Greetings folks, I hope you enjoyed the last post and not too upset with me that I left it on a cliffhanger. Biting the bullet If you would recall, I had done all the necessary pre-requisite work to prepare myself for my first investment in cryptocurrency. However, my "other life" was still playing my strings. In the summer of 2019 I begun celebrating, had just completed a rigorous placement year within the Architecture Program at the University of Manitoba. I had all but forgotten about blockchains and cryptocurrency as I was pursuing my education. Studying and sleepless nights were the tangible investments of my time. I began my third year of the program in September of 2019. As the semester was close to ending, the pandemic struck. University had shut down as I knew it and I was left at home with no idea what was coming of the world. I was now 100% at home, bored with not much else to do. With the lack of excitement that injected itself into my life, I needed to try something new. So, I said "fuck it", I'll get back to that thing that was enticing me everyday before I had to refocus on school. My first purchase was January 11, 2020. I bought $51.00 worth of bitcoin and stored it on my teal Ledger Nano.
From my research all I knew the key to endless amounts of wealth was of course, buying more Bitcoin! I followed suit. My second purchase was approximately another $600.00 worth, and added it to my stack. I kept buying. $200, $50, $400. I had over $1600.00 worth of Bitcoin that I purchased within the course of 3 months. I opened the ledger live application on my laptop to check how much I had accumulated. By the time April had rolled around, my investment had increased by 32%... what?! When I saw that, it sort of confirmed what I was learning - that this is the best performing asset class in the history of human existence. At least better than my bank's savings account, that's for damn sure.
Choo Choo
I was officially on board the crypto train. I started following crypto youtubers, devouring their content daily to get an edge on the market. The Crypto Lark, Ellio Trades, and Chico Crypto became staples of my day. I joined telegram groups that were conversing about emerging cryptocurrencies 24/7. I started to learn that Bitcoin wasn't the only cryptocurrency that could bring in juicy profits. There was rampant discussion on the "Bitcoin Killer", Ethereum. Something better than Bitcoin? Yeah right! But there was something that was happening within the Ethereum ecosystem that wasn't happening with Bitcoin.
That was Defi, or rather decentralized finance. Decentralized finance offers financial instruments without relying on intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks by using smart contracts (which the Ethereum blockchain has, while the Bitcoin blockchain does not). To simplify, it allows your crypto to potentially make more crypto for you. I said, "Well shit, that makes for good long term potential". I began accumulating Ethereum alongside Bitcoin. I poured whatever university grant money I could towards more cryptocurrency.
I started to use Defi applications to create even more profits. I utilized an application which was built on top of the Ethereum blockchain called Uniswap, to become a market maker. I provided my own liquidity (in the form of cryptocurrency) and other Uniswap user's trading cryptocurrencies on the app would net me a small percentage on each trade. My crypto was making me more crypto.
I used another decentralized application, called Celcius (again - built on top of the Ethereum blockchain). This time for a different purpose, to take a crypto backed loan. I used the dollars that I borrowed against my crypto and bought... more Bitcoin. This was while the price of Bitcoin was still under $15,000.00 CAD. The timing couldn't have been better as a full blown bull market was just starting and I had essentially doubled up on how much Bitcoin I owned (this is something I will probably never do again and I will talk about why in a future post).
The market kept on pumping and I began re-investing my profits from Bitcoin and Ethereum into alt-coins (alternative coins). These are coins other than the big two, Bitcoin and Ethereum. Alt-coin numbers pumped up, and my portfolio grew exponentially. Shitcoins, or coins that had no fundamental value were rocketing in value as well. You could say things were getting a liiittle crazy.
The Wolf of Crypto Street I went back to the well and re-invested back in. I took my holdings in Polkadot (an alt-coin) and participated in an ICO (initial coin offering). This is a play off of the word IPO (initial public offering). For those that don't know, an IPO refers to the first time a company sells it's stocks to the public. This is usually reserved for institutional level investors, Wall Street guys and gals, or "people on the inside". But here I was, sitting on my computer at home, about to participate in one. I did my due diligence beforehand, and made sure I had an idea of what it was that I was about to invest significant money towards. Polkadot is one of the biggest blockchain networks and cryptocurrencies. Created by Gavin Wood, who had also worked on developing the Ethereum blockchain and cryptocurrency. I figured that there were big things to come from him in the future, and that his current project had potential, unrealized value. The ICO I was investing in, was for a cryptocurrency called Moonriver. It was being built in partnership with the Polkadot blockchain network using their in-house Parachain ICO system. I may have lost some of you there, but that's okay, it's just a small detail. Anyway, I invested approximately 200 Polkadot (DOT) tokens and left it alone for about 3-4 months. I realized I had forgotten about it, as the crypto market was beginning to cool off from all the buying during the winter. I check to see if I had received any rewards...
For my initial investment of 200 DOT tokens (worth around $7000.00 CAD at the time) I was gifted 145 MOVR tokens in return. I was able to access 50% of them right away so - 75 MOVR tokens. At the time the trading price of a single MOVR token was around $500-600 CAD. I had to slap myself when I started doing the math in my head.
I sold half of the 75 tokens and made a clean $20K. Aside from experiencing the exponential growth in my portfolio, it blew my mind that I had made 5 figures just by doing some online research and taking a risk.
After almost two years of investing, trading, and using Defi products and services, I a had built a six-figure cryptocurrency portfolio - all from the comfort of my home.
Looking back, this is all pretty wild stuff. I had found a way to leverage my interest in cryptocurrency and blockchains into investment profits I never really thought was previously possible for myself. Having accumulated that portfolio was new, and more unfamiliar territory. Somehow, this story gets even more unbelievable, which I'll share in the next post.