Saturday, 12th of November 2022
Hello Hivers! I know I have made an #introducemyself post through Hive already couple of weeks ago, but today I would like to introduce another side of me, which I've only briefly mentioned in my first #intro post.
Since LeoFinance is all about money, I thought it would be a good idea to tell you all about my background in finance and crytoverse.
When I was still a Mathematics student back in Poland, I opened my first online bank account and become fascinated with investment funds that were available to account holders. I read all there was to read about this option and using my scholarship money I purchased a few of the options. Even in my early 20's I already had an appetite for middle to high risk investments looking at which options I picked back then. I still have some of those funds in my Polish bank accounts. Not sure how well it did over all those years, as I haven't checked it recently.
I didn't have much money to invest, but what I have gathered very fast is that the more risky investment, the higher rewards. Saving accounts back then were giving around 7% APR, which sounds like a bliss in current marking conditions, where my best savings account gives me less than 1% APR. Hence why those higher risk funds sparked my interest.
For many years to come I was earning, saving and spending my money freely without actually making my money work for me. Earning in UK was much easier than earning back in Poland, so I didn't feel the urgency to save for a rainy day.
Fast forward to 2017... I discovered an investment app which I could use for free to try my investing skills. Needless to say I was doing great until I wasn't. Back then I didn't understand that I was using laverage option and what it means. These days I don't touch this form of investment. I find it way too risky for my limited knowledge and greedy approach ;)
What I remember from that time is that I saw BTC/BCH fork and how it went for both coins. I so wish I had the any crypto knowledge back then to invest in either of 2 coins. I'd be driving Tesla now!
But hey, we live and learn is my favourite saying. Some months later I got a bit more time on my hands and I started to learn more about crytpo and claiming some various coins from faucets. The subject was too vast for me back then to stick to it, so I got other hobbies and forgot all about crypto.
Until 2021... as April of that year was the time when I joined 2 sister crypto platforms - read.cash and noise.cash. I also wish that I have found these earlier, but I also believe that when the student is ready, the teacher arrives. These 2 platforms kickstarted my crypto journey. Although I also joined Hive through #ecency that year, I feel I wasn't ready yet to enter such a vast and overwhelming ecosystem. I had some more learning to do before I was ready to start and appreciate all it has to offer.
On read.cash the tips are distributed by TheRandomRewarder in BCH and I have been rather lucky that he noticed and started to tip my articles right from the beginning. I know that some people took long weeks before being noticed. I started from making all the mistakes a newbie can make, which made dive into all tutorials that I could find to learn more about how things work. Back then I didn't even have a crypto wallet, so I was learning EVERYTHING from scratch.
Luckily I had plenty of time on my hands back then and I do love to learn new things. I created my first wallet in Bitcoin.com and learned all there was to learn to be able to make my first steps in this vast cryptoverse. I have made many friends and soon joined the amazing #Club1BCH funded by @pvmihalache . That was another great kick on my crypto journey, as in the club we helped each other in all ways possible. There was always a lively chat happening in Club1BCH Telegram channel last year, although it's not so lively since bear market came and made many people leave crytoverse.
It must have been around August or September last year, when SmartBCH evm chain was launched. That was my first exposure to the beautiful #DeFi world. I was a few days late, as setting up my Metamask and bridging money to sBCH seemed like a lot of effort back them. I smile at this memory of how overwhelming it all seemed back then. I read a few tutorial articles first before I was all set up on sBCH. Something that takes me just a few minutes with every new chain I join these days. Clearly the effort and hours spent on learning did not go to waste.
SmartBCH was my first DeFi love and a cruel teacher. I mainly traded tokens, as well as staked and provided LP's to various new dexes popping up like mushrooms after the rain. Some days I took great profits, other times I got rugged. It's how the story goes. You need to get burned before you learn I guess ;)
What was a game changer for me was introduction of NFTs into the chain. My first mint was on BlockNG, where I minted my first 3 human ladies LawPunks. I admit, I had no idea what I was doing. I saw many people talking about minting punks, but I didn't understand anything. What is a mint? What is an NFT? I asked in Club1BCH and a friend sent me her ref link to minting page at BlockNG without explaining anything. 'Go mint' she said, so I did. I decided to leave the learning for another day and FOMOed into minting, as the price was only 0.01BCH and it was an amount I was comfortable with loosing if shit hit the fan.
