one ETH coin.
I’m not about to start sharing screen shots from wallets or anything like that, so as far as the numbers go you’re going to have to trust me. That coin was purchased in late January, and it cost me roughly US $1400.
First exchange account
Now this is where I started to learn something. Having a coin in my partner’s wallet was fine — I trust him with my life, so I’m okay trusting him with my $1400 — but I felt too far removed from the action. Sure, I could look up the coin’s value on my phone whenever I liked, but it wasn’t the same as, say, checking out my share portfolio. With that I can log onto my trading platform, see my actual shares and their actual value, and and feel excited and happy or stressed and sad accordingly. I wanted the same for my cryptocurrency.
A cryptocurrency exchange is the way to do this. There are loads of them out there, and they all have slightly different costs, benefits, and user experiences. This is probably one of the first places you’ll need to DYOR. Here are a couple of the big ones to get you started:
Binance: the biggest. Loads of features, low trading fees, but looks quite complicated.
CoinBase: one of the first, based in San Francisco, recently listed on the NYSE. 56M+ verified users across over 100 countries, so they’re pretty big.
There are plenty of others, and it’s worth taking the time to research and decide which one is best for you. This will depend on things like which country you’re in, which coins you want to buy, are you going to trade a lot or buy and hold, etcetera. But don’t get too bogged down — a lot of people have accounts with multiple exchanges, so it’s not like you’re stuck with the first one you choose.
Once I’d made my choice of exchange, it was a matter of signing up, verifying my identity, and sending some money to my account so I could start buying. Well, not quite yet. First I had to decide which coins I wanted to buy, but I’ll save that for another article.
Lessons learned:
1. It’s not as complicated as it sounds.
I probably waited longer than I wanted to get into cryptocurrency because terms like wallets and exchanges and hacking and such were confusing and scary. But once you get started, it’s really not that hard.
2. Most people will think you’re crazy.
My family think I’m nuts investing in cryptocurrency. It doesn’t matter that I tell them I’m only investing what I can afford to lose; it’s better (and more fun) than taking it to a casino and losing the lot in a couple of hours. They don’t understand, and that’s okay.
The stats:
I’m a numbers person. I like reading articles with lots of information, but I love reading articles that give me the cold, hard figures. As I go through this crypto learning and (hopefully) growth stage, I’ll share the most important figures with you. I’ve bought smaller amounts of different coins since that first $1400 investment in ETH, which I’ll go through in a subsequent article. For now, here are the two key stats:
Invested so far: $1783
Portfolio current value: $2933
That’s a gain of 64% at the time of writing, in just over four months. Not the highs of 170% I experienced a couple of weeks ago, but still a lot better than if I’d left that money in the bank.
I’m excited to see what will happen next in the cryptocurrency marketplace. Stay tuned!
