It was October of 2020 when I took my first steps into the interesting world of cryptocurrencies and having spent a few days casually researching in my free time the ways to become incredibly rich in no time at all. I decided to ‘have a go’.
I must admit, I had at least heard of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum years ago. However, I didn’t understand how on earth it all worked, and as soon as I started reading more about it my eyes would glaze over and I would find myself returning to my happy place, browsing the internet for simplistic joys.
Then in October, by great coincidence, I stumbled on a forum thread about the Freedom Reserve project. I was genuinely impressed. Their ambitious plan was to build a new currency for the British Isles that would be fully decentralised and have its value based on the scarcity of its 80 million coins, as it used to be before the gold standard was abandoned.
They were offering a free handout of their new cryptocurrency, an airdrop. I had nothing to lose. This was my great chance to dive into cryptocurrency and make my overnight millions!
So, I did what anyone would do. I straight up asked the other folks involved to baby me through the steps to getting the free tokens.
The first thing to do was to be able to hold the token. Seems obvious I know. I had heard of wallets but the sheer number of wallets to choose from, their features and their flaws were beyond my understanding and put me off ‘committing’ in the past.
However, with a few pointers from some new friends, I knew what to look for. I was recommended ‘MetaMask’ and ‘Trust wallet’. MetaMask is a browser extension and mobile app wallet used by over a million users and TrustWallet is a mobile based wallet that has over 5 million users. These both work for pretty much any digital asset you might have so, in my opinion are both worth having.
Creating a wallet is actually incredibly easy. You simply download the app or extension and fill in the form. The important thing to note is that if you MUST keep your seed phrase safe and secret. The seed phrase is what you will need to access your wallet if you lose your phone or destroy your computer. The seed phrase is typically 16 random words that act as a super secure password.
Make sure you write down your seed phrase and store it somewhere safe that it won’t get lost or ruined over time by damp or crumpled beyond recognition for example.
Once you have your wallet set up, you will have the means to send and receive tokens and coins as you please (fees may apply). The important part is the recipient address you will have for each coin or token you wish to hold.
For example, if you wish to receive Ethereum (ETH) it will be a different address to that for Bitcoin (BTC) or Freedom Reserve (FR). It is important to ensure you copy the address accurately to avoid having the funds sent to the wrong place or lost completely.
With the vast number of tokens out there, not all tokens will be immediately known by the wallet, naturally the most well-known assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum will be known as standard, but you will need to tell your wallet what it is looking at before it will display the balance.
Every coin or token has what is known as a contract address. This is a line of letters and numbers that identifies the asset. You can verify the legitimacy of coins by searching the contract address on a site such as etherscan. Once you input the contract address into your wallets custom token feature you will be able to see how much of it you hold.
In all it took me about ten minutes to sign up to the two wallets and another few minutes to familiarise myself with the layout and play with some of the functions. I provided my recipient address to the groups thread and just waited for the distribution. And that was about it. I received my first crypto assets. 4000 FR. Ever since I have been able to watch the value of my holdings rise, fall and rise again via their DEXTools page.
But what I was most pleased about, was that I had broken the ice that I felt was between me and this big part of the future of world finance. It’s an ever-changing world with huge potential and to be part of it in some small way is better than missing out altogether.
I am still engaging daily with the Freedom Reserve group on telegram. The project has come on leaps and bounds over the past month or so. They are developing their own ‘main net’ which will enable the FR to be used more freely. They are developing a web shop platform that will allow users to trade using the FR coin rather than the fiat we used as the moment and the value of the coin has seen great gains occur. I would encourage anyone to discover what they are working toward and hopefully join the project by getting some FR for themselves.
For more information on Freedom Reserve and its community please check out some links below.
https://etherscan.io/token/0xc626e0619ac79afea9281c8eb9b1a9f9d3fab532
https://read.cash/@ElectricCandle/the-future-you-choose-7332ab76
https://read.cash/@ElectricCandle/its-broken-but-how-do-we-fix-it-4979ad7a
https://hackernoon.com/how-to-make-crypto-mightier-than-the-sword-9r2l3zrh
