Hi there, I'm just a young kid trying to make it in this world. Recently inspired by many people documenting their financial journey in crypto, I decided I should also journal my thoughts and journey so I can look back and see how far I've grown. This blog is mainly for me but if it so happens that you're a wandering anon who chanced upon this shithole, you’re welcome.

My investing journey started in 2018 when I started to invest in several blue chips (STI, DBS, SIA, etc). I didn’t know much except that I had to beat inflation and earn money through investing. With not much knowledge, I believed the blue chips will surely do well for me. However, after the covid crash, I lost about 50% of my portfolio and this began my hunt for bigger risks. Thankfully, my portfolio was just a few hundred only. I played around with several robo advisors and Syfe helped me achieve pretty good returns.

As I was looking for platforms to attain high returns, a financial agent lured me into signing up for a whole life insurance plan. Innocent me thought it was a smart investment move but it was not at all. I’m not trying to shit on whole life insurance because there are a lot of use cases for it. However, it just doesn’t suit me and my plans, I have so many years to live for and I don’t have any dependents so it didn’t make much sense. One of the benefits of the plan was that I could pass the plan on to future generations but I don’t even know if I want to get married, let alone have children…… Anyway, after 2 months, I cancelled the plan after many thorough and proper thinking. I lost a few thousand which I took as a lesson well learnt on insurance. I read up more on insurance after and now have a clearer plan on what to get for myself too. Not to forget that I almost fell for the trap of free airpods in exchange for signing up for an ILP. That few hundred dollars were not worth the high percentage fees charged. Since then, I have had a bad impression of financial/insurance agents because I know what they’re really after. It’s the high juicy commissions that attracted them to the job anyway. How much do they really care about their clients? Of course, they want their clients to be healthy and alive so they can continue paying them and they can earn their lucrative salaries.

After that came the moomoo and tiger hype that attracted so many people to their platforms including me. I moved out of FSMOne and bought VOO/ARKK. ARK was the next big thing and I wanted to join the wave too. Sadly, I joined in a bit too late but I still had good returns. After lurking around in r/singaporefi , I was convinced to invest in VWRA/SWRD/EIMI for the invest and hold for 10 years strategy. It did make sense but it also meant I would be losing so many gains. Opportunity costs!!!! With so much time on my hands, I could use the time to research on better use of my money instead of leaving it in an etf and letting it slowly accumulate. (I’m talking about 10% p.a. which in crypto terms is realllyyy low)

Next was one of the most dangerous decisions I made. (As risky as crypto!!!) I stumbled onto a post on Seedly about a forex copytrading platform. Forex always sounded lucrative and copytrading meant I didn’t have to do anything. The program will run on its own, copying the master trader and I just had to sit back and let the profits roll. What they don’t tell you is how this was financially impossible. The returns advertised were about 6–10% per month which is pretty high compared to traditional financial instruments. Most professional forex traders can’t even attain that high returns. What should have been the biggest red flag was that one can earn bonuses for referring people into this scheme. So on top of the high returns from the forex copy trading, one can earn a percentage of the referred returns. Doesn’t it seem like a ponzi scheme? At first, I deposited a few thousand to test the waters and after watching money flow in, tempted me to deposit in more. High risk for high rewards didn’t scare me as I was ready to lose it all (I think). I would constantly look at a compound interest calculator thinking of how much money I could have after just one year. I knew the risks beforehand. The platform was shady, the whole business model was like a ponzi, there was a 2% fee to withdraw funds. I knew it was only a matter of time before I became burnt. I decided to withdraw my funds after I fell into the crypto rabbit hole. Lo and behold, the platform recently was investigated by the police and a few have been arrested. No other news known so far but it doesn’t look good anyway. The telegram group I was referred to has been awfully quiet since too. With chat disabled in the group, I genuinely wonder what happened to everybody and whether funds were able to be withdrawn. My entire net worth was inside this platform at a point in time so I’m honestly grateful I got out before it was too late.

The last dumb mistake I made was another ponzi scheme. I had to pay for a membership which allowed me to earn money for doing tasks like liking a tiktok/youtube video. It made some sense that people could be paying for this service but the app had to be downloaded through shady ways and the whole platform itself was shady. Apparently this was not the first time the platform came about, it had appeared in a different country and similarly disappeared. However, this platform grew quite popular here and a lot of people lost money. I lost less than a thousand which honestly meant a lot to me but I realised I couldn't do anything about it so I moved on and figured ways to continue grinding.

