My Cryptocurrency Journey: How it all began?

We talk a lot about cryptocurrency on this blog. More so, lately. We’ll come to the ‘why‘ aspect of this change shortly in this blog. Before that, I wanted to share my motivation behind writing this post. So, yesterday, I attended a 3 hour workshop on cryptocurrencies and blockchain. The workshop was conducted by Mr. Ajeet Khurana, Ex- CEO, Zebpay.

There was something that caught my attention even more than the contents of the workshop. It was a poll that host ran before initiating the session. And those two questions are given below:

While you can share your understanding level of cryptos with me, I would go ahead and reveal the demographics of the workshop. 83% of the people rated themselves between 0-3 when it came to the knowledge about cryptocurrencies.

However, when these people were asked if they are invested in the the cryptocurrencies, only 19% of the audience was not invested. In effect, more than half of the audience was a part of this admitted to investing in crypto while having subpar knowledge about it. FOMO is indeed real my friend.

But who am I to judge them? I myself was a part of this clan not so long ago. So where did I start? Have I made profits or a loss so far? Let’s dive deeper in this today.

My Unflinching Fandom:

If you are an avid reader of this blog, this may not come as a surprise to you but I admire Elon Musk a lot. There’s hardly any news about him that I miss. And rightly so. The man picks up earth shattering projects like:

Tesla: No introduction needed

Starlink: Where he plans to send out 40000+ satellites (12,000 already sent up there) in the space to provide internet access to remotest parts of the world.

Neuralink: In this one, he is trying to make implantable brain-machine interfaces a reality. The first step towards making bio modified, supercharged version of humans.

SpaceX: Making space travel for civilians a reality using reusable rockets.

This is just a glimpse of it. So, when he lately started talking about cryptocurrencies on his Twitter account, I immediately got interested. As soon as he talked about a crypto called doge, the prices went up. So, riding on the back of our beloved FOMO, I opened an account with a famous crypto exchange and purchased Dogecoin worth of Rs. 5000.

And Then?

Dogecoin was priced at Rs. 4 at that time. Days passed and the price didn’t fluctuate much. My 5000 would become 6,000 one day and come back to 4,000 the other. It was all sweet and fine until one day; Musk tweeted something about Doge and the prices went berserk.

The doge jumped to Rs. 32 within 48 hours of that tweet. That is an 8x return on my investment within 20 odd days. And as I realized that I have had more than I could chew, I decided to sell off my holdings. Of course I made a sweet profit with that sum and the story ended happily for me.

For everyone else’s reference, Doge also touched Rs. 56 a few days later which could have given me a 14x return, but I was satisfied with my decision.

The Boasting Period and The Moment of Truth:

Stoked by my gargantuan returns, there began an era of bragging. I would talk to everyone about it. My friends, colleagues, family etc. This was that moment of pride where a well informed investment decision (in my head at least) paid off.

During one such swanky session over a dinner with a few friends, I brought this topic up. Everything went as per the plan. However, as soon as they left our place, my wife pointed out something.

She asked me a very innocent question. “Raghav, What is Dogecoin?”. While I was gathering some words to put it in a sentence, she continued. “If you don’t know what it is, I think you stood an equal chance of losing all your money. It was a mere fluke that you made a decent return”

Now I am generally very loquacious. But this time, someone had waged a war against my ego. And they weren’t wrong at all. I pondered over the words coming out of a passive investor– my wife. How could I go wrong with this one?

Finally:

The next day, the first thing I googled in the morning while doing my daily business was about Dogecoin. And that is when I understand that I invested in something called “Shitcoin” in crypto lingo. For the non crypto readers, it is something that has no underlying use case attached to it. It is essentially based on a troll, a meme, hype.

That’s when I was completely awestruck. This could have actually gone either way. Not that I feared losing 5k, I could have potentially put in much more once I got the taste of the success (getting lucky in reality)

So, that’s when I doubled down on this niche. Created a separate category on my blog, turned my Instagram into full blown crypto gyaan classroom and read as much as I could.

At one point, I was spending up to 4 hours a day simply going through crypto related resources.

Conclusion:

After months and months of crypto training, I still feel that I have touched the tip of the iceberg. Let’s take this up using numbers. How many cryptocurrencies have you heard of? 5? 10? Okay may be 20 if you read about it. Do you know how many are actually there in the world? The number is to the north of 10,500.

Yup. So even if we discuss one coin/token everyday, it will take us 28 years to end get done with.

While I don’t intend to do that, there is a lot more in store. So stay tuned. Have a burning question?

Got questions? Want to take it to the next level? Reach out to me using your preferred platform from the links below

Until next time..