Tales of a Cryptocurrency Newbie

This article is about my experiences and returns on staking various cryptocurrencies over the past year or so. Unfortunately, my timing was not so great, as many of these coins were purchased in the first half of 2018 and all have lost considerable value since then, some as much as 85%! This taints the experience a bit. So, to counteract those unfortunate circumstances, my discussion of any returns in this article (both parts), will be focused on gains in number of coins I own, leaving out their value vs Bitcoin, USD, or any other currency. That being said, onwards! =========== Most folks have at least heard of the concept of mining Bitcoin (otherwise known as Proof of Work ), though they may have no idea what it means. Basically, it's a way of using computer processing power to help process Bitcoin transactions and in return, receive newly minted coins as a reward. However, this method of cryptocurrency generation and maintenance has rapidly devolved so that it is only

Disclaimer: This is a preview of a very early beta for the Gods Unchained digital Trading Card Game. Only a small subset of cards and Gods are currently available for play. This article does not represent a view of the completed product. If you find this article useful, interesting, or amusing, consider using my  referral link  if you decide to purchase any cards. In short, fun and addictive. It carries on the tradition of Magic: The Gathering, allowing players to build decks from a slew of cards to try and create powerful combos and creatures with which to defeat their opponents. Being purely digital, Gods Unchained will be often compared to Hearthstone (which I have not played). The main difference between the two, is that in Gods Unchained, players can actually own the cards they play with! The cards will be represented as tokens on the Ethereum blockchain and will thus be given an explicit ownership, allowing them to be bought, sold, and traded. There is also a set of 

In the first half of 2018, as the bottom was falling out of the Cryptocurrency markets and I was watching my investments sink deeper into the red, I began to cast about for something to focus on, other than my declining portfolio. I had dabbled a bit with mining and staking coins to get a return on my investment, but then I was turned on to something different. Airdrops. 'What the hell is an Airdrop?', you might ask. In the Cryptocurrency world, an Airdrop is the term used for a gift of digital coins or tokens that is automatically delivered to a digital wallet. Instead of having to run a program on your computer, as is usually required for mining and staking, Airdrops involved simply filling out a form and waiting for some free coins! No investment required other than your time and willingness to engage with various social media platforms. Airdrops have become a major part of the game in the world of Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs. ICOs are akin to the traditional IPOs,

In mid-December of the year two thousand and seventeen, Bitcoin hit an all-time high, reaching a valuation of nearly $20,000 per coin! It dipped heavily afterwards, but seemed to recover over the next couple of weeks. I took the opportunity to diversify into numerous Altcoins during the slump, and was rewarded as they all rode the waves upwards, many hitting their all-time highs in early January. Then, all the markets began to crumble. Bitcoin prices in late 2017/early 2018 None can say for sure what caused this crash (aside from, "it was due" -- though it should also be noted that there was a large crash in the stock market at the same time ), but there was certainly plenty of bad news going around to help foster a generally negative sentiment towards Cryptocurrency Bitconnect, a somewhat popular trading platform closed shop  after being filed with cease-and-desist letters from two different U.S. state governments . Warren Buffet, a respected guru of financial wisd

After the shocking Pre-Christmas dip in my holdings, I decided it was time to spread my investments about some more. Diversification and all, you know. But many exchanges seemed shady or had complex setups involving wallets and keys. These were things built for the hardcore users. Not for a casual investor such as myself. I was still not ready to get into the whole wallet thing, especially since I was looking at buying a number of coins. I also did not want to lose what coins I did have due to a hack or botched transfer. I needed the interactions with the exchange to be intuitive and clear. And most of all, I needed to feel like I could trust the exchange in question. Binance , an exchange based in Singapore, was oft-mentioned as a preferred trading spot. So on Christmas evening, I took a look. The website was in English and looked clean, professional. I stepped into the account creation flow and after a surprisingly easy and painless setup, I was ready to go. The number of available

In the summer of 2010, while on a plane trip, I happened across a magazine article that talked about this strange new technology called Bitcoin. Though I had no idea what a blockchain was, nor did I fully understand how one could trust a non-centralized, distributed payment system, nonetheless, I was still intrigued by what I had read. Perhaps I would look further into this at a later point. And mining sounded like an interesting avenue for exploration. After all, it was free coins, right? But alas, crap did befall, my worldly possessions were at an unknown position in transit for two weeks as I moved halfway across the country, and Bitcoin slipped entirely from my mind. ... Many years later, another article did catch my eye. This time it was of the online variety, and it spoke of how Bitcoin had surpassed $1000 in value! Holy crap, Batman! If only I had invested $100, or even $20 back in 2010... but then I try to think more rationally and realize that I had I indeed invested 7