What it's like trying to talk about cryptocurrency, Dapps, and DeFi with my significant other...
In 2017, I became enamored with Bitcoin after seeing just how real the potential was. The road since then has been a roller coaster to say the least. A massive amount of loss, followed by an exponential amount of gain, only to be followed by more loss, then a witnessing of the current bull market. What's a crypto enthusiast to do??
In 2013, I heard about Bitcoin mining from my ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend. I wasn't too eager to work with him, however; he had several computers he had been mining with. I had just gone through a severe hardship and he offered to set me up with a mining rig, show me how to manage it, then start a mining farm. I chose to not work with him.
In 2015, I had a very unsuccessful stab at Forex, and lost about $5,000. I learned how to use an online application called Tradingview.com. This was the best tool I had found, and the flexibility was awesome. I learned a lot, but put this on pause.
In 2017, I noticed Bitcoin all over the news and social media. I got interested and found out people weren't just mining or buying and selling Bitcoin, but they were day trading it on exchanges for profit. I started following a guy on Youtube, and several of his ideas paid. I set out to learn all I could about trading beyond what I had already learned about Forex. I studied fundamentals and wave theory, along with market indicators.
I started using a trading bot, and was learning how to trade while I slept. Bots have their advantages and disadvantages. I got to experience what it was like to lose when a bot failed. I spent time learning how to manually trade instead, and also tried my hand at leverage trading on Whaleclub, to no avail.
For 2 years I learned all I could, and partnered with a friend online on the East Coast to build a software script that utilized Tradingview.com to trade automated. We tried many different types of automation tools while he built scripts and algorithms to detect when the best times were to buy and sell. Over the course of this period I would say I lost about $20,000.
In September of 2018, I lost my job making $30 an hour as a Construction Manager, when I had to take time off to be with my father while he fought cancer. I went straight to work on figuring out how to make money trading. In November of 2018, I was making enough to get by but I started a job in a kitchen to learn commercial cooking, and I traded at night until 3am most nights. I'd get up and try my hand at stock options and Bitcoin leverage.
However, nothing really took off until I came across Dapps on the Tron blockchain. There was so much going on but so little known about them, and the scams were rampant. I had about $1400 in crypto in my wallet, and I started playing the casino dapps. I turned $1400 into about $80,000 in just 2 weeks. Then 2 weeks later I was sitting on about $140,000 in crypto, and I didn't even know it. All these random game tokens were selling on exchanges for a lot of money. I started to discover them, the exchanges, and I bought and sold where I could. Some tanked, some websites disappeared with people's money and left them with worthless tokens.
Over the next year I paid my biz partner about $5,000 to keep coding and helped him test his Pine script code on Tradingview.com . I used a large sum to pay off some debts, lost some by not selling soon enough before some platforms closed, and I lost some gambling. All of this was a gamble really, but the gambling losses really hurt. I didn't really see it as such a bad thing, because I started with $1400. However, a loss of such a large sum, can really hit home when you think of all the things you could have done. My girlfriend demanded I keep my job and stop trading, pull my money out of the market. So, I did; most of it that was left. A few online casino project investments didn't turn out well.
So, during the last year or so while I have had the ups and downs with crypto, I have continued to find small sums of crypto on various platforms I visited. My current girlfriend has been with me since the end of 2016. I've shown her that if I had left my money in crypto and accumulated even more, we would be sitting on somewhere near $7-8 Million now. Enough to retire for the rest of our lives. She doesn't say much at all these days, and all I want to do is talk about how we can carefully put small sums away here and there, and come out on top. Much better than any bank savings account.
Every time I talk about crypto, she goes deer in the headlights or gets generally annoyed. Do I really talk about crypto that much? Maybe a few years ago. She knows the potential is there, but she doesn't understand it, and has zero interest. She also has seen me go through the ups and downs. She has a great job, a 401K, and an employee stock option plan. She believes this is the best way to retirement.
For me, I have seen the potential for trading carefully and for DeFi projects. I know that these are a good path to savings and crypto seems to only be growing in adoption and popularity. I've shown her the potential, and my savings growth based on percent. It outweighs the growth she's seen in her 401K and stock plan. I would never try to convince someone to invest in anything, but seeing the opportunity for growth for the both of us in crypto is leading me to want to get her to research on her own some of these projects and put a few dollars in savings.
I calculated the earnings I would have right now had I swing trading, and we would have about $7-8 Million saved. That's so much money. I go to work every day thinking about it, and come home tired and sore; wishing I had continued to be as enthusiastic about crypto, without the losses. haha!
After looking at the statements, she's accumulated just about $20,000 working her job. This is a good sum of retirement savings for someone who's worked in a bakery for only 3 years and is moving up in the company. However, her potential is being absorbed by the company she works for-rather than solely benefiting her if she went off on her own, and those financial plans are safer, unless the market crashes. However, she does love her work too- and I would never try to take that away. Her work is among the best I've seen. She's a cake decorator and does designs in chocolate by hand. Basically draws in chocolate. If she ran her own company she'd make 3-4 times what she makes currently and the only aspect of the work that would be more than she has now, is marketing, and running the business. She basically runs a business now though.
Right now DeFi is blowing up. As I stumble around back into some of the old accounts I had, I find that some of the DeFi projects are doing quite well, as are the new ones. Binance Chain projects are less expensive to use than Ethereum. I've decided to continue doing what I love in a careful capacity, show a track record, and maybe she'll warm up to it.
I do enjoy talking tech and crypto though, and it's hard not having a significant other with the same type of interest in finance and tech. Having different interests is okay, and there's nothing wrong with it. Maybe it's best to not try to fix what isn't broken. :)