I am still fresh to the cryptocurrency scene but would like to share a tidbit of my experience over the course of the last few months, namely the bull run that started around March of this year and how not burying my talents has led to well over a tenfold (10x) return on investment.
I was raised since a little tike to invest. My dad taught me about saving and investing at a very early age and I've dabbled in stocks and commodities throughout my entire youth. I've had a stash of Gold and Silver for awhile now and was thinking about what I should do with it as the price action of those markets have been heavily manipulated and down trodden for the last several years. I don't like the idea of having lots of bullion in my apartment that a tornado could come and scoop away and I equally detest the idea of locking it away in a bank that I might not have access to in the case of an emergency, serious natural disaster, or some economic cataclysmic event. So, I considered burying all of it. Quite literally out of fear I was thinking about going out to the family property and burying it in the ground. But something just didn't feel right about that. Every time I was about to do it, I always thought about the "parable of the talents".
For those of you who are not familiar with the Bible, the Christian faith, or that story, let me briefly go over it and highlight the main points. Essentially in the story there is a master who goes away on a journey. He leaves 3 of his servants an amount of money, also known as a "talent". The first servant, invests and makes a 10x return, the second servant, also invests and makes a 5x return. But, the last servant decides to bury his portion out of fear that he might lose it and that his master would be disappointed. So, he chooses to bury it (0x). When the master returns, he applauds the first and second servant and rewards them but harshly rebukes the last servant for not at least putting the money in the bank to gain interest. (Reference: Luke 19:11-27)
So, I took that story to heart and started researching. In Gods infinite sovereignty, I got sick one week and while I was at home I decided to do some research on the financial markets. There has been so much talk lately about another economic recession so I started poking around. Well, my rabbit trail led to watching a documentary called "Banking on Bitcoin". I had heard about Bitcoin but am sorry to say that I never did my due diligence enough to look very far into it. Well, never mind all that, because after watching the documentary my eyes were opened to the potential of the "blockchain" and so I started to dig deeper. After more research, I found out about Ethereum and other "alt coins". I had finally found my solution on what to do with some of my savings. Instead of burying it, I would invest it.
My very first investment choice was to invest in Ethereum when it was trading around $15. As of today, Ethereum is trading around $130 dollars. That initial investment is now just shy of a 10x return on investment. After I saw such a meteoric rise early on, I was convinced that I had made the right decision. I had followed the example of the parable and because I heeded its' wisdom, it resulted in a massive reward. Since then, I have made even further investments, some of which have yielded a 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x, or even more ROI.
So I've learned a very tangible lesson this year - that not burying your talents and putting them to work holds merit. Had I buried all of my talents, I would have missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime. So what about you? Have you buried all of your talents or are you putting them to work?
(Note: This is not investment advice of any kind but just my personal story. Cryptocurrency is a highly volatile space and investments should not be taken likely. You will hear it over and over again and it's true - don't invest more than you are willing to lose. Diversification is a big part of managing your portfolio and being a prudent investor, so don't "bet the farm" on anything that you aren't sure about and make sure you have hedges in place for all of your investments.)
start stacking TRST and wait a year. Vitalik Buterin is an advisor and the product looks very promising.
Thanks for the heads up! I will look into that one. So many promising ERC20 tokens. Golem has been my favorite to date, but I'm looking to add more to the portfolio.
Thanks for sharing your story. What does it mean 'to have hedges in place for all of your investments' ? I am a investing greenhorn.
Putting a "hedge" in place would mean taking a position that offsets the direction of your investment. For example, two blockchain assets that aren't related and that might move inverse of one another like ETH and BTC (a few months ago they did this, now both are going up together so it's not the best example anymore). It keeps your portfolio from making drastic changes in either direction. If you were to only invest in lets say Ethereum and other ERC20 tokens , the momentum for all of those is generally in the same direction since they are related. You would probably want to invest in another asset type that follows a different direction. Essentially, you want to diversify your portfolio and not put all of your eggs in one basket.
Thanks @cryptomanna, that was helpful.
Yeah of course, glad I could help!