Well, it didn't. I saw the 3 wierd looking pixelated women in my wallet and I couldn't see what the fuss was all about (those 3 smoking ones in the middle are my mints). I did however get curious of the potential and I wanted to mint a few more of those weirdo's. By that time I realised the mint was over. One person in the club advised to keep these for a year in our wallets and they will make a 20x easily by that time, so for a moment I considered buying some more from the market, while the price was still only 0.02BCH per punk. It seemed a bit too easy to be true and I left buying 'for another day'. That other day when I checked, they were already 0.08BCH and I thought it was becoming too much!
What do you know? It was a one-off rare case when it actually wasn't too good to be true. It was better! For some weeks after the mint the price was going up and down and finally the day has come when staking platform was launched. On that day I was one of the first people to stake my LawPunks and seeing how much Law I was earning and how fast I quickly sent a message to our punk guy in Club1BCH to buy some more punks off him. He was nice enough to sell me 2 punks at the floor price and I also bought 2 more and had 7 punks in total.
We could only stake up to 5 NFTs in 1 wallet, so I quickly created another and staked my 2 lonely male punks there too. Day by day I was harvesting bags of Law (I wrote about it in this article) and using it to upgrade all my punks to level 2 and the next harvests I used for buying new promising sBCH tokens that were still popping up from all directions.
In January 2022 I posted my December report which I closed at 12BCH increase in the value of my portfolio. Back then BCH was over $400, so that $5000 increase in December made me feel like I was on the top of the world! Crypto veterans were warning us to sell some of our BCH holdings as the market is about to take a downturn in the new year, but what do they know? I was a few months old crypto expert and I quickly became cocky with my investments. I mean, I saw BCH at $1500 when I was taking my first steps cryptoverse in May 2021, so how can it dip below the $400 even? It will go up!
Clearly I had no idea about how bulls and bears dance in a constant ebbs and flows and what goes up must go down and not necessarily the other way round. Well, at least not all that fast.
So what happened next? Well, I did even more mistakes! Not only have I invested money I couldn't afford to loose, but also my friend asked me to invest some of her money seeing how well I was doing and... I lost it all 🤣
It's funny now, but it sure wasn't funny then! Seeing how well my punks investment went (it was around 100x plus Law harvest back then) I was keen to find yet another NFT project with potential. The worst #NFT investment I've made was aping into Tropical Finance Gulls and Dudes. That's 10BCH I will never see again. They were pretty then, now they're pretty useless.
Had I been more experienced and careful, I would invest that money in LawPunks and at least the BCH value would be preserved plus I would have even more Law. I'm happy that at least I sold 2 of my giveaway Dudes NFTs when they still had value... Only to ape into more risky projects like Pega on Polygon.
Yes, Play2Earn games have sparked my interest too. I started as a scholar in AxieBCH gaming guild and I managed to grow my BCH bag a little before shit hit the fan and the game was not profitable anymore. Blessing in disguise was breaking of my main laptop, which made me quit playing for the guild without burning any bridges behind me. Thanks to Paul from Club1BCH I got the taste of earning in Pegasus P2E and I aped into the game with my earnings and some profit from selling TF NFTs. I was first trading the game token - VIS and needless to say that it was another painful lesson I had to learn.
Loosing $1200 in trading VIS didn't teach me enough. I was now desperate to recover my losses and finally earn more. I aped into buying my own Pega at $600 mark, then another one at $350 and even breed one of my own. I had 3 Pegas to race every day I was racing them despite VIS crashing more every day. Every new update would cause a tiny pump and much bigger dump. I chose to reinvest my earnings and breed again. My 4th Pega had not so great stats, so I decided to sell it and buy one with better stats. I sold it for $60 and took too much time to decide which one to buy. Lucky me and my indecision! After a few days VIS crashed even more after another bad update and all newborns were worth a few $. I couldn't belive my eyes.
It was then that I completely crashed too and without making a conscious decision of quitting I quit crypto for months. I was drained. I lost all my money, had depts and my tiny income from self employment didn't even cover my bills, let alone paying off the debts. I was faced with a difficult decision to make. I had to go back to full time employment and I resisted it so hard I ended up with severe anxiety attacks.
