My adventures in the cryptospace - What a crazy ride so far!

ProjectManhattan, Casino at RWS, size, format von onetin84, CC BY-SA 3.0

So many opportunities

Around first week of July i was looking into interesting ICO's. It was two weeks after the ridiculous dump of EOS. To think of that i bought tokens because i was convinced of the skilled team behind and future prospects of the technology and i'm still. But what happens at the morning of July 3rd? EOS became tradable at Bitfinex and what a price spike. From approx. $1 to over $5. Within seconds i decided to sell 90% of my tokens because i thought that was an short term opportunity for cash out.

Now you can say that's trader mentality or not fair for EOS but my thoughts were

a) if i cash out i have even more opportunities because that anomaly gives me more cash to investing after that spike comes to a dump

b) maybe EOS is not what i found due diligence and it's not worth. It gave me time to think over my investing idea because that ICO is one of a kind with that token sale over a whole year!

After that i bought some small amount of tokens back at $2.50 and now i'm waiting for further development and follow the news and i'm not concerned i'm still curious what EOS will have in the pipeline for easy app implementation for example. The huge crowdfunding give them all opportunities.

Aware of the ICO token frenzy

Ok, story short it was the kind of event that makes me aware what's going on in that ICO market frenzy and where that whole thing is currently. I think that is nearly a year now and was accelerating since 2017 and i saw just the top of the iceberg. Another frenzy was that token sale at TenX. They have done great marketing campaign in the preliminary stages of the ICO, had a clear structured whitepaper, fair incentives for token holders, have a minimum fireball product (that's rare!) and always communicating with their investors in unique manner.

Their idea of making cryptocurrencies spendable gripped me because i've gone through many ridiculous complicated wallets and token sales and if you want spend crypto money you have to be lucky that Bitcoin is accepted especially in germany, not one of the hundreds and thousands of Altcoins. Bottom line is that's nothing for a regular person, let alone to use in everyday life now! But it will be i'm sure because of all the ICO's that make it happen in the long term.

OK, everything was set at token sale countdown at July 26th. Their Vlog showed the final preparations and how tense the situation in Singapur was. I was also prepared to send to their Ethereum adress since it would be visible on their website. It was so tense. I tried seconds after the beginning to send ETH to the adress with no chance! The transaction was pending, i tried multiple times, thought i put in the wrong adress, but it was all correct.

video by TenX

Julian Hosp (CVO TenX) already announced that he thought the token sale would be over in minutes .. and so it was, just 7 minutes with the result of $80 Million! Oh man, i was a bit depressed minutes after that .. now i feeled the frenzy of ICO's. Julian made a Vlog right after that and explained that only 10% (4.000 / 40.000) had the chance to buy tokens and made that nice picture of a room with far too less seats for the run.

video by TenX

I was fine, just 30 minutes after the token sale, i was in the frenzy situation like everybody who tried to invest :)

Pat B, Crowded train (160928169), size, format von onetin84, CC BY-SA 2.0

Now TenX is tradable at Bittrex and some other small exchanges and i got my chance because i'm still thinking they doing something great for cryptocurrencies at all.

The ChainCoin experience

Now i stumbled across another Coin, Chaincoin. Someone in a blog talked about the cheap masternodes and that is a great opportunity to HODL. What the heck means 'HODL' .. hold for dear of life i learned :) So i'm really new to the crypto world and so i googled what is an masternode? My explanation is to provide computing power to confirm transactions and get tokens back as payment for my work. Chaincoin claims that you must have 1.000 for a proof before you can hold a masternode. The price was at that time at $0.10 and so it was possible to get 1.000 coins for $100. Ok so i looked at their website how to setup a masternode just to mention yes that's nothing you do in a hour or maybe in a day and also you have to calculate the additional costs for hosting a computer or buy one.

short term views on coins

But what was really funny with Chaincoin, there was that guy Max Lee on Youtube (high on coins) who resides in a shack for his followers and he has some intriguing manner to stay on his channel and hear all his trader opinions about Altcoins especially low volume coins which may grow fastly in value over time. First i noticed he made regular videos and gave his opinion about all the coins the community ask him about. His message "buy low sell high" later he changed to "buy low stay high".

