It’s not an easy process
I’ve known about cryptocurrency for years and got invested in the space in 2020. I was there for the bull market boom but never profited from it. I was never in it for the profit, but for the technology. I was fascinated by what I thought was a financial revolution — a way for people to take their money and financial power into their own hands.
Imagine being able to make your money work for you with more than just investing and hoping. Imagine being able to benefit more people than hedge funds and Wall Street giants. In 2020, I believed there was potential for this technology.
A while ago, I wrote a piece about the elements of crypto that frustrated me. That piece has a lot more passion and gusto compared to the meh I’m feeling right now, but it’s there if you want to read it.
This past week I left the space, cashed out at a massive loss, and sent the money to a traditional investing account. I thought I’d write and share the experience.
I’ll try to keep the buzzwords and jargon to a minimum, I promise.
I don’t feel mad, upset, or resentful, just frustrated and exhausted.
In Too Deep
It’s hard to explain to retail investors and people who only know a little bit about crypto how in-depth I was. For people doing regular investing, I didn’t have one exchange account; I had two exchange accounts, four wallets, and money spread across four protocols. There are no layman’s terms to explain that, but the protocols were other programs that crypto could sit in and hopefully generate some money. I’m not saying I was addicted; what this technology could do entranced me. Thankfully, I never got into the NFTs, never owned an ape, or went nuts about a cartoon JPEG. Thank God.
I really believed decentralized services would be the future of finance. People would have more control over their money and values. I genuinely thought this was the case, and then everything happened.
After FTX got shut down, Binance.US and Coinbase were under fire from the SEC, and Crypto.com closed their US exchange, I wasn’t feeling confident about where my money was. Putting your money anywhere, but your wallet carries risk, but I grew less sure about putting my money on crypto exchanges, especially after FTX.
Protocols are not the future. Instead of my money quietly sitting in a protocol and slowly gaining money, I had to constantly check and make sure my money was working for me.
With a bank account and traditional investing, you don’t have to pay a fee to transfer your money over to a Savings Account V3 on the Utah Chain or risk your money sitting in an obsolete program.
While gas fees (the crypto you have to spend to move money around and put it into protocols like trading fees or a minimum balance.) Although they have gotten better, they are still expensive.
Crypto still has a long way to go with barriers to entry, and the cost is one of them.
The People who Drive me Crazy
Everyone knows about the people flipping their lids over cartoon apes. What frustrated me was the community and the people involved.
Crypto started as a way for value to be exchanged without the government or corporations. Of course, both of those have entered the space.
The Metaverse was absurd, and thank God it’s dead. It was a bizarre corporate creation that served no purpose. Central Bank digital currencies are concerning for a whole host of reasons that deserve its own article.
The tech bros of course, came. Innovation for the sake of innovation without any foresight or reason. I can’t even begin to name the copycats, the trend followers, and the band wagoners. Every time an actual innovation came along, there were hundreds of projects and scams hoping to cash in.
After SHIB came out (a project with quadrillions of coins where one can buy a million coins for pennies in the hope that you could get super rich when they reached a high enough price), a horde of copycats doing the exact same thing followed.
All this made investing more difficult and risky. You could either find the next big thing or the next massive scam.
The online community has its own issues. Scammers, conspiracy theorists, misinformed people, badly informed people, and zealots are plentiful. It makes finding actual information about the space difficult and risky. Are you getting solid information, or are you getting set up for a pump and dump?
In Conclusion
As of finishing this article, I still have some crypto to sell off before I’m out. This isn’t to say I’m permanently done with the space; if years down the line, crypto is safer and more reliable, then I’ll hop back in.
This article isn’t meant to spread fear, uncertainty, or doubt. If you’re still comfortable with crypto or feel safe jumping in, go ahead. I’m simply sharing a personal story that others might relate to.
Hi, I’m Michael Vincent Hawthorne. This article isn’t a buy or sell signal or financial advice. My sell offs weren’t nearly a big enough deal to cause any serious price movement. I have some more pieces coming out and I try to be active on Notes.