People fascinate me. I love hearing stories about failures, successes, and just life in general. Life is such a complex yet wonderful and sometimes painful experience, but that's the fun of it all, isn't it? The journey. I'd love to hear how YOU landed on Steemit, the journey that YOU took to get here. It gives me a better idea of your story. I'm interested in YOU.
Like any good leader I'll lead by example and give away my story:
One dreary night
One dreary and miserable night I was stuck indoors and chatting with my distant friend over Facebook; these are the times that I'm prone to getting into long and drawn out conversations about the best processor to buy for my motherboard or the latest gpu that I can afford. It was different today because again, my wife and I were slowly heading towards bankruptcy which we managed to avoid two years previously. My wife doesn't work anymore and I am the sole provider for our family. I had been venting my financial frustrations to my geeky friend and, probably bored of hearing me constantly whinge all night he suggested that I should try bitcoin. Like any dog with a bone I jumped on the bandwagon and began to research it.
Imagine my dismay when I had just found out that bitcoin was now on a slow decline after peaking at $1000. The horror I felt after learning that Bitcoin, only a year previously, was barely $3. Of course, after learning this, greed had invested every chasm of my body and I set about learning everything there was to know about Bitcoin. I had a brand new gpu and there was absolutely no way that anyone was going to stop me from mining that stuff. No way. I started around the time that ASICs had entered the market. It felt to me, at the time, like I was the Donkey and Bitcoin was the eternal carrot on the stick.
Altcoin rules
That's where I first learned about altcoin and my running into projects two feet first and with my eyes closed. You will not believe the amount of shitcoins that I invested in thinking I was going to be the next Bill Gates. I can remember lying in bed with the Mrs; her, sceptical, and me, eyes wide and full of dreams of lifelong riches. None of them came to pass, though. If I was lucky I earned my money back but most of the arseholes I invested in broke the blockchain and ran away with the money.
Paycoin was my first victory. I walked out of that project with 14 Bitcoins at a time when they were valued at $300 each. If only I had bloody kept them until now, right? But my success was short lived because like a complete numbskull I shoved 10 of those bitcoins back in for the revolutionary new Paycoin that was set to benchmark the industry standard. Let me tell you I white knuckled those coins until they were dust, and as my largest win it was also my biggest loss. That Christmas I sunk the last of my savings into Profitcoin and like a total bastard, some of my Christmas money. I lost it all. Tired, and worn, I gave up on Crypto that year.
A turning point
A small glimmer of hope was to be found at the beginning of last year though. A coin that I thought was lost came into play again and has won me consistent profits since then. Breakout coin to be exact. That's when I found Steemit. Someone mentioned Steemit on the Breakout Slack and like a curious old dog I had a look. Okay, I'll admit, at first Steemit blew my fucking mind. I think my first seven posts topped $5k and like a happy camper I laughed all the way to the bank. I took the family on holiday that year and invested some money back into crypto. But all good things come to an end; after my high came the lows of earning $0.01 after $0.01 and I decided to leave it for a while. I let this account grow, white knuckled my other investments and concentrated on my blog. It's worked out very well in the end.
It's a different landscape
For me, the beginning of 2016 saw a real spurt in crypto. Before 2016 we saw shitcoin after shitcoin being made from the back of the Bitcoin blockchain or the Litecoin one. Carbon copies that did nothing. 2016 saw a great and exciting new rise in innovation. There are so many good projects to choose from now with viable and physical entities behind them. If you want my top picks for long term success I'd say Ethereum, Breakout Coin, Singular DTV, Steem and Bytecoin if you fancy a wee gamble.
And that's my story. What's yours?
Thanks for sharing, Raymond, following you
Following you too! Thanks :)
I started buying cryptocurrencies about 1 year ago (when i was 16) buying very little amounts and mainly learning about BTC and Blockchain technology. I mainly discovered it because i really didn't like the idea of banks to much and that Bitcoin was digital currency that can be sent to person to person around the world that was awesome to me and still is.
Such a good idea to get in on it as young as you are. That is amazing!
Thanks!
I got into Crypto back in 2011. I bought 10 Bitcoin on MT Gox exchange but lost all of them when it got hacked. I have been awarded back 50% in the bankruptcy which followed but to date have not received any back as there is a court case pending.
It turns out now that because bitcoin is so valuable today that we could all be made whole if the bankruptcy had not taken place but we cannot be made whole as there is no way back from undoing what's been done.