After watching a youtube video on crypto, I was inspired and realised this was my chance. This was my ticket to FIRE. The whole crypto space is still nascent and has the potential to 100x over the years. I still have decades ahead of me and even if I lose everything I have right now, I won’t be affected too much. Mentally most likely but financially not so much. This sparked my adventure down the rabbit hole and I never looked back since.

The first thing I did was to buy a Mutant Cat NFT. I don’t know what was so appealing or what made me really ape into that but that was one of the worst choices I made so far. NFTs are illiquid, with not much utility and because I bought mine at floor price, it meant my MC wasn’t rare and probably won’t be able to resell higher. Now that NFTs are dying and there aren’t a lot of use cases currently, the floor for MC has drastically dropped and I have no choice but to hold on. The Mutant Cats team is great and there’s a good community behind but I realised NFTs are only useful in the long term unless one knows how to flip NFTs well. Unfortunately, I know nothing about the NFT space and the FISH token I get from staking my cat is pretty much worthless. From then on, I decided to steer clear from NFTs unless there's a solid use case or I’m confident I can flip it and earn money.

I discovered Wonderland as I was learning about OHM and rebasing tokens. It sounded too good to be true but I had faith in Daniele, leader of the frog nation. I had so much faith that I even did the wMemo collateral borrowing method to leverage a higher APY. And at one point in time where TIME dropped from 8k to 3k, I was so afraid of liquidation that I paid part of the loan which wasn’t a smart move. Sadly, even with the high rebase and APY, I didn’t earn anything from this token. Nevertheless, Daniele has great plans for the frog nation and I’m okay leaving my small bag in his hands for the future.

Someone posted about Wannaswap on Aurora in a telegram group I was in. The farm was new and there was a high chance of earning at least 20% there. Needless to say, I aped in with a few thousand and made a 2x in a few weeks. I actually could’ve made a 3x but I didn’t understand the price action and I had conviction in the platform. However, the second time the price of the farm token dropped, I chose to leave and rotate out to other platforms. The airdrop tactic didn’t attract many people to the platform and that was my signal to exit. After I left, the farm hasn’t been doing so well. Anyhow, this was my first successful high returns trade in crypto and it made me excited for what's to come.

There were clearly some questionable decisions I made which resulted in some losses. I didn’t understand fully how gas fees worked. And so I casually spent eth on gas like it was nothing even though I could’ve waited till gas fees were low and consolidated all the transactions I wanted to do. I bought SAND and staked it in EnterDAO when the metaverse hype was rising. I had no clue what staking was and had no idea what epoch meant. I was wondering why I wasn’t earning any money until I realised every epoch was 1 week and I had to wait till the end of the epoch to claim my rewards. Realising I was too late to the metaverse narrative, I decided to sell my SAND with a small loss and rotated out to other plays. I bought and sold IMX with a small gain as I didn’t have a strong conviction to hold it for a long time. I wanted instant gratification from holding my tokens. One token I held for a while was WOO. WOO had a good narrative and potential to rise high but I felt it was too slow and there were more profitable strategies. I made a small loss in total after staking and unstaking several times and losing some tokens as a penalty for early unstaking. No regrets as I learnt my lesson to not chase after small differences in APR (it was 5% only).

Next was my biggest conviction so far. The fantom ecosystem. I started out in the TOMB protocol and after learning about auto compounders, moved into grim finance. Not long after, grim was hacked and I lost about $800. I think I was lucky enough to withdraw my FTM-TOMB from the vault but because of the 36hour lock on the TSHARE vault, I didn’t manage to withdraw in time. The timezone difference meant I was asleep when the vault was open and when I went into the vault, it was too late for me already. Nevertheless, the grim team have a compensation plan so I’m awaiting good news. It’s also not my first time losing money so I wasn’t that sad about it. You win some and you lose some.

Here comes my biggest bag so far, I bought LQDR after reading up on the potential fantom could rise to this year and it has been true so far. I made a 4x since and it's still rising currently. My only regret was locking it up for 2 years as liquidity is really important. I forgot how fast the narrative in the crypto space changes and when the time comes, LQDR will drop and I can’t cash out. The saving grace is I will definitely be able to get back the amount I invested due to the rise in price and APR so far. My current plan is to ride the fantom hype and hope it spills into SPIRIT where I can get a 5–10x.

Some other side investments in my portfolio include BTRFLY and Netswap farm. I have high conviction in BTRFLY as the curve/convex war narrative is the biggest thing right now and they are doing very well so far. Netswap farm is on METIS which is the hype right now. It recently overtook Optimism in TVL and I think it can be the biggest L2 in the future.

My goal for 2022 is simple.

To reach 100k 🙂