My 2018: Achievements and Failures - Further Down the Rabbit Hole

The year started with a great achievement that I would have not thought possible when I first got into blockchain and cryptocurrencies in 2016. As I saw the rise in cryptocurrency prices I could not believe the amount of hype that was being created on a day by day basis. It reminded me very much of the Dotcom bubble that I experienced while I was in college. While I did benefit from that experience I also was very hurt in the bubble that ensued afterwards. Having that previous experience, I decided to hold on to the gains I was experiencing throughout 2017 until it got to a point where it seems that he had peaked. To be honest there was some luck as well as I decided to hold until 2018 because I wanted to before paying taxes on those gains.

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However, as bitcoin reached $20,000 each I started to sell part of my position to take gains and "play with the houses money" going forward. While I still hold bitcoin because I believe it’s long-term success, I was happy that I sold for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, my efforts to diversify the portfolio to minimize risk going forward was a failure. Shortly before doing, so I found Steem and this great ecosystem that I have been a part of during this year. Although very hesitant to start as I call myself an introvert, I loved the idea of sharing and gaining knowledge with perspective in this industry.

Screenshot from Google Image Search

After the first couple of weeks I thought this was not going to go very far as I’ve barely achieve any payouts from the post that I was doing. On the other hand, my comments were gaining quite a bit of rewards from the community. I quickly learned that the best way to grow my engagement was through commenting on content that were very active and had large followers. After my second month on the platform I decided to step in and put some money into Steem directly in order to increase my influence via Steem Power. At this point the bear market had already started to impact the prices of all cryptocurrency, Steem included. So instead of putting all of my potential investment at one time, I deployed a dollar cost averaging strategy to buy Steem on a periodic basis over time until I reached a goal of 5000 Steem Power, or Dolphin status.

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A pivotal point for me was my participation in the #minnowuprising initiative which led me to learn the benefits of active engagement. Until then, I had solely relied on my commenting for rewards but quickly learned that by posting every day and remaining consistent, good things will come. I also learned the importance of supporting new users and minnows trying to grow by actively curating throughout the platform. Since this experience, I no longer allow my voting power to get to 100% as it would be a lost opportunity to support the great community at large.

I remember thinking that if Steem would go below a dollar I would quickly invest all available capital into it. However I decided to continue my dollar cost average in strategy given the continued decline and prices seem all over the market. At this point I have continued the strategy and has led me to have over 10,000 steam power which is double my goal for the year. While I believe this was an achievement, I also believe that it is just the start of many other great things to come as a focus now to grow my Steem power by engagement and rewards from the community instead of just pure investment. While that doesn’t mean I will stop investing in Steem and in the ecosystem around it, I want it to be my focus going forward into 2019.

This leads me to maybe my greatest achievement of 2018 which has been to learn my way around the Steem ecosystem and engaging with various communities that are on it. By doing so I have learned strategies to be rewarded for my content as well as help others do the same. I have also found a greater variety of contents which I have enjoyed and continue to seek others that are out there. Many have the potential to not only make me enjoy the content but bring others to enjoy the content from outside of Steem and grow our user base. As part of this expansion to engage with communities I have stepped outside the Steem ecosystem and join communities on the Discord side to learn and also engage through those applications.

This led me to initiate a weekly post focusing on new users that introduce themselves in the #introduceyourself tag on the platform. I would spend time looking through introductions and curate those that presented great content and showed promise for remaining active. I also take the opportunity to provide them some education by pointing them to some great information related to learning how to navigate as they onboard. Here is an example of my comment:

This also led me to run into another similar initiative on @fundition called the @steemonboarding project. I was encouraged by the project structure and the users that are not only supporting it with their time but also with their stakes. As I continue to believe that capital is better used for these types of initiatives rather than continuing adding to my own, I backed the initiative and wish them great success. I look forward to how I am able to assist as well!

Another great initiative was getting involved with @steemmonsters during the Alpha stage. I was able to become a Maverick by buying an absurd amount of booster packs! I found the project to be a key project for the blockchain as it could provide a great example of how to prove the flexibility of the platform as well as a different model to generate funds to support the development. I was happy to become a Kickstarter backer (number 13) and even happier to get my hand (or digital wallet) on the exclusive dragon Splinter cards!

Screenshot from Kickstarter Website

While I have not been able to broaden out my content as much as I have wanted to I believe that I am slowly being able to reach more people in the community with my engagement in their comments instead of my own. As a numbers person I have continually looked at various tools that members of the community have put together to help our journeys. I have engage with a number of them to help me benchmark my progress and also monitor how I continue to engage with others and the ecosystem. While numbers are not the sole reason for success I have found that there is correlation on some key aspects of these metrics.

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Remaining committed to monitor my progress and continue with those things that help me and stop doing those that do not help me, I have been able to achieve some significant achievements in terms of metrics. For example, I am now reputation 60 on the platform. With other measures I have seen how this engagement has increased in that now my incoming upvotes have exceeded my outgoing votes by a factor of two. I now have over over 700 followers which I would have never thought possible when I joined early January.

While I will not call it a failure because I think it is too soon to tell, one thing that I have been working on is how to get my followers to engage more on the comments of my posts. I often am inspired by some of those that I follow that have dozens of comments and interactions between the community which I would love to see on my own blog but haven’t gotten there yet. This may be considered a failure but for me it is a learning of how I can improve to get to the where I am trying to reach.

Finally, as an investor at heart, many would look at the numbers of my investment in steam and think that with the over $10,000 I have invested on the platform I have a failed investment. However, I would say that there are so many intangibles involved in this investment that it is not fair to say that it was a failure. For example, the amount of information and knowledge that I have gathered from the community is priceless. I would have made many more investments in ICOs that I would’ve regretted if it were not for the community and their feedback given the bear market. Despite what the numbers may say, I feel that I have gained more than just an influence in the ecosystem; I have gained relationships and access to communities that are much worth much more than what I have put into it in both time and money.

I will end this post by stating that my biggest achievement of the year is just the simple fact of having started to engage with the community that is Steem. I look forward to reading the experiences of many others in this community and appreciate the opportunity to share this personal experience with all those involved. I believe that 2019 will be a pivotal year where the community will continue to come together to create great things and provide awesome experiences for all those involved.

Follow me on Twitter: @NAICrypto

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