My first experiences with crytocurrencies... interesting!

Hey everyone!

Two posts in a day, that's new. Anyways..

So, I decided a few weeks back to try diving a little bit into the world of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, Litecoin, Hargaknutsacoin.. they were mostly a weird concept to me about two years ago.

"So, you take this.. token and it has a value? Like a dollar or something? And I can trade it for ... what exactly?"

Didn't really see much point in it, but I did get some free partial bitcoin from a site way back when called TryBTC. Think the amount I got way back when was like the number of decimal places after the 3. in the value of pi and ended in 4.

So a while back, I heard about Bitcoin again, and checked my old email address and found that old TryBTC post there, so managed to get logged back into things and created a new wallet and got it imported, A whole four cents. But, that was WAY WAY WAY more than it was worth way back in 2014 when I'd initially ran into Bitcoin, and I learned two things. One, if I'd gotten a lot of Bitcoin back then it'd have been way cheaper. Two, this thing that I'd forgotten about had seriously increased a whole lot in value. So that was intriguing to say the least.

So I realized that I was generating a bit of Steem here but didn't really know how to use it here. But I did find out that I could trade that value for some minor parts of a Bitcoin. So, I went out to discover what tools I needed. Polonix and Bittrex. Myetherwallet. Because I'm old school, Exodus installed on my PC. Coinbase, and Shapeshift Then I went out to look at which coins I think would gain some value. Bitcoin obviously, but Litecoin is more in my reach. The goal is to get some, or even a, Litecoin. So, I jumped in with both feet and took the plunge. I wanted to consolidate everything into a single wallet, but in playing around, I'd split things between here, Bittrex, Coinbase, and Myetherwallet. So I transferred from here to Bittrex, ran the conversion through Shapeshit to Litecoin and sent it to Coinbase to consolidate that account, and finally transferred it all over to Exodus.

Lost chunks as I went in all the conversions of course, and have made some bad transfers in the process.. but am now sitting with just under a Litecoin in my Exodus wallet!. And last weekend, found out about EtherDelta, and grabbed some alternate coins. Have a good chunk (considering I'm playing with peanuts) of Pillar, and got a bit of Populous as well.

My thoughts on the experience so far?

Ever driven a truck with a standard transmission? That's what I learned to drive on. (grind, grind, missed gear, stall.) But you keep at it and eventually, things start to get smoother.

EtherDelta is a rough site to deal with for a newbie, and Exodus doesn't show my alt-coins in its display. But I'm slowly getting out into the wading pool, and dreaming a bit more about diving past that deep water line in the near future.

Happy Trading all!