Hi Steemit!

My name is Daniel, and I'm from Singapore. 1 week old here (on the STEEMIT platform), excited, and I'm looking forward to leave something -- like a form of a helpful or fun digital footprint -- everyday that would help you like this space better!

Here is a little story about how Steem came calling.

"Alt-coins is the way to go bro!"

Early November 2017, I was having supper at my best friend's place when he alerted me to a project that he had been getting involved in the recent months.

"Alt-coins is the way to go bro!" my best friend exclaimed.

He was excited, as he started showing me a mining rig that he had came up with that stemmed from a gaming computer that he had got for himself earlier this year, and results that the machine had generated.

He further explained, "my younger brother and a group of friends of his had started setting aside cash from their monthly allowance in this space of cryptocurrencies, and found some success turning few hundreds into a graduate's salary when one of the alt-coins he had invested in had a major price move to the upside!"

"How do I get in this space?" as I began listening intently.

My friend then went on to show me what Coinmarketcap was, how he got his computer ready for mining, and a responsible reminder of not going all in till the extend of not being able to put food on the table the next day.

"Remember how you had introduced me to Bitcoin when you were trading it in 2014?" he said towards the end of supper.

"Yes I did!" I remembered clearly on how I had complained about the platform not allowing me to hold on to Bitcoin for more than 24 hours before "expiring" -- I had avoided cryptocurrencies altogether ever since, as I lost close to $500 over the course of a month.

That thought of the whole alt-coins space and mining was in my head, like it was on replay, after that meetup.

What I had found amusing was that ... I had sold off all my positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum a month earlier!

Bitcoin broke a new high at $5,000 USD ($7,000 SGD) - SELL EVERYTHING!

Towards the middle of 2017, it just struck me, "dollar cost averaging", as I was reading random posts on investing and trading on Quora.

I've always wanted to get into the cryptocurrencies space, and recalled seeing something of an "automated buy" feature in Coinbase.

It was finally at the end of June 2017 when I started stocking up on my first new shiny coins that I can't see or touch. I went on to set an automated buy for Ethereum a day after.

At that same time, I heard of friends talking about things like binary options, and how another wanting to get into high-leveraged retail forex trading.

As trading and investing had been a topic that had been repeatedly brought up during conversations with my friends, one of them had mentioned about how he had been burnt in trading and had been demoing for months (which has been over a year or two).

"Stop wasting time in demo. Go live and learn how to swim!" I voiced out over and over again with different friends during discussions about trading -- a lesson that I had to learn the long and painful way.

During a dinner, I explained to my friends at the table on the concept of dollar cost averaging, and how I am trying it out on Bitcoin and another different coin called Ethereum, that are both available on Coinbase, and how they can be easily set-up to do an auto-buy for a period of a day, to once a week, or once a month.

"Argh! I came across Bitcoin when it first came out many years back!" one cried out.

"If only I knew! I would have bought!" another screamed.

"Yeah, it's our IT people's biggest regret in hindsight. I remembered installing the wallet on my computer, I might had thrown it out or had it formatted sometime along the way. That time had passed." I replied.

"Why not do this dollar cost averaging if you believe that the price would continue to go further up in the following years?" I continued.

October came. Prices had gone up to $5,000, about twice higher than when I had started. I eyeballed an approximate 20-30% growth and got out of both my Bitcoin and Ethereum positions. "It doubled in price too quickly." I had thought.

Litecoin: an hour of epiphany

I decided to get into Litecoin on 8 December for no apparent reason. There was a slight move that had seen the cryptocurrency that I felt like it could move beyond the upper price resistance.

An hour later, I texted another friend who was in the cryptocurrencies space, "wow the Litecoin that I had bought an hour ago at $146 is worth $164 now".

The next day, a friend, who I wouldn't have thought would to have ventured into the cryptocurrencies space, started talking about Litecoin as an incredible "investment" that seen an increase over twice on his initial capital when it was still in the low $80's about a couple of months ago. He joked about planning for a trip and placing another investment into the coin when the year-end bonuses were given.

At the same hour upon hearing that conversation, I came up with a plan and mobilized another few rounds of funds from the existing profits to buy up as much as Litecoins as possible and bought another Litecoin while he was still sharing with our group of friends -- I've managed to cough out enough for 5.6 of them at the end of the next 4 days, and sold them at a 50% increase over that period.

STEEM. Looks interesting. A web 3.0 without ads? How do I get involved with this?

During the week of the staggering rise of Litecoin's prices, I went to look up on a few coins on Coinmarketcap, jokingly telling my friends that I'm going to do a lottery of alt-coins, buying them at a low and hoping that they grow into a crazy prices that would get us really rich.

My knowledge at that point of time was limited to buying up coins on Coinbase.

"Use this exchange to buy the coins that you're looking at. I'm using a couple of them here." a friend who's in this space advised.

I opened a few coin summaries from Coinmarketcap that looked like their prices had been recently flat-lining. Steem was one of those that I had piked my curiosity.

A series of thoughts came to mind.

"Is this a web 3.0 where users can get paid to create content?"

"Is Steemit something like a Content Management System that I could power a new blog on my own domain, allowing users to generate content and get paid to do it without having advertisements plastered all over their site?"

"I really liked working with WordPress (a highly popular open-source Content Management System) and the exhaustive amount of plugins and resources available that helped me build a living out of it."

"What if this wasn't meant to be deployed on self-hosted sites, but to break the barriers of being a paid publisher without all those pain and troubles someone new to web hosting has to go through?"

"What if Steem and Steemit were to do what Web 2.0 had already accomplished with Facebook, Twitter, and major social media platforms, while instead of the cash flowing to the hands of the corporations and shareholders, the cash flow would be distributed to the people who are reading, voting, commenting, and creating the content?"

"How would we deal with plagarism?"

"Wouldn't a post from an established user out-weigh the ones that started much later?"

"Wait a minute, isn't it impossible to delete something out from a blockchain? What if a post written earlier or by others cannot get censored or deleted later?"

"I have so many questions!"

I decided to have faith in humanity, and start getting involved.

I signed up.

What was I doing before Steem?

I've built a couple of e-commerce websites with each serving a small niche. One in the retail and events space, while the other is in food as a wholesaler, with a day job as a delivery guy for the former, while I spend the rest of my time tinkering with WordPress, looking at charts and sometimes I read.

I believe that the blockchain would be used to further the good that humanity have to offer.

And I am looking forward to leaving a little bit of fun or something useful, as I've mentioned at the very beginning of this post, digital footprints, for you to enjoy, inasmuch as I could think of or possibly do, everyday.

I hope you've enjoyed this post! Do help me by leaving me a thumbs up, or by commenting below.

Have a great day ahead! :)