It wasn’t love at first sight for me and bitcoin. Back in 2017 was when I first had my taste of it.
A tiny sip to be exact.
Such a tease to be offered bitcoin (BTC) as talent fee for cryptocurrency launching event I was to host. Of course, my discerning taste refused and requested to be paid in something more familiar – that which I can feel, hold, and can physically be present for me.
This is not hugot.
What I mean is I chose to be paid traditionally – via a check with Php on it – that I could and I did subsequently deposit to my bank.
Bitcoin was cheap then at below US$1000 each. But knowing its value now (about US$56,900 as of this writing), that’s exactly the kind of cheap I could’ve allowed to take advantage of me at the time! Or vice versa.
Anyway, I did decide to buy a bitcoin “mining package” from them shortly after the event! Haha.
That piece of investment was supposed to earn me a share of BTC! You see the prospect of making quick money off cryptocurrency was just hard to pass up. But it’s imperative to stress – the US$500 I spent on that was something I was ready to lose.
By the way, just to emphasize, mining is different from buying a “mining package.” Mining packages were investment packages this company sold to the public to fund their company which does the actual mining. I will touch on what I know about mining in another article.
Going back to the mining package story, that whole venture did not last for long, unfortunately. The company had invested heavily on equipment while not many people jumped on board, not to mention the Great crypto crash that followed in 2018.
But, better part:
Because of getting into that, I was introduced to cryptocurrency wallets. I was instructed to download CoinsPH at the time. That’s where I was to receive my earnings in BTC.
Best part:
I did get some satoshis in my account from that short-lived venture. That tiny portion of bitcoin grew over the years as the value of bitcoin soared up again!!! And I didnt even realized that until the beginning of 2020.
By the way, satoshis are small portions of bitcoin. Now that I’ve gained a deeper understanding of the crypto world, I also found a better cryptocurrency wallet to keep them. It’s called OKEx – a world leading cryptocurrency exchange where I now hold all my crypto and where I can do trading at the same time!
Now here is when it gets better…
Time to Hold and Be Bold
2020 – Three years later, everybody is scrambling on how to make ends meet. One thing about me, I prefer sunny side up to scrambled. I like to look at the sunny side of things. I work hard, but I know the value of working smart and smelling the roses more than ever. So with some savings left, late last year I decided to buy more bitcoin, and the next best crypto – Ether!
True story.
Since last year, I’ve been watching them grow in value in my wallet. That’s much better than watching the pesos in my bank mobile app slowly fade away one Food Panda order after another.
Now if you haven’t realized yet, I just told you a story about how to make money in holding crypto. And all it took was a bold move. Literally moving my money from the bank to the blockchain-powered system of cryptocurrency.
Holding aka Hodling
Holding or hodling (in crypto lingo) essentially means buying crypto, and just leaving it in your wallet for a time, with long-term profit in mind, anchored on the belief that its value will multiply. It’s a mix of gut-feeling, price trend, and projection that you may find online.
Somebody asked me if he could find gut feeling online. Of course not, for gut’s sake. You know where it is.
Anyway…
Bitcoin, in particular is that one crypto that has shown consistent growth and has shown monumental increase in value in recent years. Not to mention, it’s the very first cryptocurrency that received phenomenal success and reception.
I mentioned projections. It’s easy to get carried away with big words of your bitcoin aficionado friends. But it’s not very hard to do some research and check what analysts have to say about trends.
I went to Forbes online and caught an analyst saying BTC could hit US$400,000 this year! He said, “The technical outlook for Bitcoin in 2021 remains strongly upward, if past patterns repeat,” Mike McGlone – a senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence.
So naturally BTC is my choice. And it’s not just me, I arrived late at the party.
I have at least three friends who started holding bitcoins early on. One bought in 2015 when BTC was at around US$300 each. Her next purchase was a dream house for her parents towards the end of 2017 when she sold her bitcoin which was at the time soaring high and well on its way to US$19,000.
I’ve found it particularly easy to buy BTC from the OKEx mobile app. Same as ETH. I like it that I see my total net value as soon as I open the app.
Ether (ETH), the token of Ethereum network, had to be my next choice.
Also found this tidbit of info on the OKEx blog – Ethereum network became the dominant platform for launching initial coin offerings in 2017 which helped drive ETH price to more than US$1,400 during the 2017 crypto bull market. Guess what, it started at US$0.43 in 2015.
Promising Purchase
I wish I could buy dream houses and lots now too, but my goal was just equal to what money I could spare for crypto. I am happy though seeing that my BTC and ETH are now more than double their values compared to when I purchased them.
I am planning to buy more when I can. Definitely a much better alternative than keeping it in the bank.
Until then, I am playing with some Tether tokens aka USDT – a cryptocurrency that mirrors the price of US dollars . It is considered a stablecoin.
If you wanna go stable, here’s your token.
I don’t hold this. I trade. I do it on OKEx, too, the same platform I hold my BTC and ETH.
Yeah, I’v made some cash in the three weeks I’ve started trading. Pretty easy and a lot less complicated than it sounds.
Tell you about it next week. 🙂
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