I lost hope but now I'm back

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I feel a whole range of emotions as I write this - fear, excitement, embarrassment, elation and hope. Most of all though, I feel an undeniable conviction that this is the right thing to do, that this is the path I want to take moving forward.

I’ve had many obsessions during my life. Some have taken years of productivity away from me. Others have founded the cornerstones of my current belief systems. My obsession with cryptocurrency - a decentralized, permissionless, immutable, trustless, borderless form of value transfer - is the one I want to tell you about today.

Taking the red crypto pill back in June 2017 led me down the most intense roller coaster ride of my life - financially, emotionally and energetically. Morpheus came to me in the form of Nick Szabo & Naval Ravikant in discussion with Tim Ferriss on his podcast.

Later on it was the one and only Andreas Antonopoulos who ensured that the red pill was entirely digested. There was no coming back after that.

I felt unsettled, amazed, confused, bewildered and blown away by what I was learning. Little did I know, this was just the beginning of Neo’s journey into the ever-evolving rabbit whole of cryptocurrencies.

I ended up spending 12 hours a day researching, writing and investing in cryptocurrencies for over a year. If I spent just 10 minutes watching a series, I would get bored and want to go back to learning about crypto. It was crazy but I loved it.

I was focused almost entirely on fundamental analysis. I wanted to be able to explain what cryptocurrencies were, what their value was and how and why they were likely to change the world. This included researching the best arguments against crypto.

It was only after the big crypto crash that I realised I had been overlooking the important aspect of TA (technical analysis). The argument for learning TA which appealed to me the most was that investors can only make money in bull markets but technical analysts can make money in any markets.

I lost a significant amount of money during the crash and it killed my motivation to stay in the crypto community, like it did for many others. I gave up on the ideas and the people who were still actively contributing to this space, trying to make the world a better place. I feel ashamed about that.

It was then that I stopped writing my blog and started focusing almost entirely on TA. I thought I had a chance at making money with it if I focused all my attention on it. While I have had some small success recently, I spent a long time losing money trading at first. Not only that but it took me away from why I got into this space to begin with - for the principles and the technology. Being part of the technical analysis community wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as being part of the cryptocurrency community.

That’s why I’ve decided to now come back to doing what I love, even if it’s likely to make me much less money for the foreseeable future than other career paths. What I want to do is to write, research, learn and communicate with people about cryptocurrency.

Although I have a whole list of blog title ideas for specific content which will require research, I also like just talking to people in the form of videos, you can check out my first cryptocurrency vlog down below:

What excites me above anything else is learning. However, to acquire knowledge without sharing it feels selfish, passive and overly indulgent.

That is why I want to go back full time into the world of crypto by continuing this blog and communicating with other crypto enthusiasts & creators on Steeemit, Hive, Twitter, Reddit, Discord etc. I want to be a full time member of the crypto community again!

To that effect, I’m curious to hear about your journeys into the wild west of the crypto sphere. Post a link to your #introduceyourself posts or just comment about what led you into this space. I’d love to connect!

Hooked2TheChain aka Frank

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I looked at my old posts from back in the day and these are the two ones I'm most proud of. Have a read if you like:

• The One Thing People Fail to Understand about Bitcoin
• Conversation with a Five Year Old about Bitcoin