My First Year In Crypto: Part 1-How It Started.

Hello Folks,
So it's June 15, 2018 and that means that I have officially been invested in crypto for 1 full year.
I figured I would commemorate the day by posting my first official content in that full calendar year and try to explain the ups and downs of my journey and take a look back on my year and try to comprehend the whole deal. I have no idea where this will go but I'm guessing that I will break it down into small installments. Nobody wants to read a book unless they are buying a damn book! If you are new to crypto, perhaps this will help you avoid some of the mistakes I have made. Probably not though. One of the biggest lessons learned so far is that you WILL make mistakes. Hopefully you learn from them. If you have been around for a while, maybe you will laugh at how much our tales have in common. Who knows? All of our journey's are unique.
This is mine.

HOW IT STARTED:

1 year ago tonight, I was sitting in my office drinking a day end glass/bottle of Cab and my phone rang. One of my friends who has been pretty good with investment tips in the past starts ranting and raving that I need to get in on some 'Tezos'. Yeah, zero clue what the hell he was talking about, but I poured another glass of wine and listened to what he had to say. "First you have to buy some Ethereum." he explained. I had never heard of Ethereum once in my life at that point. Now remember, that this was June 15 of 2017. Ethereum had just run from around $7 to $375 at that point. That is bananaland and I couldn't have FOMO'd in more listening to him explain this foreign concept.

We finally wrapped up our call and I spent that next hour trying to figure out how to buy Ethereum. Buy it? I couldn't even spell it for the longest time. With no background in cryptocurrencies, I signed up for a few exchanges but because of the state I live in, I ran into all kinds of roadblocks until I found Coinbase. My wine buzz was 'Much Strong' by this point. I didn't care what the price was, I just wanted in before it went even higher. Problem was, I couldn't. Turns out my bank had put a block on my coinbase purchase. After a ridiculous amount of time on hold, my bank lifted the block and I purchased my first ETH. It had risen in price about $50 in the time it took me to finally get approved that night. This was the start of my discovery of what FOMO meant. At that time I could not care less. I was the proud owner of one Ether.

From that point, I fell down the rabbit hole with great wonder and excitement. It truly is a rabbit hole! I could think of nothing else but learning as much as I could about this new and fascinating space. I am astounded looking back at the amount of mistakes I made those first few days/weeks/months. It did not matter to me though. I was hooked right away.
First, I needed to devour as much information as possible. I ate, drank and breathed as much Youtube, Reddit and of course, "Crypto Twitter" as I could....
What I discovered was a whole new world.