The following is a continuation of Talking Crypto with Friends - Part 1.
In case you missed that one, I suggest you click here
I made my way to the cabin in the woods
aka: in a bungalow park surrounded by forest and heathland
and was welcomed by M., the son of the owners of the li'l wooden house. M. is a guy a decade younger than me ( in his mid twenties ), who I have known since he was a baby. He's a friend of my younger brother and an overall cool dude with a business mindset.
He told me that he was gonna spend one more night there and that he would leave me to do my own thing the next day.
This was fine by me, as I enjoy his company but I had no idea what an effect this meetup would have on me and my future.
That night, an exceptionally warm Dutch May day ( Mayday! Mayday! ), we sat outside until it was pitch black and M. talked about a world that I'd never heard of, up till that point in time:
The Magical World of Cryptocurrency
As is often the case with crypto people, M. was full of enthusiasm, throwing in all kinds of terminology, coins and processes that I'd never heard of before.
We shared a six pack of beer and ate a bunch of salty snacks. I mainly ate, drank and listened. Although it sounded a lot like 100101010100101001010110 to me and a headache build up over time, there was something to all of this that caught my interest. Some sense of freedom perhaps. I felt as if I finally saw the light again, after a decade filled with a lot of darkness, confusion and struggle.
Sure, crypto sounded pretty complicated and I wasn't a tech guy ( although I might have been quite skilled with computers two decades earlier ) but I felt that this might be the way out for me: the thing that I had been looking for since I graduated from Uni. It also helped that I tend to be a quick learner when it comes to subjects that I'm actually interested in.
I sensed that it would be possible for me to make a living in crypto, to possibly even thrive financially. It seemed to be a chance to finally change my money mindset, that was mainly focused on lack, frugality and stress and a tendency to undervalue myself overall.
FAST FORWARD to the end of the previous post:
I spent about a week deep diving into crypto. From listening to podcasts, to watching YouTube videos to doing a lot of reading. I had also decided to spent about 500 Euros on a laptop.
After that week, I felt confident enough to do my first crypto investing. I opened up a Coinbase wallet and sent a couple of hundred Euros to a bank account in Estonia. The latter felt pretty stressful. I hardly knew about Coinbase, didn't know what to think of them having a bank account in the East of Europe and it didn't help much either that I had to wait a couple of days before the money appeared in my Coinbase wallet.
It did appear though. And after that day, I slowly but steadily invested most of the returned tax money in Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum ( the only 3 coins available on there ).
This was to be the Start of my New Life.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Cabin Photo by Craig Adderley from Pexels