Down the (crypto) rabbit hole

Most people won't warn you what you're getting in to. They won't give you any clue as to what the next few months of your life will entail. They simply sit back in their chair, hands clasped behind their head, smug look on their face, and start reeling off how many 10x gains they've had in the past week alone (not to mention the 100x gains in the last year). This is swiftly followed by some terrible attempt (you won't know this is terrible at the time) at explaining what the 'blockchain' is, that it's not all about Bitcoin, and that if you don't get in now you will regret it for the rest of your life...

"We're all still early adopters mate!"

engage Smug Mode...

Week one

So you jump straight in, why not, fuck it, what can go wrong?! I'll only invest what I can afford to lose, where's the harm in that, surely it is worth the go...

Coinbase. Register an account, link your credit card, and BOOM, you buy your first fraction of a Litecoin (or Bitcoin, or Ethereum - but not Bitcoin Cash). There, that wasn't so hard now was it... your own personal smug mode engages, and you get a slight glimpse in to what everyone else has been talking about, all the while checking around you for who is watching, like you're doing something a little bit naughty.

Week two

Bored of Coinbase. So you're bored of checking your Coinbase app, it didn't take long, just like Mr Smug face told you it would, and there are other places called 'exchanges' that you could visit, to funnily enough, exchange your (rather boring now) Litecoin, for something sexy, shiny and new! (shhhhhhh, don't tell Litecoin i said that, i'm a massive Litecoin fanboy honest!). After some nail biting moments during your first ever transfer of Litecoin from one wallet to another, it finally appears on said exchange and you're all set to go... how hard can this trading stuff be anyway!?

Altcoins

Like a kid in a candy store, you don't know where to start, the urge to buy everything in site is overwhelming, but you tell yourself that you're a sensible adult and the days of collecting stuff just to complete a set (like football stickers) is well and truly behind you... you will make educated decisions based on research, what the whitepaper says, who makes up the team, what the current circulating supply and market cap is...

then you go and buy some Tron

FOMO

Fear Of Missing Out. If FOMO was a Jedi Knight, the force would be so freaking strong in him, that his farts would destroy planets! You cannot escape FOMO early on, like i've said, his force is too strong, and he will get you no matter what. It doesn't really matter what coin you FOMO in on, one fact will remain, and that fact is that you will buy near the top. Once you realise this, it's too late, and like many others, you will sit staring at the charts as the price soon starts to plummet...

Panic selling

After the inevitable FOMO comes the Panic Sell. Again, you can't avoid this, even the strongest of characters do it, however, just as you're about to click that sell button you know something deep down inside of you is screaming at you not to do it, but the urge is too great, the fear of losing all your hard earned is just too much, you have to get out now to save some of your money before it's all gone and you've nothing left... So you click sell, and pretty much straight after you've done that...

Reversal

The Panic Sell is very quickly followed up by the Reversal, where your coin you just sold (at a massive loss), decides to take off to the fucking moon, and if you'd only listened to all the guys and girls on social media, you wouldn't have made such a dumb ass mistake, but instead, would now be posting about your very own 10x... boy are you ticked off with yourself!!!

Shitposting

With all these valuable lessons under your belt, you take a step back, like a Buddhist monk meditating to reach enlightenment, you feel relaxed, refreshed, ready for the next trade, fully certain that the next coin you invest in will be the Bitcoin destroyer in years to come. But, before you pick this Bitcoin killer, you decide to do even more research, and, just because you're fed up of going at alone, you decide to take to social media to see what other coins people are talking about.
This is where you encounter Shitposting. You won't know its shitposting straight away, you may even decide to make a trade or two off of what some 'guru' has said on a forum, however, you soon quickly realise, that not everyone knows what they are talking about, and instead, are just talking absolute SHIT!

DYOR

Fed up of Shitposting, you decide to get really serious, sleeves rolled up, strong coffee in hand, you type out https://coinmarketcap.com, and start Doing Your Own Research! In time, you start to make some decent trades, you manage to keep FOMO at bay (only just!), you know what the shitcoins are, and (whilst not proud of the fact) you start to get quite good at Shitposting yourself!

Journey is only beginning

Whilst not a complete story, this is most definitely how the majority of us get started in crypto, and from here, the journey is just really beginning... Fascinated by all things crypto, your interest just keeps growing as the weeks pass. Finding, and joining Steemit, has also been one of the best things about this jump down the rabbit hole! So here's a raised glass to many more weeks / months / years of:

Staring at price charts
Reading whitepapers
Resisting FOMO
Trying not to buy too many altcoins
Educating anyone who mentions anything remotely to do with crypto
Spending hours and hours scrolling through coinmarketcap
Doing your best to avoid getting any better at shitposting
Doing your best to get better on Steemit
And perfecting the art of sitting back, hands clasped behind your head (with a smug look on your face) and telling your friends how many 10x gains you've had in the last week!

Hope you enjoyed reading my first short story...

Living crypto... short story (sorry, no Lambos)