I started investing in cryptocurrencies in May 2017. Well let me backtrack...I really started in 2014. I had heard of Bitcoin sometime in 2011. I watched it periodically but never invested. I didn't really understand it, it seemed super complicated but I was still interested. I asked much smarter friends what they thought about cryptocurrency and they all, unanimously, told me that it was a scam and was not going to be around. However, I felt that there was something there so I continued to watch.
In 2014 I figured that it was time to take a plunge. I had watched Bitcoin rise (what seemed to be) astronomically in three years. I decided to take part in this little known project called Ethereum. I invested a few bucks in their pre-sale in July 2014. At the time Ethereum was about .12 I bought 40 of them. I almost instantly forgot about them until June 2017.
There was a lot going on in my life at the time. I was a designer for a huge toy company plus I had some side projects that seemed to be panning out so I wasn't really concerned with crypto. I was doing well and it just kind of slipped my mind.
Fast-forward to May 2017. I was in a bad situation...things had turned. I was laid off from the toy company and started freelancing. My side projects had stopped bearing fruit and money was a problem. I looked for ways to profit from my skill, abilities and talent but nothing was clicking. That's when I decided to give cryptocurrencies another look. I was shocked to learn that there were so many of them. When I was first researching in 2011 there only seemed to be Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin. Now there were hundreds of coins. It was a lot to take in. I found the coinmarketcap site and just started going through the list coin by coin. I wanted to find a great entry point. I was looking for something that had the potential of Bitcoin but at a fraction of the price. As I was going through the list I came upon Ethereum. It sounded really familiar. There was a lot going on with it at them time. A little voice told me to do a search for Ethereum in all my gmail accounts. Low and behold there was an unopened email with a file attachment. It all came rushing back to me. Some how I had completely suppressed all memory of buying Ethereum for 3 years.
Now that I had this file, I had to learn what to do with it. Long story short, it took me almost a month to figure out the right thing to do with the file. Through research I found MyEtherWallet and for some reason I had a Coinbase account that I didn't remember opening. Apparently my memory sucks. I retrieved the 40 ether and sent it to Coinbase and cashed out. I was broke, I had no choice. In retrospect, I should have done it totally different.
Now between the time that I had found the pre-sale email and the time that I cashed out, Ethereum had gone from about $80 to $280. Luckily it took me almost a month to figure it out. That's the one time being ignorant had paid off for me.
So after taking care of a few bills and getting back on track I decided to really dive into Crypto. And by "really dive into" I mean that i had started investing with $600. Through heavy research, trial and error and blind luck I managed to turn $600 into $25K in about 4 months.
The thing about crypto is that being involved with it seems to speed up time or rather your perception of time. Even though I had only been involved for 4-5 months it seemed like I had been doing it for years.
I won't bore you with the details but here are some of my investing highlights:
Ethereum- I already told you that long ass story
ChainCoin- I was hearing a lot about ChainCoin. At the time I didn't know anything about pump and dumps or masternodes. I literally bought it based on the amount of news and energy that I was seeing. I bought 1000 at about .50 I watched it rise to $6 in just a few days. I decided to cash out at around $6.50 Needless to say I was super lucky with this one.
Antshares/NEO- I didn't know anything about Antshares until it hit $4. Had I known about it previously I would have sold everything I have and put it all on Antshares when it was .13 I worked in the toy industry, I had done business with China and I knew how they operated. I knew that it would be huge. I bought a bunch at $4 and it's my main coin.
OMG- A good friend of mine had brought OmiseGo to my attention. I researched it and it sounded incredible. I got in at about .50 and until recently it was my number two coin. At the time no one was talking about OMG. I had took Michael Suppo(man)'s course on Udemy and had joined his SCM group on Facebook. I brought OMG to his attention and this is what happened:
So anytime you hear him say something about OMG and him turning around on it because of members of his group then he's talking about me.
WTC- A friend asked me to help him get into crypto. We had a conversation about it over dinner and the next day he started trading. Now he was already in the financial services industry so he was quite familiar with exchanges and reading charts. He called me and asked me about a coin I had not heard of called Walton. He was really excited about it and he got in at around .80 I didn't think about it much until I notice it rise from .89 to $1.30 in less than an hour. That's when I dove in. I have been holding WTC ever since.
BQX Bitquence was my first ICO, I bought 7,775 at .03 This was the most frustrating coin I had dealt with. I expected something to happen really fast with this one. After the ICO I considered dumping this every single day. I just wasn't moving like I had expected it to. I was still new to crypto so I was impatient. I should have learned from my Ethereum experience. I managed to power through my impatience and BQX started to rise. I sold half when it first hit .80 then I sold the rest at $1.30 I think it's a great project but I don't miss that coin
EVX I clicked on a web banner for Everex by accident while I was on another site. I decided to learn about it. Upon reading it i had the same feeling about it that I had about OmiseGo. I didn't take part in the ICO but I did keep watch on it. I bought it .98 as soon as it hit the market. It's gone up quite a bit since then. i think this one is a sleeper. It's going to shock some people.
