Let see if you fall into one or more of these categories:
- You heard about the explosion that Bitcoin had, and you want in on something that has taken off.
- You remember crypto coin back in the day when it was trading for pennies or a few dollars, and it wasn’t worth the effort.
- You started playing with crypto but using your rig to mine a few coins weren’t worth the effort or the electricity.
All those describe my experience with cryptocurrency. When Bitcoin started, it was cool, a little abstract to think about, and a little hard to do anything with. It was cool, but really, it wasn’t worth anything, and getting mining going cost more in effort than I was willing to spend. Life and all, ya dig?
Fast forward a few years. Mining was easier, Bitcoin was expensive, but hey, I’ve got some more time so let’s get this going. Then the first electric bill came in for the first month, and it cost me more than the value of the coins I had mined. I also worried about burning out my GPU, and then what would I do?
A couple more years and crypto is starting to come into its own. I see an ATM that trades Bitcoin. What? I heard about it in the news, and it crossed $20k and then $30k. I dug around and found that I never made enough to withdraw what coins I had mined from the pool I was in and was essentially starting over.
That is where I am. Maybe that is where you are. Let’s do this together. I’ll share what I do; you share what you do. We learn together.
It is essential to know where you are coming from because it will help you understand where you are going. The “Why” of your past doesn’t determine the future reminds you not to make the same mistakes all over again.
Let’s talk about these reasons from the beginning of this post for a moment.
You Want in on Something.
Where were you when other things took off? Are you old enough to have gotten in when the Internet came to the public mind in the early ’90s? Did you get in on the market crashes of 2007 or 2020? If not, why didn’t you? Did you not have the money? Have you saved the money? Where you afraid of losing something you couldn’t afford to lose?
We all are offered opportunities in our life. Some of those opportunities don’t come around when it is easy for us to take advantage of them. Some of those opportunities are really fads that will cost you. That’s life. What matters is that you have learned and are in a position to take advantage of them. Have you arranged your finances so you can afford to lose some money if crypto goes bad? Can you afford the time to earn crypto? You’re going to invest something, time or money. If you don’t, you aren’t going to be building an empire of any kind.
It Wasn’t Worth the Effort.
The saying goes that “it takes money to make money.” It could also be said that “it takes effort to make money.” In crypto, both will get you there; just one will be faster than the other. Faster isn’t necessarily a good thing, though. There is a lot of hype with crypto. Reading the boards, It seems that half the people pushing crypto these days are hyperactive basement dwellers who are just excited that their hobby is relevant. No offense intended to basement dwellers.
To succeed at anything, you have to be willing to put in the time (and effort, and money, and emotion, and… you get my point) to see it through the hard times to reach the good times. You will have to put in the effort to get the coins. You will have to put in the effort to research the technology. You will have to ride the emotional rollercoaster as some coins crash and some rise before they crash. It is a journey, and here at the beginning, there is a lot of volatility. There is room for a lot of emotion.
It Wasn’t Worth the Cost.
To build anything is going to cost you something. Figure that out now. It may cost you the next shiny object that distracts you from your goal. It may cost you time. It may cost you money. If you think that the costs are too much, don’t start this journey. There isn’t much sadder than beginning a project and throwing it away halfway to your goal. Find what motivates you and direct your energy there, not on something that will cost you. You expend those resources needlessly because you don’t finish.
I’m going to close this out with some homework for you. Why do you want to build your crypto empire? Is it just money? There are a million ways to get money. Is it to get rich? There are ten thousand ways to get rich, some of them more straightforward than this. What do you expect to gain by building your crypto empire? Think about it and come back as we get started.
