I'm not hating on Lamborghini.
Don't worry. But if I make a fortune in cryptocurrency, you better believe I'll be buying a high-clearance monster truck and a remote house in the hills. I mean, look how low this thing sits. Not great for mountain roads.
For now, like most of us, I'm continuing to live poor
because I dare not convert any of my treasured crypto back into fiat. It's hard to believe that this "craze" has come so far in such a short time, but knowing that it still has a long way to go, I'm thrilled to have found it when I did. Since we all have this one interest in common, I figured I'd share my story with crypto.
Confession Time
I bought my first cryptocurrency less than a year ago. A friend of mine told me about bitcoin years ago, but I could not begin to wrap my head around what he was describing, and I resigned to the idea that bitcoin was merely an anonymous currency for buying drugs. Like so many others, I sat back with this silly belief as bitcoin truly found its footing.
I've made mistakes. In fact, once I started trading, I made all the mistakes. In all actuality, I think that I have made only mistakes. Fortunately, this cryptocurrency game is not as much about success and failure as it is about participation. If you're investing and simply participating in this future we're trying to create, you will eventually be rewarded. It's as simple as that.
I'd like to say a couple words about failure.
Remember, failure is an action. In order to fail, you have to try. Therefore, those with the most success under their belt have no doubt also seen the most failure. Aiming for success only leads to inevitable disappointment. Aiming for failure means you will always be satisfied with the result of anything you do. Think about it. Then it's that much sweeter when you experience success. If success is expected and failure is avoided, you're probably not getting much accomplished in your life.
I encourage everyone reading this to really think about the way you view failing and failure. Most of the time, people think the word "failure" refers to a type of person (I'm a failure, you're a failure). This is simply not true. Failure is an action, not a label for a person. As I've just explained, those who fail the most are the ones for whom the label of "failure" is least accurate.
This is a wonderful, eye-opening book about Failure! Buy it HERE!
Back to My Story (The Wordy Part)
Early this year, I was broke and jobless. My wife was earning just barely enough for us to survive and pay the bills. I had lots of free time at home, which I would typically spend scouring the internet looking for something that might effectively make money from home. Having tried multi-level marketing, direct sales, home-based businesses and online stores, I knew what I was up against.
We knew something had to change. The problem was my expectations. I always expected us to have exactly as much as we needed in life. As soon as I let go of that expectation, there was room for more than just what we needed. It was in the aftermath of this realization that I discovered the bitcoin faucets.
I'm sure most of you know about bitcoin faucets. They give you tiny amounts of bitcoin in exchange for letting them borrow your eyeballs for a few minutes.
Even as I was investing my time for literally pennies an hour, the idea of investing my hard-earned money was unfathomable. Eventually, I was able to cash out five dollars worth of bitcoin into my coinbase wallet. This was huge. I had generated this money from nothing but my time, and I was extremely proud.
I then began slowly growing my bitcoin on the Bitsler dice game, which allows smart people to benefit 90% of the time if they're betting right. I'm not advising gambling with your crypto. Remember, I'm telling the story of my failures.
Anyway, after weeks of grind on a mathematical dice game, I had enough bitcoin to purchase one single Ether token, which was about thirteen dollars at the time. I made my purchase, thrilled that this was the first investment I had ever made in my entire life. Seriously, I never even had a savings account before.
Luck to the Rescue
All of a sudden, ethereum jumped to about $250! About the same time, I procured a full-time job. Now I actually had some money.
This is when the serious failing started. I made a 20x gain on my one ether token, so I started buying altcoins.
I wish I could say that I didn't use my credit card to buy the coins that I believed in when the prices were right. I wish I could say that I have already paid off those credit cards, but I haven't. I'm still letting it ride, but I've made the most important leap, the leap into participation.
Most of the coins that I bought for long-term holding have gone down to nothing, compared to my entry point. I spent too much of my portfolio on DGB, SC, and LBC and still my money is stuck in these coins, as I am not willing to sell for a loss. NEO was good to me. I'm sitting currently at 4x gains on my NEO investment, and I don't plan to convert it to Steem until it doubles again.
I'm gradually converting all my cryptocurrency into Steem, and I'm also becoming slowly successful at mining Steem, by creating content here for you lovely people.
I may have lost money in this last year, but that is the true nature of investment.
You invest time, energy and money into something in which you truly believe. Sometimes you hit big, and sometimes you miss.
Steemit is the real deal. Steemit will be big.
I'm still a long, long way from considering myself an expert in cryptocurrency, but I certainly have come a long way in 10 months. I was hopeless and broke, unable and unwilling to invest in my future.
Now I have a portfolio, something I never thought I'd say. I wake up each day with positive hopefulness, thinking "how can I bring value to the Steemit community today?"
You know, if I'd lost everything I invested but still found my way to Steemit, it would be worth it!
That's all I have time for this morning, gotta get to work! Everybody get out there and fail at as many things as you can today! You'll be surprised at how much success is mixed in there!