Hear you there - I'm glad I missed that but I did read about it! I hope you get them back!
I'm in crypto from 2013, I saw the crash by my own eyes and stack, I also bought ether at 60, ether is the future, it will come n°1 soon I think.
I will post more in the next month because now i'm under the final exams.
Thank for your post (upvoted).
Thanks! Yes. I'm going to fill my boots on Ehter soon I think.
I'll try to write my story tomorrow
Looking forward to seeing it!
https://steemit.com/story/@dlina-v-metrah/as-i-got-to-steem-through-bitcoin-and-golos-io
Thank you for being so candid! My journey in crypto started in Feb 2016. My friend encouraged me to join a club that pays out members profits. We are still getting paid, but honestly I think it's a Ponzi Scheme (AIRBIT CLUB).
I got super ballsy and borrowed $160,000 from family and friends to invest in altcoins. People told me it was a gamble. It was the best decision I ever made! I was one of the lucky people who got ETH at $7.
I'll be honest and admit that I focus on the investment side vs the technology, but also think the tech is great. I'm really enjoying this journey. There is so much to learn!
I look froward to your future posts and am now following you!
Thank you, and nice move!! You'll be a millionaire now :)
I bought my first bit of btc back in 2013, Thought I would get into mining and so I ordered a 1terahash miner and the guy kept me waiting for about 3 months and I never received the miner :/ but i did manage to get a refund after many phone calls and headaches with my cc company. Ended up buying a few more btc but the market went stale so i sold in 2016. Just stated collecting bit of ltc and btc again :)
Nice!!
Thanks for sharing, iam new here so you will be the first person i will follow :D
Keep up the good work!
Thank you :)
Your such an entertaining writer loved the way you shared this story! Thanks for sending to me :)
I got into crypto from studying blockchain in college..trying to use these investments to pay off student loans!
I hope it works out for you, I really do! I hear student debt is excrutiating now
Approximately 10 days ago I was approached by a friend who told me to throw all of my money into Ethereum.
I told him I would read up on it, with the thought in my head that most people just use Cryptocurrency to purchase bad things on the internet. Boy was I wrong...
I never imagined there being an even better way to spend MORE time glued to my monitor...
I dug deep. And 5 days ago I purchased a miniscule amount of various coins, just so see if anything would move.
They did. All of them did.
It became real when I saw my ETH and STEEM wallets' "USD" amount increase. That was all I needed to know what to do next.
3 days ago I learned mining coins and altcoins was possible. I felt like I had missed the biggest opportunity to participate in future. Until I realized, this is the beginning of the end of the beginning. If I was going to have any chance to join in on this rise it would be now.
Yesterday I purchased equipment to build a ETH based mining rig with 6x MSI GTX 1060's
When I first tried assembling carts for my build, I was shocked to see almost everything I needed being sold out in almost every store I searched.
I'm still waiting for GPU riser cables and unfortunately I cannot find them anywhere besides overseas and a few eBay vendors that CLAIM to be USA based shipping. Hopefully the 10 I ordered from Chino, California make it to me soon as I do not want to waste anymore time!
I'm currently using 2 of the 1060's for an steady 65-70 Calculated Hashrate through Nanopool. It is working and it can be working even better! I am so excited to see where the rest of my story goes!
follow me and IFollow you Back.
Sorry Newbie here.😣
Yep, we're amidst another great boom! I gave up on mining last year but I'll admit finding new coins to mine is sometimes really fun!!
I am so new to this. I got interested by writing an ebook for a client (I'm a freelance writer) and I became fascinated. I have only been at it a few weeks but I'm totally stoked.
Watch out - it can get very addictive!
Great post!
I know the crypto world can have plenty of twists within seconds... and so our emotions! I find it fascinating to say the least. And it´s easy to be hard on ourselves sometimes... but theres plenty of profits to be made for sure.
My story is not as interesting as yours... I bought ETH when in was @12 usd a year ago. I was living in New Zealand then. I have been holding to them and enjoying each bull run.
Good luck on your investments!
follow me and IFollow you Back.
Sorry Newbie here.😣
Nice! I sort of wish I invested in Eth back then. I heard of Eth exactly at that point, around 12 USD. I didn't invest because I assumed that was its peak. Bad decision! Oh well, like you say, twists in seconds!
