From MtG to Crypto

I am very new to the crypto scene.

Like this is my second week.

After reading site after site; blog after blog, to understand the platform, different coins and what their objectives are I have started to dip my toes, very lightly.

Trading is not new to me. I have been playing Magic: the Gathering for a long time. I started in 1994 at the tender age of 14. I took a break through my "I'm new to this adult thing" stage but I have now been playing and trading since 2005. I have not paid cash for my hobby for roughly ten years. Not long after I got back into the game I made it my mission to understand its economy.

In the first year I spent money on nostalgic cards from my teenage days and it didn't take long to realise they were a money pit. But also through that year I noticed the value of some cards, and the fervor that some people showed in order to get a hold of them. There was a market!

I was rubbish at the game. If I had a dollar for every time I was bottom of the leader board... But over the years I developed a name for trading with and acquired good value in my collection. That lead to creating a bank account for the hobby which I would float cash in for opportune buys, then buying whole collections and the overall value continued to increase.

I was never a sharky trader (an in game term for someone who takes advantage of leverage in a misleading or inappropriate way) and ended up getting a good name for myself in the Australian MtG scene. This name set me on a path to administrating the Facebook group MTG Market Australia Group (Australia's largest MtG trading forum).

In 2013 financial strains hit hard at home (close to losing the house) and throughout the year I had about three months unpaid leave from work whilst sorting out the personal issues. A selloff of a large portion of the collection helped us get through that problem year, but I had to restart grinding cardboard from the beginning again. This hobby has been a great safety net for financial strains in real life.

The trading has still been pretty good since, though I never recuperated to the level I had before . But I have spare stuff and now there is another shiny new thing called cryptocurrency. My journey into this strange new world begins with liquidating some cards to have a little play around in these markets, and hopefully see if some of my card trading skills can transfer into coin trading.

I have been looking at a couple of ICOs as well as trying to understand a few of the existing coins what their purposes are. It looks like there is a lot of opportunity out there and I am excited to see what this new frontier has to bring.