Intro

Riding the rollercoaster called crypto was hella fun until now and I’ve decided to share the lessons I’ve taken away from diving deep into the rabbit hole we call crypto.

It all started out for me when I heard about Bitcoin touching new heights end of August 2021. On the lookout for a profitable side-hustle and big dreams, I’ve jumped in head over heels and got myself some sweet magic internet money.

It didn’t take me long to realize that crypto is way more than just HODLing Bitcoin. Numerous Altcoins are deployed by the day and almost all of them are deemed to be the next Bitcoin killer.

My plan was set. I was ready to learn the game and start making money on something that I barely understood at the time. Trading cryptocurrencies was only natural to me because I had some experience in the stock market, so I went out and signed up for an exchange to start working.

Trading cryptocurrencies

Trading crypto is like trading stocks, on speed. I have never experienced so many ups and downs in a matter of days and I was hooked quicker than Elaine Thompson-Hera can sprint.

After I got my first sats and started researching for other cryptocurrencies, I found out that there are a lot of projects out there trying to revolutionize different parts of the internet.

Many projects set out to be the next Ethereum or Bitcoin, but almost just as many are nothing but mere hype when you look behind the website and try to figure out who they would benefit from the most.

Nevertheless, my greedy ass started learning about different altcoins and their following. Transparency is key in crypto, but even though it might be easily accessible to look up blockchain data for whale movements, the noise of influencers and hype is so loud, that it becomes a game of discipline to stay focused and not to get hyped for some meme-coin (sorry Shiba-Inu fanbase, I just don’t get it).

Using the hype to trade profitably is also possible, but checking discord, Twitter, and YouTube hourly is a chore that can be tiring if profits are not high enough to make up for it, so I decided to just invest in long-term holdings and stopped chasing the green dragon.

Flipping NFTs

NFTs is a whole different game when compared to “classic” crypto trading. The sheer endless projects that are released and articles that are written about legendary sales like Beeple’s Everydays were enough to keep me going deeper into the world of crypto.

In my opinion, trading or flipping NFTs is way more emotional than just trading coins. That is because there’s a relatively small team that releases their project with an idea behind it most of the time. Of course, there are a lot of collections out there that are derivatives trying to make a quick buck off of the success of the so-called blue-chip NFT projects like crypto punks.

NFTs are way more than fancy status symbols though. There is a lot of utility behind smart contracts and NFTs can be used for numerous use-cases. They can be linked to luxury goods as a certificate of authenticity or even as a token to buy real estate nowadays.

I’m excited to see where NFTs will evolve in the years to come. One thing is certain, they are not going away anymore and people will find more and more use-cases for them as our cultural paradigm shifts from being organized by a central authority to a decentralized organization of linked minds.

Diving Deep: DAOs

Speaking of decentralized organizations, DAOs are exactly that. DAOs are basically communities with a shared bank account and people come together in these groups to achieve a common goal.

Whether it is to go ahead and do something crazy like buying a page of the American constitution or creating a shared space for creatives to come together in real-life to collaborate: DAOs are changing the way people organize themselves in communities.

There’s been a long time where dreams were given by the elite thinkers of societies, but with DAOs, even small groups can collaborate to achieve greater goals that are only limited by laws and nature.

The first time I read about the concept of decentralized organizations I was blown away by the idea of sharing equity with total strangers. But the more I get involved in this space, I realize the advantages of a transparent and trustless system.

Of course, scammers and malicious minds still exist and do their best to harm others for their own good. But in a community where everyone is transparent, everyone can check on their fellow members to see who they’re working with. This creates an environment of free-minded collaboration and self-reliance at the same time because it is highly incentivized to look after oneself and after each other simultaneously.

Learning about Web3

All the things I’ve learned in the last months are entities of a greater evolution. The internet as we know it will change drastically over the next years and the more I learn about Web3, the more I think it will be for the greater good in the end.

Nowadays, data is used by big tech companies to create value out of information. Users give up their data and get “experiences” in exchange for that. Social media is a great example for big-data businesses. Algorithms control what you see and you merely control what you are shown if you’re not into tech or know how to secure your user data when surfing the internet.

Businesses pay social media companies to be shown in your feed and all you get from that are incentives to buy useless stuff you don’t need.

Web3 on the other hand makes it possible for users to not only choose where they give up their data but also make the usage of that data traceable. In the future, you can choose to opt out of giving away your data or even get paid for giving it away. Take Brave, is an internet browser that pays users in their native token to show ads that are just as discrete as google ads.

Summary

It’s been a wild six months for the world of crypto and for me. I’ve never learned so much in such a small timeframe and I love the pace of this space. I’m excited to see what this year will bring us and can’t wait to share more stories about my Web3 endeavors.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have a project that you want to share or hear my thoughts about.

