Just wanted to start this post off saying thanks to 
Hear Me Out
I know you're probably thinking to yourself OMG, you're going to write about how your hobby is cryptocurrency on a cryptocurrency blogging site, how original, but hear me out. My crypto journey actually started back in 2015 by trying to farm faucets. What's a faucet you may ask? Well, it's a website that you visit and complete a captcha for fractions of cents of crypto. Not exactly a get rich quick scheme, but it taught me how to start a wallet, transfer crypto, and what not to invest in.
A little more about faucets is that they would give away small amounts of crypto for you visiting their website. They would get Adsense money from Google advertisements and sometimes use really scammy ways to try and get you to "accidentally" click on the advertisement. This was not legal and a lot of times the websites would get shut down for practices like that.
Some (such as the one screenshot above) operated legitimately but ended up losing ad revenue from Google (sites like these main sources of income) as Google didn't feel they created value for their customers as a lot of times it was just bots visiting these sites to try and steal all their crypto. Without advertiser money to buy more Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Dogecoin (the three main faucets back in the day) the faucets would run dry.
Now another type way that you could make money through a faucet like a website was to create a faucet list website. This was easier as you didn't need to know how to set-up a faucet and just needed a list of faucet websites. These type websites made money as faucets would show up and disappear in a matter of days or weeks, so having a great list of faucets all in one place was needed.
People that created these list would get money through Adsense as well as income from referral links. You see, instead of linking you directly to the site they would provide their referral link and some of these faucets provided referral incentives up to 100% of whatever your referral earned. Again not a get rich quick plan, but helped you earn more income and if you got high enough on Google search (I think my list and site made it to the 2nd page of Google at its highest), you could generate some decent traffic.
After I generated a decent amount of Dogecoin from my faucet list referrals and using the faucets I decided to try and create my own Dogecoin Faucet using a site called Faucetbox. The idea was to try and drive more traffic to my faucet list site. I would use the passive income from my referral earnings to fund the faucet and justify it by making more money in Adsense and other crypto advertising I had on my site. Needless to say, it really didn't do much for my earnings and after a few months with less than $100 of crypto to show for it I kind of just let it run on its own and quit maintaining it.
Bitcoin Forums and Bitcoin Lending
While I was looking for faucets and learning about Bitcoin I came across a forum called Bitcointalk where I first registered for back in November 2015. I really learned a lot going through this forum, but most of all I earned most of my BTC (pre-Steemit) from this website thanks to a Yobit signature campaign.
To get involved in a signature campaign you would comment on a post saying you were interested and then they would pay you to do a certain number of posts or reply a day or a week. They wanted accounts that didn't leave spammy or non-value added posts or comments and you would leave their logo or "signature" at the bottom of your post. The more "experience" you had on bitcointalk and the higher your rank the more you earned per post.
It was here I learned about trading bitcoin and bitcoin lending sites. I checked out a few trading sites and none of them were interested in letting me trade my $10 - $20 worth of bitcoin on their sites so I went to a bitcoin personal lending site called BTCjam. Here I could help with 100's of other people to give out loans to people needing to pay off bills, more liquidity of trading, or any other random idea someone could come up with. After months of looking for good loans (most ended in default and were never paid back) I think I ended up without making any BTC and gave up on the site.
1 Year Later and Steemit
I would say from about Summer of 2016 to Summer of 2017 I let most of my crypto accounts earnings just sit wherever I left them and gave up on crypto. What I was earning off of signature campaigns, faucets, and lending wasn't really worth the time I was putting into it and took a break from the space, and I was too cheap to invest my own money in the space (not much has changed on that front).
For whatever reason, I decided to look into crypto again in Summer of 2017 and saw that Bitcoin had spiked in price. I decided to move the crypto I had in some paper wallets (some of my faucet earnings) onto an exchange to see if I could start trading now. To my surprise, my crypto was now worth enough to be able to trade and moved most of it onto Bittrex to start buying some more altcoins. I proceeded to change most of my Bitcoin into "hot" altcoins and bought them at their all-time highs because I was afraid of missing out.
This is also a similar time that I learned if you're going to take a break from crypto you should put your cryptos into a cold wallet you own. I learned that Faucetbox had closed its doors and all the crypto that I had left on there was now gone. Luckily BTCjam and Loanbase (another BTC lending platform) were shutting down, but luckily I still had the opportunity to withdraw my BTC.
Around this time is when I first found out about Steemit. Since I'm super cheap and had considered starting my own blog in the past, it seemed like the best of both worlds. I'll skip the Steemit spill as any of those that follow me have already heard it and those that haven't can look at past articles and see how much I've enjoyed being on this platform. Steemit has been, by far, my most profitable crypto experience to date.
Why Crypto is my Hobby
I've always enjoyed learning more about investing and making the most of your money. I've been a long time reader of this personal finance blog and have been working to make my 401k work as hard as it can for me as possible.
I've also enjoyed learning about starting my own business and passive income. I am/was a long time listener of the Entrepreneur on Fire Podcast and was encouraged by Smart Passive Income Site and Earnings Sheet to buy my own domain which was what allowed me to create my faucet list site. One of the reasons I've investing in Steem, Ark, and Smartcash is to increase my passive income earnings.
The technology is growing so fast and is so diverse that I have to learn something new every day and I think that's what keeps me most interested. I find I get bored and lose focus very easily when I feel like I've become good at something, but find that this doesn't happen to me with crypto. This space requires you to become knowledgeable in so many fields it's incredible.
Since starting Steemit I've been talking more and more about crypto in everyday life. I've now started my own crypto group on facebook to help educate those interested in crypto and just added a new person last week to the group after I was DMed a question in messenger.
I'm not sure anyone in the cryptocurrency field is an expert as it's such a new environment, but I would definitely consider myself adept. I've been learning about crypto since late 2015 and most people didn't enter the field until the price started taking off during the Summer of 2017. I guess I would consider myself more knowledgeable than most, but not a leader in the field.
If I had to explain this to an alien I would do it the same way I do every day (most of the time people look at me like I am an alien when I mention Bitcoin anyways) is to do a SWOT analysis. I talk about Bitcoins Strength in decentralization and technology, the Weaknesses of adoption and ease of use, the Opportunities as it's continually developed and adopted, and the Threats of government regulation and possible hacks.
I'm not currently lucky enough to do this as a full-time job, but I definitely consider what I do and the brand that I'm building a part-time job.
Crypto Leading the Way
I'm really excited about the future of crypto. I was talking to my wife the other night that it would be really cool that when we pay taxes to the city, state, and national governments if we were rewarded some sort of token back in some way (possibly dollar per token). Then, when we want some project worked on (think street repaired) we can post the project and put forth some tokens for funding that project. Then if others (especially those that live around you in this case) think it's a good idea they can come and help with the funding as well. As the project gets more and more funded a contractor can come in and put a bid on the job and then either when the project is funded enough or contractors bid it down low enough the project is "funded" and once the job is complete the funds are released to said contractor.
This may not be a reality, but was just hoping to share this as to show how much I think and read up on Crypto. Weather it's from decentralizing lending, VPN, or providing more secure political voting, I think crypto is the future and an awesome hobby of mine. I'm excited about this bear market we're currently in as it's given me time to learn more about awesome upcoming projects such as EOS, SALT, and Substratum. Once again thank you