My love affair with cryptocurrencies

patrizia-slongo

Just now·7 min read

Ten years ago exactly I heard about bitcoin for the first time. I still remember the exact moment when my boyfriend at the time said to me: “They created a new fully digital currency… it’s called Bitcoin. It is undermined by a computer”. Then he said to me in a low voice, as if it were an unspeakable secret: “There is a guy a few kilometres from here who sells them, he gives you a code that matches your bitcoins”. It seemed very strange to me and I couldn’t even understand it, but I was fascinated by it. Bitcoin was worth a few dollars at the time, and payment to this person who owned them had to be made in cash. Things from the digital middle ages!

It was the dawn of digital currency and we still didn’t know what private keys, seeds or a blockchain were. The purchase of those first bitcoins failed, we have never met that person. Thinking about it now, it was better this way, because, given our ignorance on the subject, we would probably have lost our money and would have only had a code in hand with which we did not know what to do.

But that day a new idea was born in us, an idea of ​​change: it was possible to have a totally virtual currency not controlled by the banks. It was possible to produce money thanks to computers!

As time went on, I kept hearing about bitcoin sporadically. I read that they were created by a certain Satoshi Nakamoto, that a digital wallet was needed to store them, how they were mined, what was the hash rate and so on. At that time the topic was still very confusing, I had heard about it mainly from geek friends or others who surf the dark web.

One day I decided to buy my first bitcoin, it was worth 98 dollars. I bought it on a newborn site. A young Russian boy who lived in Italy sold them for payment via Postepay, an Italian prepaid card. I proudly bought my first digital currency, kept it in a wallet on my Asus pc.

Time passed and we no longer heard of bitcoin and therefore I forgot my wallet and therefore my bitcoin. The computer where my wallet was found ended up in the hands of my ex-boyfriend, the one who first told me about Bitcoin. Once our story ended, I never saw my computer again. Obviously, I had saved the wallet seed who knows where and the password had been totally forgotten. So my beloved BTC was gone.

Meanwhile, other years pass. Every now and then I went to see the news on bitcoins: “The first Bitcoin ATM has been inaugurated”, “Some bars are starting to accept payments in BTC”, or “Dark website blocked where weapons and drugs were sold in bitcoin”. Apart from some sensational news, the new digital currency was not at the centre of people’s thoughts, but I kept dreaming of a world with digital coins.

Having lost my precious BTC years ago it was still gnawing on me and so even though the price had already more than tripled, I decided to buy another one, it was worth $ 370. This time I keep the seed and password in a safe place. I promise not to lose it again. And so it was.

A year passes, 2017 arrives, cryptocurrency fever breaks out and the price of bitcoin increases dramatically. Brand new digital coins come into play that quickly reaches important values. At that point I decide to sell my bitcoin: “I want to invest in new cryptocurrencies!”. I don’t know exactly what prompted me to sell that BTC, I believe was the desire to embark on a new adventure and the fact of not being excluded from the race for new virtual currencies.

I started investing in various cryptocurrencies: Ethereum, XRP, stellar lumens, NEO … they all looked super promising and the price continues to rise. The higher they went, the more I read articles and inquired about the progress and developments of the various projects.

It must be said that I didn’t have much money to spend and therefore I limited myself to a small amount, also because if I had invested all my savings I would have ended up not being able to pay the rent.

At that moment, exotic expressions were born that made you dream, like: “To the moon! Lambo Now! and then Hold! Hold on till death! ”… It seemed that with little money invested I could become a millionaire, go to the moon and buy a Lamborghini. “Hold on and you won’t regret it.” And then I, like many others, put the coins in my wallet and waited for “the moon”.

In the end, I just made a little profit by selling a portion of my Ethereum and the rest remained in the wallet.

