Welcome to my practical investing (speculation) series!

I stumbled onto Steemit today, whilst researching for new Crypto currencies to invest in. Rather than start a blog, I'm going to use this account to document my crypto journey and future speculations. My goals are to buy into alt coins and ride the wave (bubble?) for maximum growth.

Last year, I downloaded an audio book called, "Bitcoin: The Future of Money?" by Dominic Frisby. I find that listening to audio content on the way to work and home from work an efficient way to consume information. Normally I find that after a day at work, I'll start to lose concentration and zone out. This audio book however, was by far one of the most interesting ones I have listened to and I highly recommend it as a place to start any crypto education.

Immediately on finishing the book, I spent a week researching crypto-currencies and how I could practically invest in these. I was sold. I was convinced that this is the future and I was determined to be a part of it. In addition to my new-found interest in crypto currency, I am also an avid investor. I believe in the time old principles of investing, with the majority of my spare funds going into a low fee index fund tracker. Boring I know, but that's what investing is, "don't confuse activity with progress". The problem that I recognise in myself is that I have an active mind and a part of me is always thinking about what's next, and where money making opportunities can be found.

I decided to take $5500 (USD equivalent at the time) and designated it my "speculation fund" for crypto-currency investment only. It was money that I was completely prepared to lose (still am). I know what you're thinking, that's a lot of money, but at the time I had just returned from an overseas deployment to Iraq with the Australian military and we get paid pretty well (and tax free) compared to our American brothers and sisters. My strategy is to research and identify crypto-currencies that I like, and to buy and hold them for the long term, waiting for the wealth transfer to occur as it becomes mainstream. Where possible, I like to invest at the 7 'o clock after the initial up-tick.

Monero

Whilst I am speculating I am not trading as the principle of buy and hold works due to the deflationary nature of crypto-currencies. Initially, in May 2016 I bought 1,100 XMR (Monero) for $2200. It was a cheap coin at the time and I was sold by its privacy properties. Also i'm not going to lie, but a lot of people on the internet were recommending it, so I just listened to them... That Monero is now worth approximately just under $30K ($28) which I'm pretty happy about, although I'd love to see it move more (it's probably my favourite altcoin, purely because I bought it so cheap).

Ethereum

Boy am I glad I got in on Ether now, with the recent shot to $90. Honestly, I can't remember the exact amount of ether I bought for $2500 back then... I bought it, locked it up and left it there. Why was it complicated you ask? Well, I read an article after buying ETH in the economist about the DAO, and logged on to spend all my ether and convert it to DAO tokens. Then, the exploit happened and Ethereum experienced hard fork.... I had actually written Ethereum off as an investment by then. I was convinced I'd lost all my ETH and my DAO tokens were worthless. I've actually got no idea what happened, I just remember logging into myetherwallet a few months after and clicking a button to reclaim all my DAO tokens back to ETH. I also clicked the button to convert all my ETC (Classic) to ETH. Now, I've got 320 ETH which is worth about just under 30K (~$90)!

Bitcoin

I did buy some Bitcoin with the money I had left... I spent $800 to buy about 1 BTC at the time. I was convinced that the growth had already finished in BTC and was keen to maximise my exposure to alt coin growth. Currently 1 BTC is worth around $1700. Yes I'm happy with BTC performance, but really I want that crazy explosive growth that I'm only seeing with alt coins. I recently took all the BTC out and bought some tokens (but more on that later).

Bubble?

Everyone's talking about another .com bubble. There is crazy growth in the market right now and who knows if it's a bubble or a sign of things to come? Either way, I'm continually fascinated by cryptocurrency and I'll continue to spread my equity across other alt coins and interesting ICO's as they happen. I'll document the journey as best as possible, but I don't plan to invest any more of my actual fiat currency apart from what's already invested.

Summary of holdings Now and then

Currency	May 2016	May 2017
BITCOIN (BTC)	$800	$1, 700
Monero (XMR)	$2200	$30, 000
Ethereum (ETH)	$2500	$30, 000

Total currency equity after 1 year

After a year of holding these coins, I'm sitting at approximately $60K USD Fiat. Not bad for an initial $5.5K investment! I'm fascinated by Cryptocurrency. It's my plan to start taking these profits to re-invest in other Alt Coins. I'll continue to post on this account, so please follow my journey.

What's my goal? I'm going for stellar growth to get to $1 million!

Part 2 Here: Re-investing-my-usd60k-usd-crypto-profits