We all hate it. Don't pretend it is what it is. You hate it too. Even the whales do though they pretend they don't notice.... I know I do. It makes ethereum less attractive and the whole DeFi ecosystem less accessible and less friendly to new users and is a drain on everyone(except miners, I hear they love it)
Yes yes, I'm well aware there are plans to address it underway, steps were taken this week in fact, Berlin rollout yay! Here's hoping we see some progress soon. That's not the point of this post... well... the title explains it all....
Please bear in mind these things happened months ago when I was first getting my feet wet.
The Ledger travesty
You have no idea how excited I was to get this thing. Super secure safe way to store my crypto and ledger live to exchange and earn interest with. Hell yeah sign me up take my money it will pay for itself in next to no time.
It arrives and I get it all set up and good to go. Now I need some crypto to send there. So I load up ledger live and go to buy some BTC and ETH just to hodl... and guess what? I cant use their exchange or earn functions because they are powered by Coinify and Coinify doesn't serve my state. Awesome. At least I have the Ledger itself to keep what I've bought elsewhere safe right? Ok so lets do this another way. Coinbase has worked for me in the past. I guess I'll just buy there and send to the ledger. Boom. Done deal, YAYYY I feel so crypto-y with my ledger. After basking in the moment for a little bit I got to thinking though. I just lost out. I paid fees to buy from Coinbase and then I paid withdrawal fees and another $30 to send ETH to the ledger. And I did this twice because I bought BTC right after... Admittedly the BTC transfer didn't cost $30. Still.... its not an insubstantial amount especially for someone just starting. The amount I spent to move my crypto out of Coinbase is as much as some would be willing to invest in the first place. All because I didn't know enough to check that Coinify works in my state and that gas costs are this high.
The Kucoin Dilemma
If you've looked at my previous posts you'll know I exchange on Kucoin. Partly because I like the fact that its powerful on mobile, partly for its free bots, and partly because that's where I can trade XYO. After dabbling in trading with my first redemption of XYO from Coin I felt confident that I wouldn't just be throwing money away if I put some actual money into the exchange. The downside of Kucoin is that its not super easy to buy crypto with cash there... In fact at this point my bank just straight up blocks moonpay, simplex, etc unless I call them to argue about how I get to spend my money. Forget that. I tried twice and got tired of waiting on hold. They don't seem to have an issue with Coinbase though. So I'm backed into a corner again just like with the ledger. I want to trade on Kucoin- there are some alt coins there that look interesting that aren't anywhere else yet. I just want to put a liiiittle bit on there to experiment with(still learning remember). Apparently I've already forgotten about my gas gripes from the ledger travesty a week earlier because what do I do? I buy ETH on Coinbase and send it straight to Kucoin like an idiot, losing another 40 dollars in the process. WOOOOO Gas!
The Uniswap Debacle
I've mentioned Coinapp a few times now. I hodl XYO rewards from them in a hot wallet and enjoyed great returns as the token price has been driven up. I also had XYO/ETH staked in a pair on Uniswap that did pretty well for a minute. But its been incredibly volatile on the way. Volatile enough that at one point I thought I had missed the peak and was at risk of losing all of my gains and my ETH would get beat up in the liquidity pool. I panicked, and I had already fooled around enough with transferring to and from Kucoin and getting cut up with fees the whole time. Besides, I don't want my BTC or ETH or whatever I trade it to on the exchange. I try to keep a certain amount on exchanges to trade with and keep as much as possible safe in wallets in my custody. So in this instance I'm worried that the longer I wait and more time I fool around deciding the more losses I'm taking on XYO, the ETH in the pair is getting hammered and its slipping pretty bad at this point so I just go for it. I know the gas fee is coming this time, I'm ready, so I head over to Uniswap and pull out of the Liquidity pool, then I have to go back in and swap my depreciating XYO into something else. I figure ETH is easy, one hop and done. Cool. I feel victorious for a moment, I've managed to save the value that XYO had generated by putting it into a less volatile asset, I've saved my ETH from the pool. Sure I burned a bunch of gas but that's crypto right? At least that's what I tell myself, that's what we always tell ourselves. I feel like I've made the right move at least, even if I'm not happy paying all that gas. I watch the charts for a while, confirming I made the right call before I call it a night and go to sleep. Of course the crypto gods did not sleep that night, and went right on ahead and flipped the script on XYO, recovering all the losses overnight and by breakfast I'm looking at the same price that I jumped out but now its on a bull trend. Damn. Now what. If XYO isn't crashing after all and I jumped off ship when its still less than a penny I'm gonna hate myself if it climbs... I got it for next to nothing from Coinapp after all. My breakfast time brain can't handle it. I go for it. I SWAPPED IT BACK to XYO.... and paid gas.... DAMMIT.
These are meant to show how easy it is to get owned by gas fees if you are new to crypto and don't know what to expect. Thankfully I've learned pretty quickly to be sure of my decisions and do more effective research into products and services before I pull the trigger. I can laugh about these missteps and mistakes and hope that my experiences here can help others avoid similar pitfalls!
Happy Hodling
JD
