I'm just a casual retail investor who does my homework. This morning I learned first hand what I've been reading about gas prices on the Ethereum chain. And for sure, it was not a happy lesson.

After a lot of independent research, as well as reading a bunch of articles here on Publish0x, I decided that today was the day to finally pull the trigger and take a long position in Ampleforth at around $1.20. Now, I'm not rich by any means and don't have a lot of Ethereum to play around with. So I went to the trusty Uniswap interface and connected my Meta Mask account and attempted to buy 30 Ampleforth, which I thought would be within my budget.

After hitting Swap, I was shocked! To purchase the 30 AMPL I wanted, the network fees were in excess of $80.00. Needless to say, when I picked my jaw up off the floor, I cancelled the order.

This was very disappointing to me and should be disappointing to all the casual small non whale investors out there. These excessive network fees are acting as a bar for the ordinary investor to enter the market and make a profit. No, I didn't and don't expect to get rich overnight buying only 30 units of AMPL, like I tried this morning. But, it would have been a start to accumulating a sum of this coin in the future. However, the gas fees sent me to the sidelines and put me on the bench - for the time being.

Maybe Ethereum 2.0 will be the panacea for small investors like myself. Who knows for sure, but we can only hope.