OK, before you yell at me, I know we're almost three months removed from Christmas.  But that's where my crypto experiences began, and so that's where my crypto blog will begin.

Let me take you back, back, back.... three months ago, to December of 2021... (imagine Wayne's World flashback-inducing arm motions and sound effects.)

It was a slow week at work, and my co-worker and I were sitting around talking.  My co-worker is much younger than me, barely into his thirties, whereas I'm pushing the half-century mark real hard.  When I try to reminisce with him about Star Wars, he thinks I'm talking about Jar-Jar and Amidala, and if I say, "It's time to make the donuts," he just stares at me in confusion.  We don't always connect on the pop culture references, but he's been very into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency for almost two years, and I thought it was about time I asked him to explain it to me.

Two hours later, my understanding of terms like "blockchain," "DeFi," and "staking" had gone from 1% all the way to at least 11%.  I was also in possession of a Coinbase account, a Coinbase Pro account, a Trust Wallet, and a Metamask Wallet.  Or, at least, I had those apps on my phone.  I'm not entirely sure I can claim possession of those wallets, since I can't physically hold them in my pants pocket, but they had been imprinted onto the blockchain (you see my grasp of the technology?).

For the rest of the afternoon, I browsed through Coinbase like a kid in a candy shop - a kid, that is, whose parents had only ever exposed them to Milky Way and Three Musketeers.  Sure, I had heard of Bitcoin, and I had even heard my younger colleagues discussing Ethereum and Litecoin.  But I had no idea there were literally hundreds - nay, thousands! - of alt-coins out there, just waiting to spike up and down wildly like a lie detector graph on the Maurey Povich show (not sure if my younger co-worker would understand that reference - I'll have to ask him).  There were coins with names that appealed to the math nerd in me like Polygon and Polkadot.  There were coins with exotic-sounding names like Solana, Cardano, and Rune.  There were even some coins that made the inner immature third-grader giggle - I'm looking at you, 1inch.

A week later, I had a bag of crypto that included a pinch of BTC, a smidge of ETH, a dash of MATIC, a soupcon of ATOM, and a handful of others.  I was spending $100 here, $50 there.  I knew that even if the prices of these coins quadrupled overnight, it would hardly make me rich, but it was fun dipping my toes into the ocean of crypto.  I could practically hear Prince Aladdin singing "A Whole New World" to me as I approved each purchase.

I received a generous bonus the week after Christmas, and I thought, why not buy a whole Etherium?  Fractions are for commoners, after all!  Plus, I may be able to STAKE this thing?  Yes, please!  Next step, learn what staking means!

Fast-forward to the middle of January - I had spent over twenty thousand on cryptocurrency, across various markets.  YIKES!!

So begins the tales of myself, a crypto noobie.  I hope you enjoy, and look for further stories/experiences as I'm able to write them down! 

I welcome any and all comments, opinions, and real-estate offers. 

If you like my writing, please consider tipping me here and leaving a comment, and if you want to read even more, check out my books on Amazon!  The first one is called Learn Me Good, and it's all about rookie teacher Jack Woodson who goes through a baptism of fire after leaving his engineering job and teaching a rowdy group of third graders.