Going back to JOB (Just Over Broke) felt like such a failure. Why did this happen to me? I was doing so well with my crypto investments I thought. Then it all crashed and so did my dreams. I uploaded my CV online and instantly got a few offers to pick from. I went for 2 interviews and I got both jobs. That was easy - I really enjoy going for interviews and I learned to shine at them. The tough part was trying to decide with one of the 2 jobs to take.
I'll cut the story short here, as this article has already grown so big. It feels good to get all this off my chest though. If you're still reading until now, here is what happened. I picked less paid job, but permanent one and very close to where I live. I work 4 days a week, which is a huge achievement on it's own to find a 4 days a week job in engineering. I have nice colleagues and get on well with my boss, my director and even the owner of the company and I feel very appreciated for what I do. In fact I mostly enjoy my job there and last month I said to my friend:
Since when my job is the most exciting thing in my life?
That was unheard of before, so I guess I've made the right choice. Once I settled at work, of course I started craving something new to put my interest into. I slowly started to write on read.cash again and refilling my bags with BCH again. My dev friend from sBCH times came at a perfect moment and asked me to moderate his TG channel for the new NFT marketplace he was about to launch on new evm chain - DogeChain. Remember that $60 I've made by selling my Pega before VIS crashed? I still had it on Polygon, so I bridged it over to Binance and started filling up my bags of doge to then bridge it to DC.
NFT craze started yet again with 1000's of new notificiactions to wake up to every day from TG Oasis sales bot channel. This time I wasn't going to repeat my mistakes. I didn't ape in any huge amount in any of the new projects that show up. I was carefully picking where to invest and the best 2 projects that I invested in so far were again DogePunks and Cryptor.At.
First of course out of the sentiment for the punks I loved from sBCH. Turned out to be great investment when firstly rugged project was taken over by the community and marketplace with staking opportunity was launched. I bought a few from the secondary market when the price was very low and pretty much made all my investment in DogePunks back by selling a few when the price pumped. Now keeping the remaining ones staked in hope of future gains.
Cryptor.At project was another one that I did very well with. I minted quite a few rats and traits for them and sold a few when the price of rats pumped once people realised what a cool project it is. I didn't hesitate much before I invested, as I knew the dev from SmartBCH and I knew their track record of sustaining their projects was exceptional, even in tough bear market.
I will write more about various NFT projects I did well and not so well with in my future publications. Right now I should really stop typing! I think if you managed to get to the end of this aritcle, you have a clear picture of who I am and what my crypto journey looked like.
Until next time 💙
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Oh my!
This is just amazing @fantagira you're one hell of an example for "Let's just try it and see how it goes" and you've been doing really amazing well with that.
Haha so funny, maybe I would be friends with one who owns a Tesla... What a rich friend I'd have 😅
Okay, I've never heard of this adage before but it's funny and there's truth to it haha
Ooops and you haven't been active since then, your account would have been so cool by now if you had been active.
But in any case, you're here and doing well too on read cash and noise cash... And look at those punks haha... You're a rich friend to me already 😂
I'm so inspired and honoured to read your crypto Journey... It's a kind to emulate.
13 mins read was worth it haha ❤️
You deserve a medal 🏅 for reading this monster of an article sis! I am also very happy that you felt it was worth your time. That’s the main thing!
Haha 😂 I’ll get that Tesla one day, I promise!
Yes, my profile here could be well settled by now if I started blogging regularly then, but I’m sure I had to learn many lessons first before I was ready for this. I’ll grow it slowly and organically 💙
Haha I love the medal 😅
Can't wait to see you in your own Tesla and see you grow on Hive, you can do it! 🥰
Community is amazing here, so I’m sure I can grow fast 😍 I promise to send you a picture of that Tesla one day 💙
Haha great!
I'm excited
Wow girl!!! This was a hell of a read! I just LOVE your spirit. I always remember that great saying - "He who dares, wins" Some may disagree of course but I also agree with the adage, - "You gotta be in it, to win it"
I am glad you managed to get back into work for just four days a week and are enjoying it so much. That would have to be max for a good life balance. 😀
What does engineering mean? What exactly do you do? ( Is that cool to ask? 😂 ) my main job is as a Voice Actress but crypto trade in my spare time around that.