RegalCoin This one is a little controversial. So I had been hearing all this talk about Bitconnect. I did my research, watched all the videos about it and decided not to do it. I'm way too impatient (at the time). Scam or not you can't deny the fact that some people are getting rich on Bitconnect. I wish I had bought the coin back in January when it was .16 Think about that. It went from .16 to $200 and in the top ten coins in less than a year. This made me look for the next Bitconnect. Did some research and found RegalCoin. I had missed the ICO price which was about $1-2. I got in at $12...the next week it was $30 then $40, then $50 and then back down to $30....AND THEN UP TO $95!!!! All of this in about 2 weeks after i had bought a nice amount at $12. I don't care about that weird lending system they have going on...It's designed terribly and seems super shady...but I am super glad that I am holding these coins.
Bitpetite So at this point I'm firmly planted in some very nice "holding coins" I decided to experiment/gamble with one of these lending platforms. I literally chose Bitpetite because it was the best designed of all the ones that I looked into. I jumped into Bitpetite without doing much research. My initial investment was 2 Ethereum which came out to $688 at the time I invested. I invested on October 14th. I started doing research after I was already in. I found a guy on Youtube by the name of Jam Bart he was explaining how you could take advantage of compound interest with site like this. I had already known about compound interest but it had never occurred to me that it would apply to something like this. One feature that Bitpetite has that most of the sites like it don't is you can withdraw your interest anytime you want. This is huge when it comes to compounding interest, especially when the interest is about 4.5% a day(Monday-Friday). I withdraw and reinvest everyday. At the time of this post (October 29th) I have turned my $688 investment into $1766. I have already made back my initial investment in two weeks. However, I will continue to reinvest until I feel that I'm done. In my mind the money I invested doesn't even exist. I have lost WAAAAYYYY more than the 2 Ether before so this isnt a big deal. I'm just curious to see how this is going to pan out for me. I got a little boost from two friends of mine that invested using my referral link. That was about an $80 boost. If you look into Bitpetite and decide to give it a try please use my referral link..I could use all the boost i can get. https://bitpetite.com/?aff=steveb
Gold Rewards- While researching Bitpetite I came across another soon to be lending platform called Gold Rewards (GRX). I had flashbacks of the time that I had invested in Ethereum in 2014. Now I AM IN NO WAY AT ALL COMPARING GRX TO ETH. I just had the same feeling. GRX will be the next Bitconnect/RegalCoin. By this I mean that it will be SUPER PROFITABLE. I wished that I had got into bought BitConnect when it was .16 now its $200+ I wished that I had gotten into RegalCoin when it was $1-$2 now it's at around $80. I bought GRX at .46 during the pre-sale, then more at .76 during the first stage of it's ICO. It's now at stage two and is .86 I'm probably going to buy more. These coins are selling out which let me know that the demand is there. Also the supply is 20M, that's low. I expect this coin (at the very least) to shoot up to $15 in a few days of it hitting the market. From there I have no idea how high it will go. I'm just super excited about the potential value of the coin. As far as the lending/reward system I don't whats going to happen. I just know that having the coins are going to make me a substantial amount of money. Once again, and I really hate pandering, use my ref link. I had two friends (the same from Bitpetite) sign up and I think I got about 150 free coins from it. Make your firends sign up also. Also I'd like to add that once I paid for the coins they were in my wallet in a few minutes. I have gotten into ICO's and have had to wait weeks for coins. The way that GRX is handling their ICO is the best that I have seen. https://goldreward.io/join/stevebravo
EthConnect- I'm going to get into the EthConnect ICO as well. Based on the recent success of the lending coins EthConnect feels like a great opportunity. I'm not a bug fan of tying my money up a lending system but you just can't deny the profitability of the coins. There a two MAJOR things that I like about EthConnect. The layout and the way the site works is impressive also it appears to be a Japanese run system. I have worked for Japanese companies on two different occasions and the one thing that I know is that they don't release anything that doesn't work. Another great incentive is that they are giving bonuses for just getting in early. So not only do you get the coins at a lower rate for getting in early, you get bonus coins. Give them a look, signup and check them out. https://ethconnect.net/ref/stevebravo
Well I guess that's it. This is only my second post on Steemit. Hopefully this helps new investors. I am still a newb at this myself so I will try to post relevant info as I come across it but I will mostly share my personal experiences. Good luck to you and your coins of choice!!