Now I could no longer lose my cryptocurrencies. I knew the various wallets … I used Jaxx, Electrum and had ordered a Ledger Nano S, the hardware wallet for greater security. In the meantime, I looked at Coingecko’s website every day and saw mind-boggling percentages, things that have never been seen in ordinary finance. It felt like living in a dream. I kept telling myself, this is the fucking future! This is the future!

But I didn’t know the world of cryptocurrencies yet and when the prices of currencies started to go down, it felt like a nightmare. I got up, looked at my wallet and shook my head. How was it possible, all those wonderful months of Bull, with new coins coming out every day, new exchanges, groups of Fb dedicated to crypto traders and suddenly everything collapsed! I could not believe it.

But as time passed, I realized that the market was being manipulated and that the winners had never been the little ones like me, only the “whales”. But it couldn’t all end like this. I still believed in cryptocurrencies. The technology behind digital currencies couldn’t just fade away. In my mind there was always the idea that traditional finance would be replaced by decentralized finance and our future currencies would become bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. The future had to be DIGITAL. So I amassed other cryptocurrencies, thinking about the best days.

And so a couple of years went by and the subject faded into people’s minds. Many scream cryptocurrency scam without even knowing what they were. I still remember a conversation with my brother-in-law, who works in a bank, who told me: “I don’t trust them, they are too unstable, better a nice ETF fund”. Basically, I thought, you don’t trust cryptocurrencies, but you had to trust banks when they were selling derivatives. My brother-in-law, however, was like so many others who faced with a novelty that could upset their world, he pulls back for fear of change.

I think it is very difficult for some people to understand this new world, especially for those of a certain age. My father, who is now 70, whenever I tried to explain what bitcoin was, the last question was always: “Yes, I understand, but where is my money going ?!” Understanding the decentralized finance mechanism and having complete power over your currency, without the need for intermediaries, seems complicated in the eyes of many. Not for me, it was love at first sight ❤

In 2020 the pandemic breaks out. People are on the scream of an economic and psychological crisis due to the upheavals given by the covid. The stock exchanges collapse, collapse and collapse again. Crypto collapses too. At that point, I thought: “It’s time to invest, there are lots of coins on sale!” So I started buying. I point a couple of coins, look at the official website, read the project, browse their Twitter account and enter their Telegram channel. Almost all cryptocurrencies have a Telegram channel and it is very useful for seeing the development of the project and comparing it with other investors. After my research, I chose where to invest. I go into Binance and buy crypto. That’s it, my diversified wallet was ready!

Unfortunately, I didn’t invest as much as I wanted. I was filled with fear of the downside. At some point, the negative percentages were getting lower and I wasn’t brave enough to invest more. Now I regret it! “Buy the Dip” they used to say, but when it’s a chasm, the legs start shaking.

Summer 2020 is coming and the market begins to recover. Things are improving for crypto. But things only get hot in winter. From mid-December, bitcoin begins an endless climb. It starts with 20,000, then 30,000, then 40,000 dollars, it seems like a mirage. Crypto fever has returned. People don’t talk about anything else. Everyone wants to invest in bitcoin, the fear of staying out of the gold rush is great. Telegram groups on crypto multiply, all the newspapers talk about it, Elon Musk buys 1.5 billion, other companies thought of accepting BTC for their payments. We are in the middle of the eye of the storm and I am in it.

It is a fantastic time for crypto. The frenzy and enthusiasm it brings with it make us feel alive and part of something great, of an imminent and historic change!

Everyone should know what bitcoins, cryptocurrencies and blockchain are and be able to take advantage of their benefits. But my story teaches us that this world too can be manipulated by big investors. If it is true that most of the BTC are in the hand of a few people, then we can understand that they can raise and lower the price whenever they want. And so I tell you… I think it is right to invest in cryptocurrencies, but you always need to consider the risk and keep in mind that this season of Bull will not last forever. We are not too greedy, we make profits and invest what our portfolio allows. If you love cryptos like me, support the most promising projects that could change our lives for the better.

Peace and good crypto trading everyone!