I'm just getting warmed up with Steem - some tips or ideas in the comments will be useful for me, specially regarding to promotion of my future articles!
Literally, it's a journey that never ends. I met my friend, bitcoin, in December 2010. You must be thinking that I must be hell of rich right now because of that time in which I created my first bitcoin wallet using the Windows wallet & gathered 919 bitcoins (15g5nXrn15LareMU36j9Rx3ig6BMF1sjsR) in it, right? Well no, sorry, I'm still as poorer as I was that time. I don't know why but I think I'm probably the unluckiest person in crypto-world, till now.
My GPT/PTC (get-paid-to-click) website, which I created in 2010, PtcX.info (currently dead, but you may find its history by googling around or searching at eMoneySpace.com forums) provided me a good way of earning money at home in years 2010 to 2015. However, the biggest hurdle that time for me was PayPal, as it never accepted Pakistanis. Because of PayPal limitation issue, I used to accept LibertyReserve, MoneyBookers, AlertPay (presently Payza) only, but these didn't attract much of advertisers and most were always interested in paying through PayPal only. However, then soon, one of the advertisers, came up with an offer of paying me through PayPal or Bitcoin for year-long advertising at eMoneySpace.com/forums (my username there is "iamforyouraja"). I did what most beginners do, opened the bitcoin website and downloaded the Windows wallet. I felt like "this (bitcoin) seems useless, I'll have trouble in selling it, but at least, this way I'm able to get something out of my website, let's just go for it!", so I went for it and literally had a lot of problems in selling it that time, at last sold it at 1 cent less than its price that time (in January 2011). Guess my age that time? It was 12. Right now I just turned 19. Should I really blame a 12-year-old kid for his mistake? I don't think so that it'll make any sense, it'll be ruthless. Moreover, those were extremely hard days for my family (my father's business of millions had gone completely bankrupt and ended up making my whole family totally zero, or maybe minus will be more appropriate word, and many of the investors included in that business, lost a lot of money too and sadly, many relatives were a part of that loss, who still blame him, my father for their loss), so I guess keeping it all in view, I think it was just a fine decision (decision of selling bitcoins for money), as food & shelter is always a priority for time-being.
In 2013, when I came to know that the thing I sold 3 years back got pumped so hard, any idea how would I had felt that time? Of course so bad, isn't that obvious? :-P However, our journey (of me & bitcoin) as I said, just always seem to be getting started.
I got hired by Jeffrey Johnson (jjohnson777 of eMoneySpace forums) at rate of almost half bitcoin each week for the work of Web-Development/Graphics-Designing/SEO/etc. I again, kept on selling like almost every week, from 2014 to 2016, whenever I used to get my weekly pay, that weekly withdrawal of bitcoin was requirement of time too, and I again think, it was a fine decision of selling whatever I get each week in bitcoin, I shouldn't blame myself. However, at last, I held only one bitcoin and thought of never ever selling this last one, as I was starting to get to know the true potential of it.
Now again, the journey/story of me & bitcoin didn't end in 2017. I wanted that whole bitcoin to increase in number, I decided to take a look at altcoins. It was May 2017, when I noticed that ZCL (Zclassic at Bittrex) had gone down to something like 0.0007 BTC from 0.003 BTC, and it could recover soon, so I went "all in". Held for months, wasted my time promoting it almost everywhere from Twitter to Bitcointalk to Reddit to Discord, gave a lot of ideas to its developer, even offered my skills for free, tried to convince my very very dear Mr. Rhett Creighton (creator/owner of ZCL) for an airdrop of Bitcoin Private (the idea of Bitcoin Private, was totally mine, and I gave it on Slack, one can just search it out there!), but due to so-called lack of his time, he absolutely refused to make any action/announcement like that. I even worked out a deal with an outsider-developer for ZCL development, tried to gather community for development funds raising for this Bitcoin Private update for ZCL, but everything went absolutely in vain thanks to Rhett. Rhett announced clearly that absolutely NO UPDATE will take place, and ZCL will just carry on without any updates. People dumped after his "no-more-updates announcement", value came down to 0.0004 BTC, I kept on holding, but in November 2017, I sold my bag too, thinking that it can collapse totally as the 24-hour volume of ZCL in November was getting close to 1 BTC (which makes it worthless for Bittrex), and de-listing from Bittrex can further crush its value. However that didn't happen, instead, Great Sir Rhett Creighton out of absolutely no-where in December, came up with the exactly same idea I proposed of Bitcoin Private, and announced to make it happen... and since then, its value has only been climbing up and more up, making me wanna kill myself, but hey, I shouldn't blame myself here either! It was Sir Rhett's biggest lie of century, at least for me, which could've changed my life. He most probably wanted the price to climb down to the rock bottom, and then buy himself a huge bag, and finally announce my idea of Bitcoin Private. Those ZCL which I sold in November, are right now more than 15 bitcoins worth... sadly. Another chance of becoming a millionaire, got flew off from right over my head...
So finally, right now, after all this, my total portfolio is worth around 0.5 Bitcoin. This is all what I have and this is something painful to watch as I'm in cryptocurrencies for a long time, but I still try to see it happily. "Hey, half a bitcoin, me & my family couldn't have afforded it right now if I hadn't held it up tight all this time, so even this makes me happy - happy but with a few tears in eyes..."
I told yesterday to someone at Twitter that I'm in crypto since 2010, he was like, man you'd have become extremely rich by now! I was like, yeah, for sure, whatever you say. 19-years of age right now... I just have to make good decisions from now on, enough of experiences, and make 2018 a memorable-rise-in-wallet year! One thing I can hope for is that, crypto is still in beginning stages, my God will provide me few more chances to get everything back on track (I just want to pay back off the investors who got in loss in my father's business and still blame him for everything, I'm not greedy, don't want to have lambo or something, just a fine but peaceful living!)
Just wish me luck guys, getting started at Steemit... :-)
Re-publishing same article after 3 months... main reason for it is the contest and challenge! ;-)