The introduction of Masternodes

Later then he made first videos about Chaincoin in combination with PivX and Exclusive Coin i remember and claimed that would be a good chance to get cheap masternodes, much cheaper than dash and get residual income of 6% i think. The price of Chaincoin was already on the rise. And that looked true because you need a special amount of coins to get the grant to hold a masternode. At that time Dash was also at $200 per coin and i think you need 1.000 Coins to setup a masternode. Wow! that's a lot of Dollars. In comparison Chaincoin was just $100 at $0.10 but for what all the masternodes? What's the application for all that computing power i asked myself? Bitcoin is already a real currency in Japan, Australia and soon in South Korea for retail shops but Chaincoin? Ok it's also hardcapped number of coins but what's unique?

High on ChainCoin

Ok i decided to watch Max and the so called HODL movement just for fun. And i made a very small investment in the Coin just for fun at $0.10. Yes, after a few days he decided to found that movement in his shack. It was enjoyable to watch the interaction between him and the chat community in his videos and also my doubts were growing because he made Chaincoin videos now everyday! In the meantime i already sold my Chaincoins at Cryptopia with a small gain. But the Party in the shack had just begun. On top he made a special video in an studio environment with a special Chaincoin-T-Shirt. I googled and found the Shirt for $21 i think. I think now the price of Chaincoin was over $6 from $0.10 July 13th! The market cap was in the range of a 100 Million and on page one of coinmarketcap.com. The new video got mixed votes because it was not Max anymore in his known and loved shack at the hills. It was some other guy and it feeled he just promoted something..

Greed and Frenzy

But it was obvious that he focused all his affords on Chaincoin, it feeled like a pump for the community, everybody was in a fever. He iterated the message "just HODL" "relax and HODL" and "we build the wall, a huge wall" against the whales he claimed. Some people wrote their calculations if Chaincoin reaches $100 per coin for a masternode .. more videos popped up. Some smart people cashed out others HODL. He explained if all the people just HODL than the so called whales (big investors with huge amounts of money) had no chance to dump the price of Chaincoin ..

video by HighOnCoins

now what do you think just happened the they after that .. the price crashed for the first time but halted just at $4 and began rising again up to over $6 at July 14th .. now movement was called "The Chaincoin Gang".. and Max had a new smartphone and enjoyed some belgian beer *cheers to the community .. i got lines of worry and thought of a very clever manipulation scheme here .. but ok Max iterated that he is no financial advisor and that everybody make their own decision. Yes that's true.

The Crash

After that day the price dropped again and never get back to the alltime high. In the following days he convinced his gang to just HODL because all together have reached that Chaincoin is over $1 and that is great he claimed, everything over a dollar ist great.. I saw some comments of a guy who financed his "investment" with his house and another who was cashing out because now it's was to risky for him. The "Chaingang" in response said he is weak and that the movement is just successful if everybody HODL and build up the wall again.. that remembers me of something

What do you think was happening? The priced dropped even further to under $1. At that day Max was nervous, he had another beer and 4 cigarettes in one hour video. It was obvious that he was not happy with the development and a little bit angry with the community which vented their frustration against Max but he claimed that he will win the battle whether they follow him. In the videos just after the crash he began talking about a so called "warchest" with a public adress everyone can spend some Chaincoins for the war against the whales .. my worry lines became even stronger, in some recent videos he called himself the cheerleader the gang needs. Two days ago chaincoin.org got hacked respective it was claimed. At that time i was on the site and their was a strange message by "admin" who claimed that Rofi (dev lead) is hiding and not responding and that all which have invested in Chaincoin have invested in nothing.. hours later the website was not reachable and under construction.

behind the scenes

I done some further research on Chaincoin and thanks for the hint of a Youtuber the Github revealed some insights. Chaincoin was developed until 2014 and then there was nothing until 2017.
https://github.com/chaincoin/chaincoin/graphs/contributors
Ok, it's possible the technology was perfect and masternodes are running and nothing is to do. But from my experience a software is never finished and there are always improvements to do especially in that fast evolving cryptospace.

Now the price of Chaincoin is at $0.50 and maybe it rises to $10 or maybe it faltering to $0.10 and even further and maybe Max was right. I don't know but what i've learned was always do my homework before investing in some cryptocurrency or asset like in the stock market and think for myself.

What do you think, have you made similar experiences in the cryptospace?

If you've any questions don't hesitate i'm always curious and please vote me up!

Thank you!

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