Hello and thanks for reading. This is the second instalment of my blog.

This is where I discovered there is a steep learning curve in the crypto world. 

I decided I would build my crypto portfolio some more and continue to stake. This time I decided I would stake some coins in my atomic wallet. I bought 40GBP ($55) of litecoin on Binance and sent it over to my Atomic wallet, they have an inbuilt currency swap so I can just swap it there right and earn some AWC tokens for using the swap there or so I thought.

Hit swap to exchange my LTC to AWC, doesn't swap in wallet like I expected and instead sends it off somewhere to get swapped and takes out a chunk in fees which I wasn't warned about or expecting. Not good, but at least I have some AWC now. I go to staking to stake my AWC and discover I have the wrong type of AWC, what I actually needed to stake was AWC-986. OMG, this is a bad day. Ok at this point I am a little frustrated. I don't want to be sat with a token I can't stake and I know if I swap again it will cost more fees but decide to do it anyway. 

Back to the exchange menu, I can't swap for AWC-986. damn, OK, I look at my staking options and BAND looks pretty decent at 17%. Back to the exchange to swap my AWC for BAND. Wait I have just over 19 AWC and it is saying the minimum swap is 20 grr. It is also asking for ETH to pay gas fees, which I don't have. At this point I am just fed up and annoyed and decide I want to ship my AWC off at whatever cost and screw it. I just go to purchase in my atomic wallet and buy 250GBP ($344) of Ethereum. As I don't meet the minimum need for an in wallet swap I look for an alternative and discover Uniswap. After figuring out how this works I connect my wallet, send my AWC and exchange it for BAND as i now have the ETH to pay the gas fees. Wait what, not only did it take the gas fees it also took a large chunk of my ETH for transaction fees. Today is just getting worse. 

Ok the BAND is back in my wallet at least. I go to the staking menu to stake my BAND. I now have the wrong type of BAND. I can't believe it, once again I am stuck with the wrong type of coin. After much research I discover that I can exchange the BAND quite simply on Binance by sending the one I have and withdrawing it from Binance selecting the right type. More gas fees to send my BAND, I set the gas as low as my wallet lets me and send it. It arrives pretty fast still. I now withdraw in Binance to send the right BAND back to my wallet and bingo, after another transaction fee I now have the right BAND in my atomic wallet and stake it. hoorah finally.

Looks like it is working, but it will take a long time to recoup my losses. what a day but I have learned a lot today. I now have a good chunk of ETH left in my wallet but have decided the gas fees for ETH are too high and I will not be sending coins around with ETH and will be looking to keep ETH coins on exchanges where possible. After a lot of research into ETH it seems the consensus is ETH might raise in price and may even hard fork this year or next. Ok maybe I should hold the ETH and see what happens but it is not doing anything for me in the wallet. Seems they are looking to upgrade the ETH blockchain and I can stake my ETH I have left to help towards this. Seems like a good idea. I have decided on Binance again as they do ETH 2.0 staking. After more gas fees my remaining ETH is now arrived and staked. In return I have been given BETH in my spot wallet which represents my staked ETH. I will just leave that there and see how it grows. At least all my coins are working for me now despite the great losses today.

I decide I better look at what I have invested and what I have left to see how bad it is. So far I have invested $467. 

I have 2.37 BAND staked in Atomic wallet equal to about $51.76

I have 0.08 KSM staked at Binance equal to about $36.90

I have 0.69 DOT staked at Binance equal to about $28.81

my spot wallet at Binance is at $223.57 including my BETH from staked ETH

My total portfolio stands at $340. I am currently looking at a loss of $127. This is terrible but I have confidence I can recover from this. 

Tune in for my next instalment where I am looking at ways to earn free crypto currency to help increase my portfolio and offset some losses.