Cryptocurrency - A long way from home

As I am a complete novice to cryptocurrencies I must advise not to take anything I say here too seriously because honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing.

Lets start with the beginning, I've only very recently found an interest in cryptocurrencies. My whole life I never really cared about money or how it worked, I just saw how greedy and desperate people get when it comes to money but since then I've grown to see the importance of money and how vital a strong, stable currency is to keep our civilizations working but i digress.

I first heard of bitcoin in 2015 on the Joe Rogan experience with Andreas Antonopoulos, It was a fascinating conversation, it made me think about the future and my place in it, at the time I didn't 'do' anything upon hearing about bitcoin the coins were expensive (for me at the time) and I couldn't really justify such a purchase.

Several years pass by I hear stirrings of bitcoin and other crypto currencies but nothing that really brought home what this technology was and the potential here, its not until last month while I was looking for lending services and came across people lending coins on online platforms which until this point I had not come across something offering or even just facilitate use of a crypto currency between people and for some reason it clicked, just seeing the technology in action was all I needed to see before I was onboard.

The First coin I bought was Litecoin, I bought it through Coinspot and I found Coinspot to be awesome due to the amount of initial security that at first annoyed me but once I had identified myself and my account was activated I felt pretty secure in knowing that at the very least I can trust that I'll get the coins I paid for.

The fee's are pretty high in my opinion but I gladly take on that burden for a secure company run by my fellow countrymen (Australia), The exchange uses the Poli payment system, which allows you to login to your AU bank account (most Aussie banks are on the list) through a secured gateway and transfer funds into your trading account.

I bought my first Litecoin for about $70 (50-55 USD) and now its about $90 - $100 AUD, I didn't buy it outright I did the smart thing and bought my way upto a whole litecoin due to my paranoia and distrust for the crypto-market which incidently did work out as there is constant fluctuations with ALL cryptocurrencies (keep that in mind when you buy the more expensive coins), on an interesting note I kept well away from buying Bitcoin or Ethereum and I'm questioning whether this was the correct decision or the hipster douche in me not wanting to do what everyone else is doing.

My next coin of interest way NEM or (New Economy Movement), I liked NEM for the strategy around "mining" where instead you collect a sort of interest over time with the coins purchased, depending on the amount you hold you can become a node and collect even more interest, NEM using a system called Proof of Importance (POI).

Proof of Importance is one of NEM’s major innovations in the blockchain industry. It’s a novel algorithm that >uses network theory to assign a rating of each account’s importance in the network. Many other blockchains use >Proof of Work (POW) or Proof of Stake (POS) to allocate rewards.

With POW, those who can afford the most powerful computing arrays have an unfair advantage over other users. >These POW systems also consume excessive amounts of energy, harming the environment and burdening miners >with expensive power bills.

POS gives an unfair advantage to coin hoarders. The more coins they keep in their accounts, the more they earn. ?>This means the rich get richer and everyone has an incentive to save coins instead of spending them.

At this point in time I'd like to just apologize for not being able to fully articulate the mechanisms that I prefer in my altcoins, I'm very new to this and I want to stress this, I don't know what I'm doing. I honestly think no one knows what they're doing, especially when it comes to cyrptocurrencies. as you probably know there's a lot of reading involved when it comes to understanding how these coins operate so just bare with me while I stumble my way to hopefully some plateau of understanding before I get lost again, lets continue.

I've purchased 80 or 90 NEM at the price of $0.20 per NEM coin, since then I've watched this coin fluctuate and move from 0.20 to 0.26, slow but steady, I feel this is a good sign of legitimate growth as opposed to inflation due to hype which seems to affect the market a little too much for my liking.

I think another altcoin worth mentioning is IOTA, I think IOTA is my favorite purchase because like anyone who spends about 5mins researching IOTA you notice that there's no transaction fee's, like at all. . . But wait there's more, so I purchased IOTA for less than $0.50 and now it's risen to over a dollar, a little too quickly so it will go down but when you check your wallet to see that your purchase has doubled in the matter of a few days is an exhilarating feeling.

I think overall the "philosophy" if that's what you can call it that I'm following is that of investing in systems that I believe in and at the very least can see future potential in, so far what I've found in the crypto world is not a surprise to many as these coins are the obvious game changers and the fact these currencies are in the top 20 of the thousands being developed is a testament to their potential.

I think the market recently has had a surge of new people like me, I've personally received requests and questions on the topic of how and what to buy in the Cyrpto-sphere, I have links to coinspot if you would like to join and yes these links are attached to their affiliate program so if you do want to join but would also like to do me a solid at no extra cost to you, please click the link and follow the prompts but if not there's plenty of others, another I'd recommend is Coinbase the only major downside with coinbase is that they exclusively hold Bitcoin Ethereum and Litecoin and nothing else.

Any questions or concerns just comment below and I'll get back to you asap.

Thank you for your time and happy collecting!