Feel free to check my youtube and subscribe if you like listening to stories and poems. My main side hustle plan right now is to grow my channel there but its a slow grind it seems 😂
It is nice to have met up with you again after meeting you at noise cash. I am sure you are going to have great success here. You write like a demon! Much love to you 😎
I write like a demon! That made me chuckle Sally 😂😂😂 It’s a great phrase that I never heard about my writing, but I love it 😍 It only happens when I’m in the flow though. That’s why on read cash I don’t write every day, because it doesn’t always flow. I’d rather have less articles published, but of good quality 🥰
Speaking of quality - that is also my job. I am a quality inspector/quality engineer. My job is usually in places where they manufacture anything for cars/planes/ships/army to technical drawings. Usually I either write programs for measuring machines or use other measuring equipment to make sure that component manufactured are correct to their technical drawings. Sometimes I have to prepare documentations for inspection reports too and this time round I have been helping my company in upgrading their quality system to a new standard. Maybe I’ll write an article about my job one day 😉 And yes, 4 days a week is a dream come true. It gave my life a routine as well as a nice work-life balance 😍
I used to watch YouTube every day, but I got sick and tired of constant ads, I have an aversion to ads. Is there any other place where you post your updates without any ads?
Thank you so much for staying with me all the way till the end of this article. It was a long read, but it felt so good to get it all off my chest 💙
Wow! So much to take in dear, lots of new words and terms I could not fathom because I am not a crypto geek☺️ I don't know if I will really understand all of this probably if I will really take the time to educate myself about NFT's, investments and how it works but for now because we are so busy with work everyday I can't spare my time.
I am glad you learned a lot too over the years. You are one of my idols when it comes to the cryptoverse.
I read your post up to the end. I was having fun reading it.
In that case, you deserve the medal 🎖 It was a long read!
Of course, learning takes time and with full time work it is hard to squeeze everything into 24h of a day. When I started learning I was still self employed and had more time. Now even with work it’s easier, cause I’ve learned it all before, only the chains change, which is an easy adjustment.
Just reading other people’s articles was already enough help to understand a lot, but then applying it all in practice seed things up for me.
Hope the time will come that you will learn too, but if not that’s also ok. There are plenty of other ways to enjoy these platforms without much of crypto knowledge 💙
Oh yeaj, I remember those days, too as I am a readcash writer also. The fun there
for us was waiting for an airdrop time at Telegram every time a new sBCH token appeared. 😆
Haha 😂 These were the days! I wish they were back! Everything was new and exciting back then.
Do you still write on read? Do you use the same nickname there? 💙
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Wow, Monika! I didn't realize how long it was until I saw the 14 min read when I already finished reading it. Even though, you told me it was a monster, hehe;)
The important thing about that rollercoaster ride you had is that the lessons have stuck. And more opportunities will come.
I've also messed up on more than one occasion, and I hope I've learned from it. With SBCH I didn't lose much. At some point, I just left in a kind of freeze mode everything I had in SBCH, although I never invested too much. When for time reasons I had to choose between growing my Hive account or half-heartedly blogging here and there, I went for the former and I don't regret it. I don't rule out going back to Read and looking at BCH again, in fact, I want to make the effort on the Noise.app. But I really like Hive and I think it has great potential.
I'm glad your return to work went well. Now that my son is gone abroad and the economy is so struggling here, I have considered going back to a formal job, but I still shudder at the thought of that possibility.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Haha 😂 You can’t say I didn’t warn you Eli! I guess it had a flow to it if you didn’t notice the length 😁
Yes, I left the tokens on sBCH be and took a long break. Even now, I still only ever go to harvest some more law and play with LP’s on BlockNG. Sometimes I support a mint of good devs.
I can see the appeal that you’ve seen when you joined and you told me many times that I would enjoy it here and of course you were right, but sometimes it’s all about timing. I had some more lessons to learn, then take time off and slowly come back, hopefully stronger. Now I’m very ready for a new adventure 😍
Thank you for sticking with me till the end and for all you support 😘💙
You're welcome, Monika 💙
Everything comes when it has to come, I think. I hope you'll enjoy Hive's adventure. These are convulsive times in the crypto world.
