With snow thick on the ground and the cheer and celebrations of the New Year freshly embedded in memory, for most of January 2021 I spent time reflecting on the year past. The deep cold of a Vermont winter and the ever present pressure to stay home due to Covid left me with plenty of time to think, plan, make decisions about the path I intended to take going forward. I had left a job in March of 2020 as the pandemic rapidly gained pace and it seemed the whole world was stuck in lockdown. We took the pandemic seriously. Our relatives are all high risk. I made the decision to protect my family, to provide a stable home environment and schooling for my 3 year old daughter. I was lucky at the time that my wife was able to work remotely... unfortunately my job did not provide the same benefit. It turned out to be a blessing. I had been extraordinarily unhappy working at a manufacturing job- long hours and little chance to progress. For a long time I had been intending to find a new means of generating income. The pandemic made the decision easy. My daughter Sky needed full time care and schooling at home in order for my wife to be able to work effectively and though I earned a greater portion of our income at the time it made more sense for me to stay home than to continue to work. I spent the summer and fall hoping that the pandemic would soon come to an end and we would be able to return to some semblance of normalcy- that I could return to work and we would be able to recover the savings we were burning to enable us to stay safe. The unfortunate reality is that though we are making progress in this battle we are still not there yet more than a year later. And so in January I began to look in earnest for ways that I could bring extra cash in to recoup some of our savings.
I had been aware of the cryptocurrency world for years. My brother in law has been into it since before I met my wife in 2015. She even had a chunk of BTC that I had been urging her to sell to help cover our lost income. Thankfully she didn't listen to me. If she had she would have sold before it hit 20k. So as I wracked my brain to figure out how to come up with extra income in January I watched BTC soar to new highs it seemed every week. I started to research. I spent weeks reading articles and explanations of wallets and gas fees and tokenomics and blockchain technology and distributed ledgers and NFT's. I've learned a lot, and to be honest a lot still remains over my head. But by the end of January I felt confident that I could do this, that with the right research and patience I could generate returns that would make the difference to our savings, and that I could do it from home, while still providing the care my daughter needs and the support my wife needs to be successful at her job.
To start with I moved a portion of our savings into BTC and ETH- feeling confident that both would remain fairly stable in price and likely to increase over the medium-long term. I used COINBASE for simplicity and then moved them into a ledger. Unfortunately LEDGER doesn't allow purchases from their exchange in Vermont- a fact that was not clear until I attempted to buy BTC and ETH through Ledger Live. Then I chose a selection of apps that generate crypto returns in exchange for data- I'm talking about apps like Pi, Bee, etc. I researched these and settled on several that seem to have potential. Pi, Geocash, Coin are three that I've chosen to put time into. Coin is already generating real returns for me- I redeemed coins for 100k xyo early in March. That xyo is worth around $700 dollars as I write and all it cost me was a months subscription to Coin- $34.99. Geocash and Pi are quickly approaching mainnet and both look like they will be valuable long term. I discovered PUBLISH0X and BRAVE browser- no brainers really, if you read or browse the web and want cryptocurrencies you should be using these.
Finally, I researched exchanges and DEX's and began making trades. I'm using KUCOIN primarily though I have also swapped on Uniswap and staked in their liquidity pools. I've made missteps here- big ones. My technical analysis is not up to par and I've made bad trades- often. Several times I moved on tokens that looked to my inexperienced eye like they had further growth to come only to have them fall back shortly after. And of course being inexperienced I then traded out of those tokens and missed their bounce back rather than staying the course. I experimented with Kucoin's trading bots and abandoned potential gains by stopping them early when they run red. Only after making this mistake several times did I learn my lesson and wait patiently enough to see returns. I have yet to truly dip my toes into margin or futures trading but that is why I am enjoying Kucoin so much. It doesn't feel limited- I am not shepherded to invest only in established tokens or fintech products that have minimal risk like I would be on Coinbase or other simplified exchange services. I am able to experiment with and earn returns(or losses) without being limited. It can be harsh- but there is no better teacher than a loss that was entirely your own fault for not doing enough research beforehand.
All told I feel I am doing well so far. Some of my picks have returned more than 1000% (xyo) while I have certainly lost on trades as well(LUNA, BEPRO). I have a lot more to learn and a long road ahead! I hope you'll join me as I share my successes, losses, and thoughts as I explore the cryptoverse.
I've added referral links for Kucoin and Coinapp- feel free to use them or not. Both are great apps in my opinion but if there is one thing I've learned its DYOR.
JD
