A story worth telling...

As every fairy tale starts with the phrase “once upon a time”, I believe every story related to the amazing world of crypto should start like this:

When I first heard of bitcoin was back in 2013, I was doing some research for a paper about the deepweb, that is when I learned about the silk road. I noticed that the price tag of things wasn’t in US dollars or Euros or any other currency that I knew of back then, so I researched a little more and I discovered the infamous bitcoin! This nasty ominous thing that was used only by criminals, perverts and crackheads.

A year or two later I did a youtube video with a friend who is an accountant and economist, he talked about bitcoin and my only reaction was “Oh yes, I saw that “thing” was worth like $300US. Still no real interest on my part.

Finally on February 2017, my company hired a software developer (I am also a software developer) to assemble a team in order to be able to pull out a new development that we were needing. At this point you might be asking yourselves “why on earth a guy who is supposed to be interested in tech didn’t got interested in bitcoin since day one” right? So, this new guy started talking about bitcoin and ethereum and while the other members of the team laughed at the idea, in me, the spark of satoshi was lit at last. We engaged in a long talk about the tech, the trading and crypto as a whole. He bragged a little about how he made some extra bucks by just holding a small amount of bitcoin for a few days in his Xapo wallet.

I remember I was very excited about it and frightened at the same time. What if I put some money in and everything results in a scam? What if my exchange account gets hacked? But the illusion, the smell of “easy money” echoed in my head. It is fair to say that everyone around thought it was a ridiculous idea. This of course didn’t stop me. I started to research a little on how to get in, how to trade, setup an account in tradingview.com, cex.io and poloniex, so I begun watching the market and continued for some time.

And then, in June 2017 I did things that everybody said I shouldn’t do, like buying my first coins with a credit card; as stubborn as I am, I couldn’t care less so I did that on one of the lowest volume exchanges of that time (cex.io) and bought 3 ethers for around $350USD each, then I sold them next day for around $400USD! Just imagine the feeling!!! My very first trade gave me a hundred and fifty bucks! Indeed, easy money. I felt smart and a real pro.

A few days later and out of the blue I received a call from my bank telling me that I had a loan already authorized. I never asked for one, so this seemed very odd to me. Then I started to see a lot, and I mean A LOT of combinations of numbers everywhere… clocks, filenames, calculators, excel sheets… I am no fan of numerology, but I felt a connection between this and the call from the bank. And even tho EVERYBODY says that you only must use what you can afford to lose, I thought of this as a business and business often start out of a financial credit. After all, what was the worse that could happen?

Ego and stubbornness together, I took the loan. And yes, I Immediately lost 50% of it. This was the moment when I realized that on one side I was an absolute idiot and on the other that I could not quit just like that and I needed some serious studying… oh, and throw away the ego.

I read a good bit on Technical Analysis, Fundamental Analysis and started researching coins. Did small tests, started to do some risk management… so, around October I did some FA on NEO (I had some since antshares) and ADA, both looked promising to me and decided to go big on them.

By early December I got my mortgage liquidated. Later that same month I paid back the loan and in mid January 2018 I got rid of a credit card. Basically, the only thing I’m paying monthly right now is one of the cars I have.

I kept some bitcoin so I could continue to make profits by trading altcoins and I believe I am doing fine. The plan is to quit my job (they asked me to stay until the end of this year) and go full-time into trading.

Crypto-Tweeter is an awesome tool to help you get through rough times and you can also find really good and experienced people giving very valuable advice. BUT, there also are a lot more trolls, egocentric pricks and haters than anywhere else.

In the end, my story is about how trading changed my life. I am not rich, I do not pretend to be rich neither do I want to. I just want lo live free and this gave me the opportunity to try. It doesn’t matter which road you take, the most important thing is to be able to recognize your mistakes and learn from them; never quit. Be open to advise, but decide for yourself. Do your own research and never ever stop learning.

@cryptojnoob
https://twitter.com/cryptojnoob