Crypto Journey - My Sixth Month Anniversary in Crypto

Six months ago to the day, before I first fired up an old laptop and figured out how to start mining some Dogecoin, I knew nothing about crypto. I've learned quite a bit since November 20th, 2021 and a lot has changed since then.

I checked the Bitcoin (BTC) price for the first time that day and it stood at $60,082. In the news that Friday they announced the first known COVID case came from a vendor at the Wuhan market. The Ahmaud Arbery case was in full swing in the US. And after a few hours of tinkering I cheered with glee when that first micro amount of Doge was earned on an old Dell laptop, wouldn't Elon Musk be proud?

It was a slow burn that first month through the holidays and into the new year. I was initially  focused on earning free crypto on faucets and doing surveys, building up my Bitcoin bag with the price slowly pulling back from the $60K range. I would wait patiently until January to finally strike and make my first BTC purchase at the bargain price of $42K along with an equal share of Ethereum (ETH) well off its highs as well as I snagged the second biggest coin for $3.2K. It was a decent sized purchase that I moved from an exchange to Midas Investments after quite a bit of research where they would earn a decent interest rate and still sit today. While my number of coins has continued to grow since then, the value of these two purchases has not as one can imagine now after the fact having seen crypto plummet in value as of late. 

This was, and will probably remain, my final crypto purchase in terms of buying coins for the sole purpose of holding them long term. That said, it was certainly not the last investment I made in the crypto space with my focus quickly shifting away from simply holding coins for the long haul. But why? It is rather simple, holding individual coins offers little diversification from the bulk of my investments consisting of stocks and mutual funds. Stocks go down and crypto quickly follows. What is the point?

February would roll around and prove to be the turning point for me in crypto. Sure I had a number of coins now, over 20 in total, but most in small amounts earned through a variety of ways. There was tokens earned on Coinbase for taking a few lessons and Cronos (CRO) earned on Crypto.com for buying the initial BTC and ETH. I did some small loans on KuCoin generating very little if I'm being honest. Then tokens earned for writing articles, and searching on the web, and just for using a new type of browser. My crypto coins grew in numbers but not a lot in value. In fact, most of the time it seemed to keep going down.

But in early February, after a lot of initial research that had me still pretty confused, I finally got involved in something that felt different - yield farming and more specifically providing liquidity. I wrote an article titled The Animal Farm - My First Attempt at Yield Farming and off I went. I had to buy some Binance (BNB) coins on and exchange and move them to a Metamask wallet set up specifically for this new experiment. Sounds easy, but the first time you must set up the Binance Smart Chain as a network on Metamask and then set up the BNB coin (by using import token) so you can actually see them and any other coins or tokens you want to deal with. Then I had to create a Liquidity Pool (LP) token on Pancake Swap. Next I added the LP tokens to the platform and my first yield farm was off and running - phew. I harvested the reward coins and placed them in other parts of the platform, learning how The Animal Farm ecosystem worked.

This felt real. This felt like how I imagined crypto should feel. I had found my space in crypto and it was on a farm - who knew? Over the last three months I've continued to learn about yield farming. I've specialized on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) partially because it is pretty affordable in terms of gas fees, downright cheap compared to the Ethereum network. In addition, I've become familiar with a number of communities on BSC and feel like I can focus on just a few of the best opportunities for me.

The Animal Farm was paused for two months which caused me to look elsewhere. I've since found other yield farming ecosystems that I absolutely love. The strategies within these platforms are endless as is the amount of time you can spend researching the different features available. I really enjoy this aspect of working in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and putting my brain to the test each day. The possibilities have no limits, your imagination is guiding the journey to a destination planned out yet still somewhat unknown.

I love the idea of building passive income! Holding coins does not do this for me outside of earning a little interest on my coins via staking. Through yield farming strategies I am able to build a daily income stream much like a job. Unlike a job, I am able to grow this at a nice rate through daily compounding. This has become my true passion in crypto and the area in which I want to continue to focus and learn. It is my true calling after a six-month journey into crypto and something I now want to share.

My goal now is to be able to spread what I have learned to anyone interested. I found trying to learn about yield farming was initially difficult and the information out there very fractured, something I would like to help remedy. Starting next week I will begin to publish a number of articles about yield farming, still relatively basic, that I will eventually combine into something more. Perhaps an e-book or a website to serve as a guide and a resource for those wishing to try yield farming themselves.

Six months into crypto and I'm still as excited today as I was that first time a little bit of Dogecoin showed up in my mining software. I learn more and more everyday thanks to all the great work of the authors on platforms like read.cash. Bitcoin is now worth roughly half of what it was that first day I learned what a digital currency was all about, but I could care less. Investments go up and down, but knowledge is the real thing of value when it comes to finances and life in general.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me so far.  How long have you been in crypto and what is your passion?