People fascinate me. I love hearing stories about failures, successes, and just life in general. Life is such a complex yet wonderful and sometimes painful experience, but that's the fun of it all, isn't it? The journey. I'd love to hear how YOU landed on Steemit, the journey that YOU took to get here. It gives me a better idea of your story. I'm interested in YOU.

Like any good leader I'll lead by example and give away my story:

One dreary night

One dreary and miserable night I was stuck indoors and chatting with my distant friend over Facebook; these are the times that I'm prone to getting into long and drawn out conversations about the best processor to buy for my motherboard or the latest gpu that I can afford. It was different today because again, my wife and I were slowly heading towards bankruptcy which we managed to avoid two years previously. My wife doesn't work anymore and I am the sole provider for our family. I had been venting my financial frustrations to my geeky friend and, probably bored of hearing me constantly whinge all night he suggested that I should try bitcoin. Like any dog with a bone I jumped on the bandwagon and began to research it.

Imagine my dismay when I had just found out that bitcoin was now on a slow decline after peaking at $1000. The horror I felt after learning that Bitcoin, only a year previously, was barely $3. Of course, after learning this, greed had invested every chasm of my body and I set about learning everything there was to know about Bitcoin. I had a brand new gpu and there was absolutely no way that anyone was going to stop me from mining that stuff. No way. I started around the time that ASICs had entered the market. It felt to me, at the time, like I was the Donkey and Bitcoin was the eternal carrot on the stick.

Altcoin rules

That's where I first learned about altcoin and my running into projects two feet first and with my eyes closed. You will not believe the amount of shitcoins that I invested in thinking I was going to be the next Bill Gates. I can remember lying in bed with the Mrs; her, sceptical, and me, eyes wide and full of dreams of lifelong riches. None of them came to pass, though. If I was lucky I earned my money back but most of the arseholes I invested in broke the blockchain and ran away with the money.

Paycoin was my first victory. I walked out of that project with 14 Bitcoins at a time when they were valued at $300 each. If only I had bloody kept them until now, right? But my success was short lived because like a complete numbskull I shoved 10 of those bitcoins back in for the revolutionary new Paycoin that was set to benchmark the industry standard. Let me tell you I white knuckled those coins until they were dust, and as my largest win it was also my biggest loss. That Christmas I sunk the last of my savings into Profitcoin and like a total bastard, some of my Christmas money. I lost it all. Tired, and worn, I gave up on Crypto that year.

A turning point

A small glimmer of hope was to be found at the beginning of last year though. A coin that I thought was lost came into play again and has won me consistent profits since then. Breakout coin to be exact. That's when I found Steemit. Someone mentioned Steemit on the Breakout Slack and like a curious old dog I had a look. Okay, I'll admit, at first Steemit blew my fucking mind. I think my first seven posts topped $5k and like a happy camper I laughed all the way to the bank. I took the family on holiday that year and invested some money back into crypto. But all good things come to an end; after my high came the lows of earning $0.01 after $0.01 and I decided to leave it for a while. I let this account grow, white knuckled my other investments and concentrated on my blog. It's worked out very well in the end.

It's a different landscape

For me, the beginning of 2016 saw a real spurt in crypto. Before 2016 we saw shitcoin after shitcoin being made from the back of the Bitcoin blockchain or the Litecoin one. Carbon copies that did nothing. 2016 saw a great and exciting new rise in innovation. There are so many good projects to choose from now with viable and physical entities behind them. If you want my top picks for long term success I'd say Ethereum, Breakout Coin, Singular DTV, Steem and Bytecoin if you fancy a wee gamble.

And that's my story. What's yours?