When I started with crypto as a serious investment, it was the fall of 2019 and the world had yet to know what COVID stood for, much less a novel virus. The last time anything happened even got notice on the Western side of the ocean was when SARS was spreading from bird flu and actually killing people. However, unlike today, we didn't make a big stink of it at that time; everyone lined up and got their vaccine shots and SARS went away. So, fast forward a decade, crypto was rocketing and yet to go three times higher, and we were all once again going to see how nature could really kick humanity's arse down the street with a bug no one could see without a microscope.

Since those wonderful, heady days, we've all seen where crypto could get to and where it failed. And, like a bad hangover the next morning, the government has now arrived to punish everyone for having a party in the house without them knowing or approving. Looking at Bitcoin turning $20,000 again comes with a lot of hesitation and clearly caution. Anyone who's had serious money in the crypto game has been burned and, like others who've kept our hand diamond, many still have some serious losses to recover before making a move again.

We're all smarter, less impressed, and more practical about Bitcoin and it's assortment of misshapen relatives.

And if there was any possibility for a professional platform for trading and providing the foundational framework clear and true currency activity, FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried aka "Crypto Madoff" set that ten years back.

So, the question we're all asking ourselves is one that I'm facing as well. Do I get back in?

Overall, I can't say I was destroyed by crypto. I started off blindly like so many others, and soon got confused by an assortment of different coins and tokens. I got lucky early on with an unexpected airdrop and smartly used that money to pay for one of my kids' dental work instead of putting it back into another digital coin. The IRS got their share too (ouch, that was a bite), and boy am I glad I took care of that. Soon after the boom of 2020, I started hearing all sorts of nightmares about folks finding themselves short on owing capital gains for all their crypto wins that had been subsequently spent or squandered. By Spring 2021, the party was over, the furniture smelled like spilled beer and puke, and BTC was dropping from the heady $60k down to $45k. I staked a few positions to catch a falling knife, recovered some, but lost more. I tried DeFi and various other options, only to see those erode as well, week after week. By then we were well into the spiral down. Finally, by the beginning of 2022, I just stopped altogether. It was throwing good money after bad. And we've been in a limbo since, watching things go down to 2017 levels.

Now, over the last week, an angelic spike happened, and we're all taking it as an omen that the crypto winter is over. I would love it to be, honestly. We've all suffered enough and it's high time what goes down goes back up. I still have some ETH 2.0 that lost 55% of its value that needs to recover.

However, now I'm older and less phased. I don't use exchanges, I don't trust DeFi, I definitely don't trust any kind of staking platform after being burned by Celsius for a few $ hundred, and I have everything in wallets only. To be quite frank, it's really boring.

Is this what crypto has come to now?

Ideally, I would love crypto to be a passive income stream. I work hard enough as it is, and I definitely need something that generates income automatically while I'm putting my attention where it really should be, on living. I have yet to find that opportunity in the crypto world. And I have tried. I've played with staking, liquidity pools, play to earn games, NFT markets and more. I'm just not finding a good sizeable source. That's not to say it doesn't exist. I know plenty of folks in different forums who have been quite successful turning over stones and producing gold. It's just not my knack so far. My writing has continued to be the most reliable income earner beyond a day job, which is really funny because I remember even my own father making fun of my English degree. Now who's laughing.

So, like most things one gains experience in, I'm probably not going to go gangbusters on crypto this time around. It proved to be a Cinderella that lost its charm when the sun came up. And, thanks to the government working actively to shut everything down in favor of the banks, I think the wild, wild west days of crypto adventuring are also coming to an end as well. Yes, BTC will probably rise again. And a few coins with real liquidity and low cost networks will stay strong, like ETH without the gas fees and LTC. But the disco-partying tokens and LPs are over. In fact, my bank CDs at 4 and 5% are earning better right now than most of them.