How I got involved in Cryptocurrency and why you should get involved too!

So it was the summer of 2016 when I was standing around at a wedding talking to a group of guys who I had not seen in a while. One of them happened to be my ex-coworker. Eager to see what he was up to since Id last seen him which was about 6 months prior when he was still working with me, I asked what the heck are you doing these days? Did you land a new gig yet? Sadly he had not. I had to dig further. How are you paying bills and getting money? I asked. The only next words I heard after that was ......BITCOIN.

He was honestly reluctant to share information with me about it. He simply said he was making some extra money trading Bitcoin. Now at this point I knew what Bitcoin was. I heard about it from years back but never actually pursued looking into it further. I needed to know more. Since he was not wanting to get into how he did his trading I decided that night when I got home to start doing my research. Days passed as I read and read about Bitcoin and the history, looking through the market analysis charts etc etc. I then had came across this nice app called Coinbase. Now I probably should mention I was already into trading stocks and investing, mostly getting into the new marijuana stocks that were popping up. But they were not going anywhere. I tried out different exchanges and apps like Robinhood and Acorns. But I was getting bored. That is when I started looking at Coinbase on the daily.

I went ahead and said what the heck. Linked my bank account up but did not buy any Bitcoins or Ethereum at that point. I really didnt even know what Ethereum was back then. Little did I know ETH sitting there at $6 what a big boat I was going to miss out on. I already knew I had missed the boat on Bitcoin... or at least I thought. Bitcoin was sitting roughly between $400 - $600 when I started speculating. I watched the prices climb for months. Telling my wife, wow look at Bitcoin its up to $700! Etheruem just hit $20! She laughed as she had no clue what I was talking about. I laughed because of the amount of money I could have made off the price rises. More months continued to pass by.

Now that Bitcoin was cruising over $1000, Ethereum hitting all time highs I was beginning to ask myself... should I be investing in these? Of course over the months I was becoming more familiar with Bitcoin and Ethereum. Still doing my research. February 2017 hit. Bitcoin was on pace to hit record all time highs in the coming months, Ethereum also continuing to climb at a steady rate. It was time for me to get involved. I took my money out of the stocks I owned took $500 and bought Bitcoin. Had I known about the wild ride that was about to take place I would've invested alot more.

So now I owned some Bitcoin I started to look into Ethereum alot more. That's when the world of Altcoins opened up to me. Bitcoin led to Ethereum, Ethereum led to my next buy which was $XRP. Already somewhat familiar with how trading and exchanges work I then took to twitter to find out what some of the best and reliable exchanges were. I had read about horror stories and how people lost a ton of money in the whole Mt. Gox incident and was very hesitant to move my Bitcoin from Coinbase. I then came across Poloniex. This seemed at the time and probably still is the most widely used Bitcoin trading exchange. I have recently moved all my funds off of there as they have been having tons of server issues and withdrawal issues. Poloniex offered a bunch of different coins to choose from. I was beginning to get that kid in a candy store type of feel. I couldn't choose what I wanted to invest my $500 in or if I wanted to split it up. I was greedy when I started and an extreme noob. I was jumping coins left and right for the first few days. Losing a few dollars here and there. Finally I settled my coins on something that was cheap and I could afford alot of. $XRP was my choice and for no real reason at that time. Just because I liked it. I looked at the website and liked the information I read and thought Ok ill let the coins sit for alittle and hopefully make some money.

The next 2 weeks I watched the price of Ripple $XRP go up and down. But never really made any big moves. Again being the impatient noob that I was I sold my $XRP. I don't even know what I bought after $XRP. I was so blinded by the fact that 2 days after I had sold my Ripple the priced soared. I mean that $500 would have turned into over $13,000 in a matter of a few hours. Yes I kicked myself for weeks. Angry I went back into buying and selling mode losing more money. I then stopped. I started looking around at the various coins and checking out the charts. I noticed whoa, almost EVERY one of these coins has doubled or more in price within the past month. That's when the meaning of HODL hit me. (Hold on for dear life) You will hear that term often in the crypto world. As it is for sure a wild ride.

The story doesn't end there though. It was just the start. I decided to recoop my account back up to $500 by putting in a couple hundred more. But this time it was buying and NO selling. I split up and bought a couple of coins some of the good better project based coins I could find. But still cheap. A couple I happened to buy into were $DGB digibytes and $STRAT Stratis. And thank god I did. Majority of my $500 went into these two coins but I bought a couple more cheap ones. Over the next month I had no idea I would walk right into a crypto explosion. Mind you the overall marketcap when I first invested was around $7billion. Right now as I write this article about 4 months later its up to $107billion. Yes quite an explosion. My $500 quickly turned to 1k ... 2k ....3k.... 10k. I was on cloud nine. I knew this couldn't last forever. And sure enough the prices that once took an elevator to the top floor started to fall faster than they went up. I quickly sold off some of my bags and started to diversify. My portfolio that was once 3 coins was now 20 coins. Unfortunately the market has somewhat slowed down since then but its still on a steady climb upward. I don't want to sit hear and tell you about some success that I had due to that fact that everyone's success is going to very. But if you do your research and put your money into coins that back good companies and good projects and products, then you do stand a good chance to make a very good return on your investment.

My thoughts on where we stand within the so called crypto bubble thats going on, I really want to equate this time period we are in now back to how the internet age was in the early 90s. The dot com era as they call it. You can think of the Blockchain as the internet the backbone structure. Then you have a layer that is built on top of that structure. Kind of like HTTP. Which would equate to platforms such as Ethereum or STRATIS. Then on top of those you have DAPS (decentralized apps) that are being built on top of the platforms. This would be like such things as Google, Youtube, Amazon etc. And here's the thing, were just getting started. Many of these coins and companies have been around since 2012. Some earlier some later. New ones are entering the market almost daily. Most of these companies have laid out road maps for their projects and applications for the upcoming years. Things are really just about to take flight!

Some people have asked me is it too late to get into buying crypto. My answer.... its never going to be too late to buy into crypto. Its really just what your looking to get out of it. Some want to use it to move digital assets, some want to use it to make money, some want to use it for its technology. Whatever your reasoning behind, its not too late. Crypto is just starting to touch the tip of mainstream. You may have been hearing about Bitcoins soaring prices or even Ethereum. Especially if you are outside the United States. Its been all over the news!

I will end with this, I am now addicted to Crypto. There's no other way to say it. And I am accompanied by thousands and thousands of others just like me. Its incredibly exciting to be part of something new that has so much potential to not only change my life but to also change the world we live in today.

If you have questions don't hesitate to find me on twitter or YouTube. I love helping people get started!

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwT3ToVHkpDZj1DtTSrA7gg
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CryptoChron
Medium: https://medium.com/@CryptoChron