The Set-up

I was speaking to my colleague today. The 'micro-analyst' who invested £250 in STEEM back in November, cashed out 'early' at £300 and missed out on a 10x return.

What I hadn't previously mentioned is that he has also invested £250 in AMP back in November.

At the time I was pretty bullish on AMP. AMP had tanked from 40k sat (just after the second "ICO") down to under 14k sat. I'd thought it had reached it's bottom and would climb to at least previous highs. He bought £250 worth of AMP at 14.5k sat and got around 3050 AMP tokens.

The Unravelling

Then, of course, the Synereo AMP Team began to unravel as I'd previously documented here and here and here. The price tanked and dropped below 5k sat. He speaks in fiat, so I'd told him his AMP had halved in value. He marked it in his spreadsheet. I was even more despondent. It was only the steadily rising Bitcoin price that stopped his losses being a lot more.

The Recovery

Fast forward to today and my colleague asked me how much his AMP was worth. I'd noticed that AMP had recovered to just under 12k sat. To me this was down on the 14.5k sat price he'd bought in at. He was also a long way off the gains (in BTC terms) I'd thought he make when he bought AMP. However AMP had made a some good gains on BTC this year.

The Math

So we did the math. His 3050 or so AMP was now worth around 0.35 BTC. To my mind this was a loss. It was less than the 0.44 BTC he'd spent in November. I told him his investment was worth 0.35 BTC. He asked how much was that in pound sterling, so I told him,

£650.

The Elation!

He was delighted!

The £250 speculation on AMP, that he'd thought was worth only £100 was now worth a whooping £650!! He wanted to cash out there and then and wasn't listening to anything I was about to tell him! He was beaming and boosted to anyone that would listen how much I'd made him in just over 6 month. He was happy to lock in his crypto profit and was going to put the money into Russian stocks and some other country.

The Disconnect

I didn't register other country he was going to invest in because I was incredulous. Seriously? He was going to bail on crypto and put your money in some random Index Fund?...

He hadn't even made a 3x return on his AMP. Worse still because he bailed early on STEEM he hadn't even made a 2x return overall. He'd put £500 and 'only' managed £950 in return.

In his mind however, 'HE'D ALMOST MADE A 2X RETURN!' That was fricking awesome!

The Spilt Milk

It was then I realised,

I'm "Crypto Spoilt".

I've normalised the idea of getting a 10x return on a crypto investment to such an extent that I couldn't be happy for my colleagues almost 3x return on AMP. He was happy to be almost tripling his money. However I think I'd let him down. I can't help knowing he'd have made more if he'd have kept his cash in bitcoin, then backing my hunch on AMP.

Frankly he'd would have likely earned more if he put the top 100 crypto in a hat and let a monkey pick out the one to invest in at random.

The Take Home

I think I brush off 90% gains because I feel we're 'in the bottom of the first innings' in terms of the disruption crypto can cause. It is literally life changing tech and the right investment can come with life changing returns. What is happening now is nothing compared to what potentially lies ahead. It's self-evident to me, why cannot others see it?

This is how crypto has spoiled me. A 90% return on an investment in 6 months or so, is by any measure, fantastic. I should be happy for my colleague. There was and is no guarantee of AMPs success. He got in and came out with a healthy profit.

More importantly, he learned a bit about crypto. He learned about wallets. He learned a bit about exchanges. He dipped his toe into cryptocurrency and came out with a positive experience. He will share that experience. Should he have an occasion to actually use crypto as a means of exchange, he'll be confident in it's legitimacy.

That's the take home for me.

For all the thrills, the wild rides, the pumps, the dumps, the gains and the losses, all that really matters is adoption.

If people 'come for the profit, stay for the utility', then those invested in crypto for the long haul can only benefit.

With that said I'd going to try and recognise I am 'crypto spoilt', so I must try to keep a bit of perspective when analysing how others navigate their way through this crazy world of cryptocurrencies.

Thanks for reading!