[How I became passionate about crypto and my two favourite places to talk about it]
After writing this whole post I realized there would be a lot of value added in creating a more comprehensive analysis of where to learn about crypto since there are MANY places and each of them have their own specific merits. Hence this post is somewhat of an intro to the the more comprehensive one.
If you’ve heard anything about cryptos, it’s probably from someone telling you how much money they made from them. For better or worse, most of us are largely motivated by self interest, one of the major interests being making money.
I got into crypto in the opposite way that most people do. First I heard about how much money people were making but I wasn’t interested because it sounded like a ponzi scheme. That was almost two years ago.
Then a few months ago I learned what the fuss was all about, i.e. decentralized blockchain technology, and from that point on I was absolutely infatuated with this technology to the point that I gave up my job a successful high stakes poker pro to put all my time, energy and money into a technology which I believe has the biggest potential to give the power back to the people. I was a poker pro for four years but it took less than two weeks (of 12+hour days researching and learning) for me to completely transition my efforts towards cryptocurrency.
I've made a solid amount of money from my crypto investments but if you are a newb it may be encouraging for you to know that I had no experience trading stocks or currencies and certainly no IT or programming experience. I just did a lot of research, talked to a lot of people and figured it out along the way. So I’ll start with a basic overview of how I learned so much so quickly.
My two top favourite places to learn about crypto are the Cryptocurrency Collectors Club Facebook page and the Cryptocurrency subreddit. The former, aka CCC, is my favourite because you can not only learn a lot from more experienced investors (go to Cryptocurrency Collectors Club for Beginners if you have newbie questions), but it also gives you the community feeling that Reddit somewhat lacks. Also there is a strong focus on fundamentals as opposed to technical analysis which suits my needs perfectly. They have a group of admins who regularly take down posts which are scams or add no value which is what every other FB crypto page I've visited is lacking.
Reddit has tons of useful and targeted subreddits, every coin worth mentioning has their own sub reddit. So it’s definitely a good place to go for coin-specific research in a community setting. That being said, by far the best place for coin-specific research is the Slack chat. Slack is designed as an IM platform so it lacks the community feeling but if you have very specific questions or want to talk to the team members of the project, this is the best place to go.
Usually cryptocurrency projects have links to their Twitter, Telegram, Bitcointalk or Github channel too.
Below is an example of which icons to click on the OmiseGo website. Most projects will also have links to the aforementioned channels.
My favourite subreddit is the Cryptocurrencies one which currently has a whopping 87,000 subscribers. It has less of a community feel than CCC but it generates longer and and more comprehensive comments/posts than FB does (not because of the people but because of the design of the platform).
I'm looking forward to spending more time learning about crypto on Steemit but as of yet I've not found all that many experienced crypto enthusiasts posting here. Although I'm sure there will be more as time passes, Steemit will have to create communities geared towards specific interests before they can compete with FB/Reddit.
What is your favorite place to hang out and talk crypto? Who are your favorite Steemians to follow for crypto-related news? Let me know!
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