As most of you might be able to tell from my user handle I am from Australia or Straya as it would sound coming from the mouth of most Australians. I'm in my mid twenties and until recently I didn't pay much attention to cryptocurrency , however that all changed during my Christmas holidays when I was stuck at home essentially doing nothing apart from playing video games like PUGB on my computer. A friend of mine had recently told me about the profit he made buying Ripple early on and the value it had risen to (which was an impressive amount at the time). This of course got my brain pumping and caused me to think about it for the next couple of hours until a few too many beers put it on the back burner.
So yeah lets get back to me in my study being bored out of my mind and honestly I cant fully remember what triggered the memory but I started to research bitcoin, blockchain technology and of course alt coins and the many interesting projects that come along with a lot of them. Obviously like many I was at first interested in the money being made however this turned around quite quickly once I educated myself a little bit. I do personally believe that 'crypto' will take over many things in our everyday lives going in to the future. I think the basis behind being decentralised is the main point that grabbed my interest in the beginning when doing my research which in itself is quite funny considering it was a story about Ripple that caused cryptocurrency to even be on my radar.
The first issue that I faced is of course the fact that I live in Australia and at the moment it is quite hard to even buy cryptocurrencies. Every website or exchange that I tried to sign up with needed extensive identification, which was fine however this was also during the peak time where BTC reached the 20k USD mark and my estimated wait to be accepted was about 1-3 weeks. This was demoralising as I wanted to get my foot in the door so to speak. I did manage to buy some BTC/LTC through Coinbase however I had a $300 weekly limit and Coinbase doesn't do withdraws in Australia. Over the next week or two I managed to continue to spend what I could to add to my portfolio. This in the end was not a good thing as of course the market started to correct or crash depending on who you ask... So my starting point thus far has been behind the 8-ball as my portfolio is a lot lower compared to what I had put in at the start.
Recently I've been adding to my BTC holdings and of course started to venture out into a few altcoin projects that in my eyes showed promise or at least had decent concepts/teams behind them. Hopefully buying at these lower points has helped my portfolio overall but that doesn't really bother me that much as I am in for the long haul. Don't get me wrong I'm not HODL till I die or anything like that but at the moment I have zero experience in trading (apart from some grand exchange flips in Runescape).
So that is who I am essentially in the crypto world but who am I as a person? Well let me begin with a few interests of mine, of course earlier in the post I mentioned video games. Video games have been a massive part of my life, more or less I've been playing since I was very young and have gone through nearly every console...PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, N64, XBOX, XBOX 360 and finally PC. First person shooters was definitely my game of choice with Call of Duty and Halo being the big two that I put many, many hours into. Moving into PC games which is essentially all I play these days PUGB and Football Manager are the games that have most of my attention these days.
Another massive part of my life is football (soccer). I played for 10 years when I was younger and I wasn't too far off playing at a highish level when I was around 16. That of course didn't work out but I still watch avidly as a fan of both Arsenal FC and Sydney FC (my local team in the A-League). My mum started taking me to Sydney games when the league first started and for the last 8 or so years I've been a season ticket holder. I am an active supporter in the Cove which means I sing and chant throughout the match. I'm thinking of making some blogs related to the remaining games I'll be going to. Touch wood but it looks like we will be back to back champions this year!
Finally as this introduction is actually huge I have massive respect to anyone that does manage to read this whole thing as I have spent a little bit of time writing it. So thank you very much for reading!