I am glad to present the first article of #unheardvoices, an initiative that tries to bring exposure to good articles that have gone unnoticed because they were written in a different language. You can read more about this segment here.
The year was 2014, I was broke as hell and needed to generate some extra revenue as quick as possible, I just found out my girlfriend was pregnant and I really didn't want to bring a child into poverty.
I kept hearing people talk about this new coin called Bitcoin, I decided to do some research and find out what it was all about. The more I read the more I was drawn to it, but how could I use this technology to make money?, I had no capital and couldn't even afford 0.1 BTC to try it out.
I started looking for help on the internet and I found two peer2peer lending sites that I thought could help me: loanbase and btcjam. I filled out the forms and completed my registration on both platforms. I first asked for a small amount of BTC on Loanbase.. I had no success, a big failure. With little hope I copy pasted my loan application on btcjam, to my surprise I managed to get funded and thats how my bitcoin adventure began.
Now that I had some Bitcoins I realized that I didn't really know what to do with them, I wasn't sure what to invest on and I was worried that I wasn't going to make profit to pay it back. I had a few alternatives: ZenMiner or LTCGear (wow, I am glad I didn't!), re-investing on other loans or some other scammy looking websites that promised to double your bitcoins … the only reasonable alternative was trading at LocalBitcoins.com
My rule was simple: sell high, buy low… pocket the difference. I did this without any sort of experience on the matter, I was completely self taught. The actual trading wasn't really hard but I had to deal with a few users who tried to scam me. I know now that I was an easy target since I was selling trough paypal, other users received my BTC and then claimed their credit card was unwillingly charged...oldest trick in the book. At one point they even froze my account until a dispute was resolved.
However I managed to overcome all the hurdles and after a year buying and selling I already had a good reputation and some loyal customers.
I can now say that Bitcoin has lifted me out of poverty and helped me trough the difficult situation my country is going trough. The fact that I was going to be a father gave me extra motivation to make my dreams come true. Bitcoin is not perfect but its a viable alternative for people in third world countries to make much needed extra income.
# Phrase of the day:
"Life is a never-ending learning process"
This post was written with the permission of
Original Post
#bitcoin
#life
