Starting from the ground up, mid rush, as the rest of the world begins to scramble up the same hill we are all trying to conquer. The cryptocurrency world is a mess of voices loud and opinions on which way to go, which platform will make it, buy vs sell, the bull vs the bear, story's of overnight millionaires, burnt hopes, and a constant feeling and questioning "am I out of my depth?"
For what its worth and for whoever would like to hear my story I will do my best to document step by step what brought me to take this leap of faith and put real world money into something with no intrinsic value and some insights to my personal beliefs along the way.
A bit of background.
My name is Mayim, it comes from the Hebrew word for water, I was born in Sydney Australia and I am 23 years old
I attended a Rudolf Steiner school for the entire duration of my schooling career, this school and form of teaching encourages thinking and the ability for children to develop their own ideas of the world and not just to be caught up on the way things are fed to you and to question any system that attempts cuts you into groves that tell you how to think, live and behave. This school was and is such a large part of my life It deserves its own piece to come in the future!
After school the first thing I had to do was leave, get out of the small community I had grown up in, the 'bubble'. Funded by delivering pizza's after school 5 days a week Tokyo and Japan was the first destination followed by a year in Canada, there a job in door to door sales gave me a first taste of what it takes to put your nose to the grindstone and work.
After this I returned home and got a job at the only computer repair shop in Byron bay and with my sales experience and knowledge of computers quickly began to manage the day to day running of the business and this carried on for the next three years.
First Contact.
April 2013, The first time I heard of bitcoin, in my home town of Byron Bay, Australia, I was 18 at the time and an avid gamer with interest in computers but as most 18 year olds, no drive, no vision, and not even the slightest thought of investment or my financial future. This is definitely not a story of success from an early investor, just the first encounter with an idea.
Byron bay is one of Australia's premier hubs for backpackers, beaches and party's, so naturally growing up in a place like this we had our fair share of wild nights and this was definitely one of them.
Wondering the town after more then a few beers and other substance in the system you tend to encounter a fair share of characters and colorful people and as it happened, I don't remember how, I ended up deep in conversation with a fellow named Stu.
The conversation stared midwalk and soon found its way to a park bench and the subject of computers came up as it usually does when I talk to someone for long enough and he responded with a story of how he had set up all the computers in his workplace with some old AMD Radeon Gpu's and had them "Mining" bitcoin overnight about 15 computers in total and the payout was not huge at the time, so instead of holding the coin or selling it for currency he would use the mined bitcoin to purchase large quantity's of MDMA on the Darkweb and sell it to tourists on the streets of Byron turning a hansom little profit as the price of these substances is very high in Australia (about $250 per gram for those who have a reference).
At the time in my drunken state I thought it was a nifty trick to make a few bucks on the side and take advantage of computers to make some real money. A few days later I was sitting on my computer at home scrolling mindlessly and I remembered my conversation with Stu so I started digging, a few hours later I had my old Radeon 4790 set up with a mining pool and running at a hilariously low hashrate for a few hours, then a few days, and then it I forgot all about it like most pet projects, my tiny portion of the take gone forever like so much coin lost by people who simply moved on for one reason or another.
Second brush with Bitcoins
December 2016, My father told me some old friends who lived nearby had returned from overseas and he was on his way to visit them so I decided to go along and say hello as they had been my first real employers, Rohm a feisty older American surgeon and his polar opposite calm collected Australian wife Marion, I had worked on their property maintaining the gardens and helping with some earth moving projects, they live entirely off the grid in a beautiful house in the middle of the rain forest.
The final guest joining us was Alon Geva, a teacher of the investigation of the mind, a long time family friend who's teachings have influenced the way I think and approach some tasks and difficulties in my life. His youtube channel linked >here< is worth checking out, but more on this another time.
When I arrived we sat down for a late lunch five of us enjoying they view
We sat and talked about many things mostly to do with philosophy and the understanding of the nature of the mind, being the youngest in the room by a large margin might make some feel vulnerable or that their voice may not count as much as another's with more life experience, but in this circle this was most definitely not the case.
At one point I brought bitcoin up as an analogy and how the mind attributes value to things with essentially no worth and the more minds that think the same way the more concrete this idea becomes and grows, this way something is formed from an idea to a physical manifestation, a true testament to collective human will.
This lead into a stream of conversation debating the validity of bitcoin as a currency or a worthy investment and at the time with little knowledge of the technology and inner workings I did quite a poor job of defending it as a legitimate investment strategy.
I maintained that having your money somewhere where no one entity can take it from you is priceless in itself, and still do strongly believe that it will have a serious impact on our future and needless to say I should have put my money where my mouth was at the time. This turned out to be another missed opportunity to jump into the world of Crypto currency.
Where I am today
I am currently living in Düsseldorf, Germany, I have been traveling for the last seven months and have settled down here for a while to rest, recharge and save up a little bit more money before I continue.
As it happens it is quite a bit more difficult to find work in computer repair in this city then I originally thought it would be without being able to speak German, so I found myself with quite a bit of free time on my hands so I started to read, how can I make an income to sustain myself wherever I am in the world from my computer.
I don't know how to code, my Photoshop and web design skills are very average, I am not the creative type but I consider myself a problem solver and this lead me to trading.
One thing I like to think I excel in is research, whenever someone is looking for some small bit of information on any subject I will be able to jump in and extract the relevant parts quite quickly and efficiently while mostly ignoring the fluff around it and this leads me to one of the first and most important skill I think are required for any job relating to computers or almost anything today for that matter, using Google correctly and efficiently.
This section will receive its own story and will link to it when it is up.
This brings us back again to Crypto and trading, I want to document my process to help me plan my way along, this will help me stick to my plan, it will give me a chance to be critiqued on an open platform and learn a few things along the way.
September 23rd 2017, A few youtube videos and reddit posts later I was setup again with a wallet and bought into about $300 AUD of BTC and ETH, better late then never!
My next post will outline my beginning and the influences on my decisions.
Game Plan
Whenever I have the time I plan to be posting regular updates and story's, looking forwards to hearing what you guys have to say in response and improve my writing skills too post by post.
Timeline - 1 month - 10 full pieces min and other posts.
- Getting started in Crypto(not a guide per say, just my personal experience)
- Researching
- My Schooling at Shearwater Steiner
- Weekly updates on trading and new ideas Crypto and other
- Travel Blog until now + some photography
- Maintaining a good head space & General life Philosophy
- Other hobby posts
From the beginning to the end of this post alone there has been drastic directional changes and thought provoking realizations, I cannot wait to jump deeper into some of these topics and hopefully open up a dialogue in a way only this platform can provide.
A big thank you to everyone who took the time to read this post!
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