Crypto Currency – My journey as a beginner in the space

Updated February 2018

Years ago (back in 2014) I first started being interested in Bitcoin, and actually set up my desktop computer to mine Litecoin. I think I mined about 0.02 LTC just for fun over a couple days as I was working on the computer at the same time. (note to myself: figure out where I stored the LTC and how much did I actually mine? What’s it worth today?)

Now in 2017, I’ve regained interest. After doing my 2016 taxes I had a few thousand dollars to invest, and didn’t want to just put it into the stock market and hope the pile of Western debt doesn’t take out my savings. I’m usually a contrarian and like to follow the 80/20 rule – see what most people are doing and do the opposite (these days it seems more like a 99/1 rule).

In early March I came across Palm Beach Research and saw Teeka Tiwari’s webinar on why the crypocurrency market is on the verge of an explosion. Teeka compared it to the early 1990’s with tech stocks like Microsoft. Although Bitcoin has already soared to thousands from basically nothing, Microsoft did the same – it shot up to around $400 and many people thought it was too late. But, had they bought in, they would’ve been part of the rise to 1000% gains in a short amount of time. Teeka’s arguments convinced me – the blockchain is the future, the next big step in technology, and I want to be part of it.

Plus, I’m young, and even if all my cryptocurrency investments go to $0, it’ll be a wild ride, and I’ll still have plenty of working years to save up for ‘retirement’.

Since early March I’ve been buying different cryptocurrencies and cryptocoins and blockchain apps. Now, I’m starting to look into mining. I really like Ethereum, so I’m researching buying and building an ethereum mining rig. BTC is all the rage, but there’s no profit anymore for the little guy. Ether mining is getting that way too, but since it’s based on a GPU vs ASIC-able hash I’m confident I can make some money. Plus – I see large future potential for Ethereum, so even if it takes 4-6 months to regain my initial investment, I’ll still end up with more ETH in a year than just buying with cash right now. Either way, if Ethereum goes to $0, I’ll be out some money, but at least with a bunch of GPUs I could hopefully sell and recoup some loss.

Follow along as I figure out what mining hardware to buy, how to build an Ethereum mining rig, and how to mine Ethereum.

As I’ve started the research, I see there are some difficulties in the research, and as a web developer, I hope to build out some neat comparison tools to make things easier. I’ll be building these tools to aid my research, and I’ll be sharing them with you too so that you can build the best Ethereum Mining Rig without losing your shirt!

I’ve also been watching BitMain’s website to see if and when the AntMiner L3+ will come back available. It’s one of the fastest ASIC miners for Scrypt mining that you can get. Only a few have shipped already, but the reviews are great stating they are meeting the 503 MH/s specs that BitMain advertises. Most people received these are saying 2 things:

  1. It’s too late to buy an AntMiner and pay it off because of the decline in most cryptocurrency prices recently.
  2. It’s an awesome miner that should pay itself off and start giving a postitive ROI within 60 days.

Is it just me, or are both of those things actually opposites to each other?!

2018 Cryptocurrency Update

There’s no doubt, 2017 was a WILD year for Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market as a whole! Now, heading into 2018, after an initial run of all time highs, there’s been a massive pullback in the markets. Last year all the big banks, and other pundits were calling Bitcoin a bubble, and it sure looks like it has popped.

Except – whe a bubble pops it drops to zero. This has been a decline with ‘stages’ of decline, and we’re still at or above prices from just 2 months ago. I think it would make more sense to call this a pullback, not a bubble popping.

Plus, for us, the hard core, never-give-in to the banks, HODL to the end crypto fans, the long-term vision has never changed. The fundamentals haven’t changed. The reasons I first became interested in Bitcoin are all still there and valid. I like to think I’m smart enough not to hold to the bottom, but this sure doesn’t seem like the end to me.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite – I think it’s a buying opportunity! If you look back at the charts, the same thing that’s happening now in early 2018 has happened before – in January 2015, January 2016, and January 2017, the BTC markets all saw a pullback. Sure, this one might be bigger, but it isn’t by much when looking at percents.

I’m still long-term on cryptocurrencies, and I’m using this decrease in price to buy some more BTC!

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