crypto wail

Most of my posts are music related, but I just wanted to write a little about the state of the crypto space, since it’s been a tough week. I just wanted to share my thoughts, as I know I’m not the only one who is suffering.

And I am so rekt…….…. I can’t even think about how much I’ve lost and how many mistakes I’ve made. It’s very unlikely I’m going to get it back.

You never know of course, as crypto has many surprises. Just when you think something has gone too far, it goes way beyond! Up or down! Very unpredictably.

I guess what I’ve discovered about myself during this year and a half, is that I have a gambling problem. And I’m too easily influenced. Emotions take over, and the rest is history…..

.......

My worst asset that I fomo’d into was Gigawatt Mining. As I write this it is on the verge of going bankrupt, and investors most likely losing everything.

When I first started getting into crypto, I was drawn to coins or projects which offered a way to make a passive income. I discovered WTT on youtube, and it looked like a legitimate company and a safe investment.

I had already missed the ICO, so I scrambled to buy as many WTT tokens as I could on the only exchange etherdelta around it’s peak of around $2 or more. I begged my wife for weeks to put money into buying some miners, and was convinced we would have our money back in 6 months.

Anyway, a year later, and my miner still not deployed due to mismanagement and the local government stalling construction with their regulations, combined with the unprofitable mining prices, looks like it's over.

…....

The second big mistake I made was not getting out of a position soon enough when I fomo’d into trading alts. The interesting thing is that 70-80% of my trades were winners. The problem was when I lost, I lost much more!

I think in part that was because I always thought that it would swing back, and I would just patiently wait it out. Turns out that is the wrong way to go about it. You need to accept that the trade failed, and simply move on.

Of course trading in such a manipulated environment is kind of crazy if you think about it. No one knows what's going to happen. And although there are plenty of people braging about the predictions they made, the same people don’t mention much the times they were wrong.

........

So my strategy for now is to get completely out of alts and try to accumulate as much BTC as I can under 6k. Well…. alts that aren’t worth more than a few dollars I’ll just leave alone and see if they go to zero. I’m wearing huge losses with this decision. So why now, when I should have done it…..anytime in the last 9 months???

I could be wrong but after moving some of these alts around tonight, it just kinda dawned on me that…. They just aren’t working properly yet. And that these are really early stages in what could take decades. It really is speculation when you look at it very calmly and objectively.

Look at me trying to send ETH to an exchange. I think it failed many times cause the network is congested I guess…..

But I still had to pay gas every time. For the no 2 (ok XRP is now) cryptocurrency?? It doesn’t look good at all. It’s not working as a valuable product yet.

Then I had problems with IOTA. I couldn’t sync up with the node or something.

Then I needed to keep adding addresses to the tangle, to try and get my balance to display. It took more than 20 times, and still no balance. Also a top 20 coin which is not ready yet.

Then there was siacoin. Which didn’t seem to want to update to it’s latest version…..

The only reason I sent coins to these web wallets was because I heard that exchanges could get hacked.

And then QTUM where I need to somehow swap tokens for mainnet coins. I remember moving these from my ETH wallet before mainnet launch, but I assumed the exodus wallet would do that for me….

Not so.

So I need to figure these thing out……. One thing I have improved is troubleshooting on computers. There’s always some hoops you need to get through to work with these wallets.

Finally since I’m writing negative things about alts, I should mention a few things about the steem blockchain. The first is that it’s not entirely clear how each block is divided up and paid out to content makers. I did a little research into it, but couldn’t really find much about it. Is there a site where you can view in each block where all the steem went and how it was calculated etc? Where can we view all the calculations. Like when we post, and people upvote and over time the amount of steem decreases. When can we see all this kind of info?

The other thing was that it seems like reputation doesn’t really mean much. It doesn’t carry any weight.

Last week I used some upvoting services for the first time, just to try it out. More out of curiosity since I’m pretty new to this space.

What surprised me was that my reputation went up by a point, almost each time I voted. So that means that people can buy their way to ‘good reputations’ simply by using upvoting services. That doesn’t mean they have a good reputation.

^^^^

I still like steem and its applications as I think this kind of system is just better than a facebook or wechat. Perhaps the system isn’t perfect, but it looks like though community voting things can be changed. And it is growing, and I want to bring people to it. This is a way to secretly teach family about blockchain and private keys, but in more of a fun way. So for now I’ll continue using it. At least it is a working product!

I still want to see a future with some of these alt coins. But for now I’ll continue accumulating BTC only on a weekly basis. And if this bear market continues, and these alts get close to zero while bringing something useful to the world, I’ll probably get back in. I’m talking about a $30 ETH or 1c ADA. That kind of level. But for now, no more speculating until I can see what is useful; what can scale; is easy to use; AND of course is as decentralized as possible.

I think BTC will survive, but with everything else it is very uncertain at the moment. I could also be wrong, as I have been many times before. Alts could skyrocket tomorrow and leave BTC in the dust.

In any case, I want a much more relaxed approach to crypto, and get back to doing more with music. I’ll just keep accumulating little by little and hopefully in the next 5 years get back what I lost in the next bull run.

I do want to end on a positive note though. Because these days you have all probably asked yourselves why you got into crypto in the first place. The market really does test your beliefs.

I like what Andreas Antonopoulos talks about sometimes. Think in terms of what I have learnt about security, private keys, immutability, value, technology and possibility. And even deeper phenomenons like patience, restraint and being humbled.

Money comes and goes, but real experience teaches more important lessons.