Tales of a Cryptocurrency Newbie

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 avail...

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...