Today we’re doing something a little different, talking with one of our readers, someone who has come out ahead through crypto investing — though not without some stomach churning reversals along the way.
Why it matters: Crypto is often spoken of as a democratizing opportunity, yet regular people seldom see the stories of non-professionals placing bets in the space. Here is one.
Details: Darragh Grove White, a Canadian marketing technologist, is on the leading edge. But, he took some hard hits.
“I made a lot of mistakes, for sure. I’ve had crypto exchanges take my money,” he tells Axios.
He was one of many Canadians out of luck when the founder of the exchange QuadrigaCX, Gerald Cotten, died (?) in India.
State of play: Grove-White is one of the fortunate ones. By his account, since the Quadriga loss he’s turned around. He’s up around 11x on his principal, though there have been wild oscillations in that number recently.
Axios has verified the success of his portfolio.
The scoreboard: He has invested in over 180 coins, his first three purchases being bitcoin, Monero (a privacy coin — that trade is still down) and Verge, a coin with salacious affiliations.
“I have had a few that have done really well and even fewer that I knew would do really well,” he said.
The largest loss was caused by a token that was right in its idea (blockchain financing), but was wrong at the wrong time. His biggest win was a lucky guess about which solution to fix Ethereum’s speed problems would click with users first.
Context: While he only got into crypto in 2018 (a bear market year), he had some advantages. Given his day job, he’s considerably more technically sophisticated than most people.
That has worked to his advantage. He explained, “I’m just super curiosity.” It’s not enough to just read charts in crypto. He contends that one must get into crypto to fully understand it.
Be smart: Having been in for four years, he sees new arrivals come in waves. You can spot the new investors on Twitter and Discord — they are always looking to make a quick buck.
“This most recent cohort of noobs, their on-ramp was the Wall Street Bets experience,” he said. “A lot of the n00bs go for meme coins. They make it seem a joke to invest in meme coins.
Check out about Axios Crypto just go to our new site
Be First to Comment