Be fascinated with paradigm shifts and try not to get stuck in your own biases. The world will always change! Avoid scams but keep an open mind. That's how I stumbled into crypto currency years ago, and how I'll stumble into the next revolution I suppose :)
One thing I've I've benefitted from is an open mind. Like you I'll be diving right into the next revolution whatever that may be. Virtual reality I suppose! :)
I moved to Hawaii with my 2 best friends in 2013. I invested 50/50 in pretty aserious BTC mining set up with one of those friends, Zac. Zac was super intelligent and years ahead of his time with tech stuff. The only reason I invested into it with him was because how convincing he was about blockchain tech and decentralization. Problem was, Zac had a major drug problem. The worst kind, a functioning genius addict with the ability to easily fund his habit. We mined 77 or 87 btc on my last count and he was holding all of them, he had plans to invest them and I left him in control of them before his worst downward spirals had begun. Fast forward to 2017, Zac had been through 10+ rehabs and i considered those BTC lost and had all but forgot about them. Zac had moved back to CA in 2014, but he ran away from family back to Hawaii early this yr(17'). I got a call from his mother asking me to check on him at the place he was staying and learned he was found dead of an overdose. After his passing I kept seeing/hearing signs from other friends getting into crypto and about 1 month ago decided to re invest. I have over doubled my money in just short of 3 weeks. I spent about 2.5 yrs prior to this day trading stocks and in the short time I've observed and traded these crypto markets the regular volatility makes every day seem like Christmas. It Makes me miss my old friend Zac, now that I have the Crypto Bug and he's not around to chat with. I'm highly motived to build upon the fundamental truths about decentralized currency that Zac imparted on me 4 years ago.
That's such a sad story. Drugs suck. If anything is to come out of that situation is that Zac has introduced you to a really, really amazing time to be involved with crypto. I love that although you've lost all that Bitcoin you still keep plugging away. That's to be commended!
Not a day trader myself, but I can totally see why if you were doing so it'd seem like Christmas!! I'm more of a buy and hold, and prize out of my cold, dead hands type of guy lmao
Congratulations on your success! That's a great story.
I first heard about bitcoin from a weed dealer in college who was very excited to be able to buy drugs on the internet. The technology sounded interesting but I didn't think much of it until I started researching investment years later and realized that the accessibility and profit potential were exactly what I'd been looking for.
Bought a little BTC, bought a little ETH, but my first bit score was getting into Litecoin right before segwit. Been trading, analyzing, and writing about crypto ever since. I'm one of those millennials who went to college and still ended up working fast food due to unfortunate circumstances but getting into crypto has empowered me to take my finances into my own hands and work on building my own career. To the moon!
That's such a shame. There's so much stigma attached to Millenials yet the fact of the matter is that you guys had it so much worse than we did. Going to college and University when we were kids pretty much guaranteed you a job at the end of it. Now all I see is graduates working in supermarkets and fast food joints to make ends meet because there's not enough jobs to go around.
Glad you found your story though! Thanks for sharing it :)
I first learned Bitcoin a few years back while playing ESO talking with a friend in teamspeak. He told me about mining and how he was building a few rigs to see what happens. I was off a good pint of Don Julio and pretty much annihilated, so pretty much everything he was saying was annoying me and the rest i forgot lol.
Maybe a year to 1.5 years ago I was browsing newly downloaded TOR just to see some crazy stuff and everything i came across required BTC as payement, but never thought to buy any.
Fast forward d to the beginning of the year, my coworker who is doomsdayer and conspiracy theorist had been hounding me into buying silver and gold because our almight dollar will soo be worth nada. Well he came to work one day completely turned around asking about the cryptos and what i know about them
I began looking into them and when i saw the first $20 increase in 1 day I had to be in
I once thought about buying into silver and gold. Not because our currencies will be worth nada but it was a solid investment. I'm glad I didn't because crypto is a far easier investment and simple to swap into hard cash if really needed.
A little of everything is always a wise move, especially when the electricity goes off.
Very true - I have a slice of the pie in several projects now. Some that don't involve crypto but crypto has enable me to do so!
I am glad that i bought a nice chunk of silver and gold to sit on...actually silver spot price is down a little today its down to 16 and some change so i may buy some more just to add to my stash. But you are def right cryptos are far easier to buy sell and trade that metals in hand. I love looking in my crypto wallets and seeing the price going up day to day lol
Same!!
Thank you for upvoting my photo. If you like that one you will love my other ones. https://steemit.com/@readallaboutit
Hope so :)