Starting off with BitCoin

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My first purchase of any cryptocurrency was in order to participate in a bet with one of my friends, nearly 11 months ago. He was part of a group that used BitCoin to make bets and distribute the winnings and the only way for me to join was to buy BTC.

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At that point, I had been following the value of BTC and keeping up with news of the rise and fall of the currency, but I hadn't thought it would be a wise investment or liquid currency. (Hindsight is 20-20, and boy do I wish that I was buying chunks of BTC back then!)

So my initiation into the cryptocurrency world began with opening up a Coinbase account. As I was extremely skeptical about this endeavor, and has not idea how reputable of a site Coinbase might be, I tried to give as little personal information as possible. It turned out that I wouldn't be able to conduct any transactions without including my personal information, so I ponied up and put in as little as necessary.

My first deposit took forever to clear, for them to verify my bank account (I still don't trust them with my credit card information). Then, I bought some BTC and find out that I can't access it for another week! This was not starting off very well...

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Fast forward to when I'm finally able to use my BTC, and my friend tells me that I should put my BTC into a wallet not associated with Coinbase because I could possibly lose my money if they decided to prevent me from sending it! I was thinking "What did I get myself into, just for a stupid bet?!".

In the end, the bet played out, I won a few and lost a few, all the while, BTC is dropping in value! I hated myself for buying the currency and vowed to stay away from it until I had confidence that I knew enough about where the volatility was coming from and how to manage it, or possibly predict it.

I stayed away from crypto until recently. The volatility has been off the charts and completely unpredictable. (If anyone tells you otherwise, they are either lying to you or have a huge stake in the game where they are part of the market movers!)

So I definitely can't predict the volatility, but I see the potential for growth and as you can tell from my comments above, I like to gamble once in a while. I bought back in!

Time will tell how long I will hold onto BTC, but I'm fully informed and ready to play this game! :)

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Entering into Ethereum

I read a wonderful article about the genesis of Ethereum and was highly intrigued. I can't recall the publication, but I believe it was a technology focused magazine.

Recently I started to pick up some of the currency during the drops. I'm hoping that this will be a long-term currency, and considering that large financial institutions have mad considerable investments in the platform, I expect there will be at least some desire to push this platform forward in the future.

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Are you also a crypto newbie? Have you "got your feet wet" with any other crypto besides Steem?

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Thanks for reading, I hope you have a great day!

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If you want to read more, please take a look at some of my other posts:

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• All of my Posts!