Investing In Crypto At 18 - My Story

Hey, I'm Alex. I'm 18 years old, and I'd like to tell you a story of frustration, loss, success, and learning. I'd like to tell you my about my journey investing in cryptos.

So, let's start at the beginning. The first time I heard about a cryptocurrency was in late 2014 and big surprise, it was Bitcoin. I was, and still am, into tech. So, when Bitcoin started getting some press it peaked my interest. I ended up doing some research and even tried to get my computer mining, but back then mining took a good bit of technical know how, and I soon became bored.

Unfortunately for me, after my failed attempt to mine Bitcoin I decided the whole crypto space was too technical for me, and I decided to leave it alone. Had I simply chosen to buy $1,000 of Bitcoin at the time and loaned it out (like I now do), I would now be siting on just north of $12,000 of Bitcoin (at it's current $2,800 value).

So, after (stupidly) choosing to not care about cryptos for a few years I finally came back into the space in early 2017. I was making good money from my gaming YouTube channel and some freelance work. Additionally, I was doing a lot of reading on conventional investing (ETFs, Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Etc). One thing that always stuck out to me was this idea of inflation. All these book would talk about how I had to adjust my ROI for inflation to get a clear view of how my portfolio was doing. Now, conceptually I knew what inflation was, but I'd never really thought about it until then, and the more I thought about it the less sense it made.

I had to drop ~3% off of my portfolio's annual earnings because my government was printing money to pay its debt (among other things). Now, I can't print money to pay my student loans, so why did my government get to print money to pay its loans? This is when I started looking for investments that were sheltered from inflation. First I looked into precious metals. They seemed to solve my problem, but historically had underperformed the market (even accounting for inflation). Many people believe this is due to market manipulation, but whatever the reason, I was out to make money and precious metals weren't going to do it.

However, cryptos could (and still can) make massive profits unaffected by inflation. As I started to re-enter the crypto space, I learned more about the underlying tech of Bitcoin and the economics that governed it. What I saw was a gold that was impossible to manipulate and was massively undervalued (based on some simple back-of-the-napkin calculations about a conservative future forex market share of 10%).

So, I went in. I bought $500 of Bitcoin at $1,800/coin. Sold it all a week later at $2,700/coin. And made a cool $250 out of thin air (which I promptly lost on a cloud mining contract). I was hooked. In the following days I bought ~$1,000 split up between ETH, BTC, LTC, GNT, SC, XRP, and MAID, and I've been holding ever since.

Then, a few weeks ago I learned about margin funding. I was always super fearful of taking margin positions (for obvious reasons), and I still think it's a fool's game to margin trade (without inside info, which many margin traders have...). So, when I heard I could profit from other people's risk, I was SO in. I moved a large amount of my holdings onto Poloniex and setup my lending bots on Polobot.net (I highly recommend). Now I let Einstein's 8th wonder of the world do its thing.

Additionally, when the BCC split happened I chose to stick with BTC (I believe Segwit is technically more elegant than massive f***ing blocks). This allowed me to snag a week of crazy 5%/day loans on Poloniex (some of which are still going *cough* margin traders' loss aversion *cough*).

So, thats it. I'm currently up around 25% on my $1,000 investment (transaction fees add up...), and I plan to hold until one of the following things happens.

- The world completely moves to Bitcoin. I'd then use my holdings to live a life of luxury with my future St. Bernard, Duke.

- BTC goes to $1,000,000. I figure I can buy a a house in cash at that point.

- I get super sick and need the money (S*** happens. I won't act like it doesn't.)

Thanks for your time,

Alex

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