My journey into cryptocurrencies - Introduction

I am about to describe my journey in cryptocurrencies so far, my thoughts and my opinions. Being convinced by cryptocurrencies, I am not going to write a fanboy and praise cryto „to the moon“ but also trying to play devils advocate and incorporate some criticism and reflection.

My journey began in 2009 after the financial crisis. I only had some education in basic business economics and accounting but none in macro economics or financial markets. Being at university at this time, although studying ecology, I enlisted in the elective courses „Introduction to banking and finance“ and „Basics of stock,- futures,- and option markets“.

Like many people at this time I could’t understand how some house-loan defaults on the other side of the world in California could trigger a global event and send shockwaves throughout the world.

The lecturer wasn’t a University professor but a executive manager of a local branch of Erste Bank.

At that time the bank had sunk billions in shady real estate deals in the Balkan states and eastern Europe and it was in question whether the bank would go bancrupt or gets bailed-out by someone somehow.

One of the lecturers questions was: „Who would be willing to buy Erste stock now?“ and I was the only one to raise my hand because a) I didn’t believe that the bank would go bancrupt, b) I thought buy low sell high, and c) I thought of Warren Buffet who said something like „When others get scared, it’s time for you to get greedy“. Not having any money as a student buying stocks was no option anyway, but from then to now it would have been a good deal.

After 2009 I discovered Max Keiser on RT while switching through programs and I liked it. From the Max Keiser related videos on youtube a journey began where I discovered Peter Schiff, Doug Casey, Jim Rickards, Jim Willie, Gerald Celente, Jeff Berwick, Andreas Antonopolous and many others.

The Keiser Report was the first introduction for me to bitcoin. Although having heard of it before I did’t pay that much attention. My current knowledge of bitcoin then was: Ok, so you can send money like e-mail.

It took till 2013, after having read about bitcoin, wrap my head around eliptic curve cryptograpy, getting hooked and buy some bitcoin. The only problem then was, how to get it. This was the first time that I missed out on a spike where it rose from about 200,- to 1000,- dollars. From there it started a steady decline, so then I thought that I am glad that I hadn’t bought.

When you look at the Bitcoin ATM-Map there are some venues where you can buy bitcoin, but in 2014 there was only one. So I had to drive from Austria to Slovenia just to find out that the bitcoin ATM is out of order. A second time a couple of weeks later i happened to be in Slovenia and the ATM was working so I managed to buy my first 200,-- of bitcoin.
Later that year a second ATM openend in Austria so I was able to buy a little bit more. What bothered me at that time that I wanted to have 1 Bitcoin, and not the 0.435656something.

When I bought into Bitcoin the price / my reference price was 449,-- USD. Then I also started to use some exchanges, all of which don’t exist anymore, to buy Darkcoin. For those who don’t remember Darkcoin is Dash before it got renamed. I thought that Darkcoin might have a Bitcoin-like future as it was the first currency to provide some anonymity features.
So if you are here in 2017 and thinking to yourself why didn’t I buy DASH when it was XYZ, then look at this chart. I bought in June 2014 and the guy who runs the bitcoin ATM business and a friend of him who was in the office told me, „Yeah, darkcoin’s run is over, it’s dead.“ So ask yourself if this chart looks like one of the most promising investments you could ever make? Not really, I guess. I bought Darkcoin at about 7,-- Dollars from where it went down to about 1,50 and I was really pissed about a 78%ish loss. So I was out.

Foremost from my father I heard: „See, told ya.“, „It’s a pyramid scheme“, „It’s a fraud“ and this sentiment ran from 2014 to the current day, for all cryptocurrencies from almost all sides.

Having said that my reference price was 449,--, for simplicity, I use Dollar and Euro interchangeably.

So for more than 3 years it was no way obvious that we would get from this:

To this:

The reason I stopped being interested into crypto was foremost, as I described above what an effort it was to get some, was now the question of how to spend this crap? As recent as early 2017 there wasn’t really a way to spend your crypto in a meaningful way. Now it does, and I will give you a list of plattforms to buy, sell, and trade cryptos and crypto for dollars that worked for me in another article.

In 2017 my DASH rose from 7,-- when I bought it to 100,--. Of course this has to be a tulip mania, right? In addition to fraud, pyramid scheme accusations that stood and stand always in the room suddenly this DASH promotion on Youtube with Amanda B. Johnson appeared. Remember I am playing devils advocate….Now it suddenly seemed that the critics could point their finger to someone and say: „See what a ponzi scheme this is.“ With these videos you had a perfect definition for a ponzi, with someone trying to lure you into DASH. I remember her saying „Yeah, we always expected it to go to 100,-- but we thought it would take longer“ Sure you did, I am wondering what the reasoning for a 100,-- was and how you came up with this valuation?

After the facts it’s always easy to say: „I knew all along“. But if you invest your own money it’s not that obvious.

I had Darkcoin/DASH that I bought in 2014, so after the spike I was wondering „Are my Darkcoin still here?“, „Did they get converted into DASH seemlesly?“

Short answer: They did. I just want to make sure that someone who might get into Crypto today understands that there are some questionmarks and uncertainties that were there at the time and that you might consider.

Disclaimer: I don’t have any Bitcoin or DASH at the current time.

I’ll leave the introduction at here, but I’m going to write about:

What are the biggest problems of cryptocurrencies as of today?
What plattforms worked for me?
Which cryptocurrencies worked for me?
Which investment strategies worked best for me?
How I evaluate currencies?
Which were my greatest successes?
Which were my greatest losses?
What are my takeaways?
What is the current state?
Where are the potentials?