While I have yet to strike "rich" off of crypto, there is a liberating sense of financial Independence that is present today.

Freeze my assets? Not today Uncle Sam...

With Bitcoin or any other crytographically secure digital currency, a centralized institution can't freeze, or manipulate my assets. And for those who fear a cyber attack, it is only those whose assets as stored in a centralized location in danger. Such as exchanges.

Recently, I had a bad experience with @poloniex - I thought they stole all my XRP, and a nice chunk of BTC. With multiple support tickets unanswered, I grew nervous and sad. Fear, uncertainty and doubt were creeping like shadows around the corner.

Weeks passed, and nothing. Cold as an ex lover. I posted on Steemit. I tagged them in Tweets. I read through countless posts on subreddits. And nothing.

I'm reading horror stories of CoinBase not showing funds and the recent GDAX Ethereum plunge. There's a man on Bittrex who lost over 10 bitcoin, and screen captured the thieves sending his BTC out of his accounts... Horrible.

Time is Money

What's an existing investor to do?

And how does this ultimately effect the perception of the cryptocurrency market as a whole?

Well, the latter? Not good.

If an experienced investor is nervous, scared, and full of FUD - especially a hodler, and a buy-low-er, half-bear half-bull all-man, gets shaky in his boots... then of course some flaccid virgin to this 800+ coin market is going to be.

It's scary, losing money. Maybe one of the most cruel forms of psychological torture.

A Paradigm Shift

Some of us have already begun changing the way we think about money.

But all of us have changed the ways we spend money.

Take Amazon, how many of us have our credit cards saved in their centralized system?

And don't even get me started on these Dash buttons. Cool yes, but costly. Imagine when that shift in how we shop takes hold, (Echo, too) - how many costly credit card transactions are computed every second.

Now imagine that on the blockchain.

Faster. Safer. Cheaper. and what?

Users are rewarded for participating?? Sign me up.

But let's be honest with ourselves.

We know how greedy massive corporations are, like Amazon or Google, Facebook, or Apple. They are greedy. It is their job to be greedy.

But this doesn't have to be the case. Power grab after power grab. Centralized machines determining our destiny. Ultra rich, and indefinite deflation.

We need to hop on the train before it takes off.

Cryptocurrency is a beautiful monster. But it may never reach it's full potential, like capitalism, if we don't spread the knowledge.

Sharing Best Practice

So you're new. You're excited. But you're nervous?

There are plenty of solid wallets out there, just like in the physical world.

Some favorites of mine are, Exodus, Coinami, and of course, the native desktop wallets per coin. Such as the Ripple Wallet, or Mist for Ethereum.

And seeing countries regulating cryptocurrencies, is probably a good thing. As there are more protections from larger organizations, we are less likely to fall victim to hacks.

Patience is Key

Lastly, this is still VERY new technology.

There are going to be bugs, and glitches, and shit that just doesn't work as planned. There is going to be disagreement about how protocols should be followed. There are going to be hacks, and things that break.

Take my @poloniex experience for example.

Yesterday, I FINALLY HEARD FROM SUPPORT. Yes, it appears I will be getting my coins back after all. And while it has yet to happen, I am in communication with support. It's important to call out both the negative, and the positive experiences we have with these services, so the story matches the truth by the time new users get wind of it.

This holds true for CoinBase/GDAX - offering to pay out its users that lost money in the "ETH FLASH CRASH" - and this is the type of 'corporate responsibility' that will warm the hearts of timid investors.

Thanks everybody, enjoy your financial independence day!

mikev