The adventure started with the purchase of my first Bitcoin last year in 2016.
Entering the crypto currency jungle, I was foolish and had no idea what dangers & opportunities were awaiting me. Nobody told me what was going on "back" then and no one could have predicted what would happen in 2017.

A small glimpse into my current crypto currency world as of today looks like this:

First steps into the the jungle - Level.0

Last year I was very uncertain and uninformed about what Bitcoin is, how you to get it!?
Gathering information through various mainstream channels like newspapers, television, google, youtube was and is still quite difficult. On top these sources are very superficial often times and some are even inaccurate. This changed a little bit during 2016 when the discussions about the underlying blockchain technology started to spread...

Wallet - Level.1

Anyways I figured out that I would need a "wallet" to be able to receive Bitcoins. The first wallet I came across was "blockchain wallet" by blockchain.info and it was available for iOS. So I just went with this one, installed the app and had my first Bitcoin address "bank account" within less than a minute. That was a lot quicker, easy and exciting compared to opening an account with a bank ;)

Exchange - Level.1

The wallet itself did not enable me to actually change some of my hard earned Euros into Bitcoin. I needed to find a exchange!
I stumbled across various exchanges, with funny names like Kraken, Poloniex, YoBit, Bittrex, Bitpanda, etc. But they all worked differently and not all of them accepted EUR -.-
For my purposes I decided to try Bitpanda, which seemed trustworthy to me and they accepted EUR and even PayPal =)
1 BTC was 650€ and I fought with myself, if I should spend that much money. Maybe just buy half a Bitcoin, 0.5 BTC was also an option. Luckily now, I wanted to earn one full Bitcoin and bought 1 BTC. Afterwards I transferred 0.01 BTC to my wallet to see if it works. It worked so I transferred the rest, too.

AltCoins Level.1

Surprisingly this first exchange I used was also selling Ethereum & NXT. I never heard of these before words before and started again doing some research. I came across Coindesk for blockchain and Coin related news. Ethereum could do the same same as Bitcoin, but had its own underlying blockchain and was on top of that able to not just be transferred form A to B, but was programmable based on conditions that could be set in Smart Contracts. That sounded very futuristic and quite nice. I was not as convinced as with Bitcoin, but as the price was just 10€ per Coin I just bought 10 ETH and also some NXT.

Crypto Currency news and information - Level.2

Being invested now into this new technology and kind internet, crypto based currencies I wanted to be more up to date on things and came across several other sites that I still use today: cointelegraph, cryptocompare, reddit, coinmarketcap, ...
I also went to several MeetUps in various cities and booked 2 Blockchain conference tickets. On linkedin and other networks I searched for people and groups: #bitcoin #cryptocrurrency #blockchain without much success (a lot of gambling, scam and mining pools which I am not interested in). Slack and Discord recently became one of my main communication and information sources with lots of smart and fun people, who have plenty knowledge about recent developments, trends and gossip^^

Alctoins Level Lvl.2

Currently on Cryptocompare you can find 897 different Coins, all similar, but somehow different...
In the Top#10 markets you find Monero, Dash & Litecoin. Further down on the list Dogecoin, Bitshares & NXT. Much further down the list DopeCoin, PinkCoin, CarftCoin (increased 400% in the last 24hrs) and lots more.

Most coins are used for special purposes like Steem for example^^ You can get Steem by writing nice blog posts on the Steemit.com community. But you can also buy and sell Steem on the Poloniex exchange. ONce you have Steem you can use it to gain Steempower and thereby give your vote more weight.

Other examples would be: Waves = crowdfunding // GameCredit = Gaming App Token // Dogecoin = Fun // NXT = Asset transactions // ...

ICO / Altcoins Level.3

Why are there so many different Coins and where do they come from?!
The answer is ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings = similiar IPOs for company to go public and sell shares of their company)
There are a ton of ICOs this year and a hype for a new Coin to be the next big thing. One ICO that I personally thought was very interesting is called Humaniq. The pitch for this one was that about one third of the human population on earth doesn't have a bank account and therefore no access to any financial activities (besides cash and black markets of course).

Portfolio overview Level.0

Going fast forward to today the portfolios of some people are quite diversified.
I have to be honest I completly lost the overview and if you asked me on the spot how many:

• Coins I have
• exchanges I use
• ICOs I have invested into
• wallets I use for which coin
  => I have to pass!
  the best help for an overview of available Coins, Exchanges & Wallets for me is cryptocompare. But it does not include ICOs. You can create you own portfolio overview, but I came across the blockfolio app and use that right now. But this app is not linked to my actual wallets and drives me also crazy sometimes with the 24h % change^^.

For my actual accounts there are some Multi Wallet Coins that are quite nice. Exodus is the one I use most right now.
Over 80% of my transaction go through Kraken first and for coins that are not available there I use Poloniex.

Still I have no actual clue which assets I have and were exactly they are stored...

Portfolio overview - Level.analog

So I sat down today and tried to list and link my portfolio:

This is madness!
(put sparta or jackie chan meme^^)

It becomes even more crazy when I try to connect the dots:

=> Not really safe to store so many coins on exchanges, as often times said and repeated:
- Exchanges are for exchange!
- Wallets are there to store =)

Lost in the jungle - ConfusionLevel.1000

I am not sure how you guys manage these things, but even for me with a Bachelor and 10 year background in IT this is quite crazy. If I wanted to explain this to a regular person, who often asked the questions:

1. What is Bitcoin?
2. What can I do with it. Can I go shopping with it?
   The conclusion is there will have to happen some improvements for the mainstream to be able to adapt.
   I am not worried that this will happen, because it is happening right now that this complete topic is breaking into the maintream slowly, but surely. I would only love to have a safe an simple version as of today already^^

"Easter Egg"

I thought it is maybe fun to include a little game into this and give a reward of 1 SBD each to the first 3 Steemers to name all the coins "hidden" in the first picture at the top (hint: #8)

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This article just reflects my own experience and is no (investment) advise! Do your own research and make the decisions that fit for you.

Upvote, follow & resteem
@blocklab