Lesson 1:
I can't predict what the free market will do.
My experience in the realm of cryptocurrency has been that of an intermittent explorer. I'm not a fanatic or true believer. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the concept and ideals. I'm just naturally a little risk averse with my money. It's ok, you can call me scared and ignorant. I am both.
Fortunately, I'm also very curious. When I learned about bitcoin in 2013, I was already behind. After a lot of reading, I purchased a 5 GH/s bitcoin miner from Butterfly Labs. It took 3 months to receive but I opened that package with joy. I also opened the package with the full knowledge that every blog and review I ever read prior to this purchase had told me that the ROI would be never. It wasn't that I thought I was smarter or could mine better. I just believed that the $308 spent on the "jalapeno" was worth the lessons I would learn from the experience. That's my curious side.
I plugged in my miner and excitedly started collecting microscopic pieces of bitcoin. Eventually, as I am prone to do, I got bored...and the jalapeno has been whirring and churning in the back of my office for the better part of 4 years.
Fast forward, if you will, to November 1, 2017. As it has occasionally, my miner stopped working and required a restart. It was at this moment that I just happened to look at my bitcoin wallet. I had to do a double-take. I had $847 in bitcoin! If I could have predicted that bitcoin would have jumped from <$200 to well over $7000, I would have invested my entire life saving and I'd be playing beach volleyball on a ....umm beach somewhere.
Lesson 2:
Buyer beware.
Naturally, this rejuvenated my excitement for cryptocurrency. I've been ravenously devouring new knowledge for the past two weeks. Among other things, I've noticed the massive proliferation of pure crap that's out there. Maybe it was, but the world of cryptocurrency didn't seem like such a minefield in 2013. There are lots and lots of scams out there.
Anonymity is awesome until you want to hold someone responsible.
The very essence of cryptocurrencies reminds us that "with great freedom comes great responsibility" (i.e. buyer beware).
Another thing I've noticed is a lack of cloud mining for Litecoin. Since I experienced bitcoin mining with my own hardware, I was looking for an alternative way to experience Litecoin. They're out there, but there's nothing promising. For an annual contract, the not guaranteed payback periods range from 300 days to never.
Enter Litecoing Miner (ltcminer.com). 
You've probably heard that "if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is". Litecoin Miner definitely sounds too good to be true. The website offers 4 paid levels of mining and 1 free level. Each of the paid levels offers a payback period of 5 days. You read that correctly, 5 days. I did a little of that new math and figured out that if this were true and I practiced 100% reinvestment, I'd be earning 250 LTC per day by January 9.
Unfortunately, I'm a bit of a scientific/experiential learner. I knew this was a scam. I read the reviews and everyone said it was a scam. It's not that I doubted the experience of others, but where was the data? Why hadn't anyone posted their actual experience? My guess, other people aren't as obsessive about learning as I am or maybe just not as willing to pay for learning. Regardless, I gave it a try.
The Truth About Litecoin Miner.
Here's the data.
At first, I just got a simple free account. Each day, I opened my account to find that the earnings had grown as promised at a rate of 0.0035 LTC/day. After 3 days, I had the minimum required to make a withdrawal (0.01 LTC). I gave it a shot. The result was less than inspiring. Instead of receiving my hard-earned cash, I got the following message:
My question is simple. How can I achieve an instant payout of 0.005 LTC when the minimum withdrawal amount is 0.01 LTC?
Regardless, I reasoned that I can wait 10 days to get my withdrawal. So I waited 10 days. No deposit.
But wait...the message said "10 + days". So I waited 11 days, 13 days. Still no deposit. To be fair, infinite days is within the promised "10+ days".
I signed up for a couple more free accounts to verify the experience. In every instance, the minimum withdrawal from the free account did not go into my wallet and I'm still waiting "10+ days" for the transactions to go through. If 10+ days ever arrives, I'll update this post. Don't hold your breath.
The message also said I could increase my IPV by upgrading to a Premium Litecoin Miner version. You know I did it so go ahead and jeer. I couldn't help myself. It was done in the name of learning and it only cost me $62. Honestly, I did this for you.
Mining at a rate of 0.2 LTC per day, I only waited until the next day to try a withdrawal. My account had accumulated 0.16 LTC. I withdrew that amount. Again, the result was less than inspiring.
Not only did I have to wait "10+ days" to receive my withdrawal, but my account balance went to zero. Now I also had to wait another day to test the IPV of 0.15 LTC. But at least this IPV is possible (unlike the IPV of 0.005 LTC for the free account).
After waiting another day to accumulate the required amount, I again attempted the withdrawal. To keep it under the 0.15 LTC limit, I decided to withdraw 0.14 LTC. To my surprise, the deposit actually occurred and the LTC actually went into my wallet.
Unfortunately, my IPV decreased to 0.01 LTC.
Emboldened by success, I thought I should try to withdraw the new IPV of 0.01 LTC. So I did, and it worked.
But again, my IPV was reduced; this time to zero.
Litecoin Miner also lists all their payouts on the website. I thought if I could find my payouts on this page, that might be a small proof that perhaps the payouts were real and not just made up. You can see my payouts highlighted below.
Lesson 3
Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but everytime I learn.
When I was younger, I loved watching Jackass. Those guys were just so very stupid. I never wanted to try any of their stunts. The empanthetic pain was enough. My sincere hope is that noone will repeat my learning experience with Litecoin Miner. Just like the guys on Jackass, I know I will do this type of thing again, that's just how I'm wired. But you don't have to. Sometimes, it's better to learn from the mistakes of others.
At the end of the day, I'm still ahead by more than $400 on the cryptiocurrency experiment as a whole. This is purly an accident. Don't try this at home.
Now, can anyone tell me about Ether...?
About Ether, what do you want to know? :)
It's a blockchain, like bitcoin and the rest, but what makes it special is its ability to house and execute "smart contracts", or bits of code that make stuff happen.
So through these smart contracts, people are able to create Decentralized apps or Dapps, and subchains like ERC20 tokens, which is basically a different crypto coin that is rooted in the Ethereum blockchain. People have created literally hundreds of these tokens, which are usually sold in ICOs.
Other things smart contracts can do:
Disclaimer: I may not be 100% technically correct on all that, but it's the general gist. I welcome corrections.
Great post @bob.rinella - it seems you’re experimenting with Steem now as well...would love to hear how that’s going!
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