I vaguely remember, in the haze of my mind during Coronavirus lockdowns and stock market swings, clicking on the “crypto” section in my Robinhood App. This was before the GameStop fiasco and the other shady parts of Robinhood were exposed. The app was still pretty cool. I’d argue to this day that it’s the prettiest interface and the most user-friendly for people new to investing and crypto.

So, I saw the crypto investing options and had absolutely no clue what Bitcoin meant or the potential use cases for Ethereum. But, like anyone else that was bored during the pandemic receiving stimulus checks, I mindlessly bought something random. At the time I legitimately thought this was trading crypto. It was my belief that I now owned Bitcoin and Ethereum—honestly this is one of the most deceiving parts about buying and selling crypto on Robinhood. It would be beneficial if Robinhood explained more directly and clearly that you own zero crypto on their app. 

Positing, I admit, without the Robinhood “crypto” experiment, I would have never owned a fraction of my current crypto depth of knowledge. In that sense, Robinhood is perfectly fine for letting people join the crypto community, although these hodlers have no Bitcoin or Ethereum and don’t trade real crypto. 

Anyway, my interest was piqued when Bitcoin suddenly shot up from $10k (where I initially purchased it) to ~$20k by Christmas of 2020. Seeing in the app that I had made a 90% gain on my investment was exhilarating. How many stories are there like mine from the past year?

Once I started reading and studying the history of Bitcoin and what it truly entailed, I immediately realized it was time to purchase a cold storage wallet and begin DCA (dollar cost averaging) into Bitcoin. There’s almost no feeling equal to the power you feel becoming your own “bank” for the first time. Reddit and some other blogs really led me to my strategy of DCA via Swanbitcoin.com and it was smooth sailing from there. I also dabbled with ETH, DOT and DOGE for fun. 

Then, in May, I experienced my very first crypto crash. I’d been in stocks for a little while so I knew to only invest what I could lose, but, wow, it was like the prices fell off of a cliff. That’s essentially where I am now in terms of crypto: hodling mostly BTC and enjoying the (positive parts of) different crypto communities. 

As for my personal life, I’ve been a high school educator for ten years, and I’m a dad to a three-year-old boy and a three-month-old baby girl. My wife supports my crypto interests but still thinks crypto is just kind of funny and odd. 

Thanks for reading!