You Might Also Like

Why documenting trades will boost your portfolio Trading can be a dangerous path if you are out for quick profit. Don’t be a gambler and learn to document your trades!blog.cryptostars.is

What I learned from investing into PFP NFT projects Thinking about making a quick buck flipping NFTs?  Keep reading to find out if it’s for youblog.cryptostars.is

Living the life of a side-hustler in the crypto-space I am always on the lookout for projects to get involved in, so you can imagine that I was pretty excited when I read about people paying millions for JPEGs and GIFs for the first time. There is nothing like reading about the next big thing in crypto and thinking “Whoa, what the hell is happening here!?” so I jumped in, started to research the subject and my next ride in the crazy world of crypto began.

For those who are just getting into NFTs or haven’t heard about it here’s a short explanation: NFT stands for “non-fungible token” and is defined as a unit of data running on a blockchain that represents a unique and (as the name says) non-fungible asset on said blockchain. Unlike tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum each NFT is unique and, like the name says, non-fungible. People quickly realized the potential behind it and started finding ways to monetize it.

I went out and tried to make sense of this “next banger” making Millionaires. A plethora of projects got released since the early beginnings and I found a ton of success stories like the one about the infamous Bored Ape Yacht Club.

No question that I wanted to join the party and get a piece of the pie. My greedy ass got active and I searched for projects that I could join to find the next NFT gem.

…I didn’t mind a lack of individuality if the project had the potential to be the next crypto punks

Needless to say that I’ve lost about 280$ on my first NFT investment which was, of course, a PFP project. They had a shiny roadmap and threw around big words like metaverse and tokenization after the initial minting-phase was over. Their discord seemed okay at first glance, so I jumped in despite paying two third of the price of minting for gas. There I was, proud owner of my first NFT.

After paying this much for the NFT I thought I could easily list it for at least 2x, so I tried selling it on opensea. The only “downside” was I figured out too late that a NFT PFP (profile pic) project lives off its active community pushing sales. Both sales and active community members were declining for weeks already. I didn’t list my toothless buddy in the end because I wouldn’t pay another 100$ for gas, so HODL is the way to go.

That moment was my first experience of a “bad deal” in the crypto space, so I went out and read more about NFT projects and the market in general to avoid becoming another gas-wars victim in my next try.

Lucky for me, the biggest market for NFTs, Opensea, caters NFTs on a lot of different blockchains That gave me the option to look into projects with lower gas fees for listing and entering projects. One blockchain with a lot of collections on opensea is polygon. It offers super low gas fees compared to Ethereum and their highest ranking projects have a volume around 500ETH at the point of writing this.

I looked into collections around rank 100–250 and tried to find some NFTs that I liked and that had a more active and growing community. There are so many nice looking but totally overpriced JPEGs or projects with little to no active community which made it not the easiest task to find the right one.

Looking at the sales history of some projects I quickly learned that a lot of collections peak once shortly after release and fade out into lower and lower sales volume after that. Even more projects don’t even make it that far or are just blatant fakes of famous or popular other NFT collections.

After going shopping for random NFTs to hold on to I started looking for a collection that could have the potential to be in the “pre-peak” stage. It took me a while but after doing what felt like enough research I decided to grab some of my portfolio to mint myself some “Billionaire Zombies”. The project started just seven days before I discovered it and was placed above rank 100 when I got into it.

The project consists of 10,000 individual NFTs depicting all sorts of zombies. I always dig zombie stuff and their community was very active. The projects roadmap sounded like a lot like every road map of a PFP-NFT project. A little bit of Mint -> sales & community -> staking/tokenization -> metaverse…

Being on the lookout for a rather a short time-frame investment, I didn’t mind a lack of individuality if the project had the potential to be the next crypto punks.

I decided to mint a total of 13 NFTs over time and got active in their community. It was a lot of fun but knowing about the concept of multi-level marketing, I knew that a big part of the community consisted of just hyping the project to pump interest.

I highly recommend you to read this article if you are not familiar with the concept of MLM.

The projects sales volume slowly climbed up and the project jumped more than one rank on opensea almost every day. Then the day came that the minting phase ended and the next phase of the project started shortly after a period of built up suspension about this “next level” of the project.

Sales started to go crazy (for my experience) and climbed from 0.0009 to 0.09ETH in a matter of weeks. The makers of the project released mysterious keys to early holders as part of the next step. I was lucky enough to get one. After the release of those keys the community started to get a little bit too focused on “raising floor prices” and a weird vibe started to flow, that started to worry me and made me sell off all of my zombie NFTs and my elusive key shortly after prices were at their ATH.

Participating in this project was my first big win in crypto. I made more than enough and had a great time with the members of the community.

On one side I’m grateful to live in a time and place that grants the possibility to earn yourself more financial freedom with freely accessible knowledge. Against that stands some foul feeling of having participated in some kind of scheme that (almost) always ends bad for most of the participants.

In the end I decided for myself that it was super cool to have been part of a fun social club for some time and to have taken home enough to keep learning more about the world of blockchain. It was’t hard to learn about NFTs and the very basics to spot possible investments, be aware though that timing is key in this type of business. I am not going back to flipping NFTs but I am sure that the time will come when I want to have a piece of abstract digital art.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this article, if you liked it and want to support me you can follow me and leave some claps and comments below :)

All the best for your investments.

Feel free to reach out if you have a project that you want to share or hear my thoughts about.