But there are many possibilities here. And it's a good time to build our accounts and fill our bags.
Have a wonderful week :)
!LUV
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Yes, a bit of a bear chaos happening. All platforms have become quieter, which makes it easier to gain exposure for newcomers. I’ll do my best with that window of opportunity. I’ll be staking my HP, so my vote has more power. I really enjoy it here Eli. It’s a great platform where quality is appreciated, which I love.
Have an amazing week too 💙
You've lots of NFTs collected :D
This is the right community for you where you can post about your earnings and such, anything about finances and numbers that I know you can talk about well.
Oh yes Lee, my NFT collection is in 100’s 😂 I will have a fertile ground to talk about them here on LeoFinance 😁
Ah, the experimentation. I was lucky I had almost no savings if I had I would have gone your way. haha
You went knee-deep into NFTs. It's just you win or you learn. And you learned well... I will come to you when I need NFT advice 😉
Btw, how much is this dude worth now?
Glad that you find your JOB exciting, unlike many others.
!PIZZA
Haha 😂 I’m glad you didn’t have to! Some people are smart enough to learn from other people’s mistakes, while others just need to experience those growth pains or else they won’t learn 😉
Good job it’s only knee-deep and not neck-deep! I’m happy I didn’t play with Etherum NFT’s as fees only would ruin me 😂
I am no expert at NFTs, but I know a few things, so if I am able to assist with anything I will be more than happy!
That dude? Not sure exactly. He’s rank 4473, but prices on DC NFT marketplace don’t always take rarity into consideration. Often it’s whatever people like. It’s all about timing buy/sell. Some I bought at less than 100 Doge, sold at 300+ Doge when their marketplace launched, now they’re back below 100, so I’ll probably buy more to prepare for v2 marketplace 😉
I have heard stories about people who went neck deep... most just drowned. 🤪
Do you think NFT will rise back? I highly doubt... those were some mad times.
What's a v2 marketplace?
Oh, I’m sure they will, but nobody knows when, just like with wider market. Even in the bear market the prices go up and down and if you watch them closely you can profit from these.
What I said about DogePunks all happened within a few weeks of September/October. Their new dev released the marketplace where everyone can stake their NFTs and get % of sales volume, which made them go up in price 3x and then it turned out not many people were using it, because it’s slow and many features are missing. So the dev works on v2 (version 2) of the marketplace with improved usability and speed, which hopefully will bring the prices up again. Will see 😁
I gifted $PIZZA slices here:
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What a journey it must have been for you and you've tons of NFTs there.
Cryptoverse is an awesome space but can be really ruthless. We earn some and loss some but we can all learn from them. Happy to know you are enjoying your work and Hive too :)
!LUV
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It's nice to finally see some women among the punk NFTs. We've been sorely neglected in this genre of art, as in so many other areas of life. Thanks for sharing these!
I love my NFTs. I will no doubt be sharing more NFT related articles in the future. Thank you for stopping by 💙
what I have gathered very fast is that the more risky investment, the higher rewards
Same way also is higher the lost should the investment go south... It's all about making the best decision anyway.
You quite have an introduction to make about your financial life indeed.. those are valuable experiences.
Thanks for sharing
For the ones you've lost, sorry and for the profits you've made, congratulations 👍
Hence why the high risk 😉
Thank you for stopping by and reading.
Well, then, welcome to this part of yourself as well!
Besides, I love Polish people! I knew a lot while I was in Erasmus in Netherlands and I am now working with a Polish team for a Web3 Educational project. You guys are great!
Haha 😂 Some of us are great, while some of us are the opposite and all kinds in between. Like in any country I guess. After living in England for so long I am no longer sure whether I’m more Polish or more British, I guess I became a blend of both 😂 So I guess European would be best description, as I never ventured anywhere outside Europe, except through the internet and people’s stories.
I’m happy you’ve met some nice Polish people and thank you for a nice welcome 💙
The NFTs~ 😅 love them!
It's so much fun to read this. I can totally relate to leaving the learning to another day and just doing it now, even though I don't have an idea what I'm doing. 😅
Haha 😂 Sometimes it pays off, other times it bites us in the bum 😂 Yet I still do it at times!
Yay! 🤗
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