Each market cycle there are more new people entering the space of ‘cryptocurrencies’. Everyone has heard of Bitcoin, but there’s more to this space, right? 

As a noob, it’s extremely difficult to shake off the lure of altcoins (or as I will refer to them from now on, shitcoins), so hopefully this article helps someone along the way. Take this advice from someone who’s been there, done that and is never coming back.

My story

Like many, I heard about Bitcoin early but dismissed it completely until early 2016, when I received some BTC for a job I did. I remember how difficult it was to even pick a wallet I would use to receive the bitcoins, let alone anything else. I just wanted the FIAT after all, so I sold it all except a small chunk as soon as I got it. The NgU from that small chunk got me interested as I checked the price a few times during that year, and each time I checked, the price was higher. I finally decided it was time to invest in ‘crypto’ around the beginning of 2017.

After some short research I decided that 80/20 bitcoin/shitcoins was a good ratio for my portfolio, so that’s what I did. But only for a short while. I started networking, finding people I could talk to about this stuff, and after a while I was spending almost all my free time reading and learning about ‘crypto’. Soon I started noticing that ‘everyone’ is making ‘big money’ of ICOs, while I’m there allocating just a part of my 20% into them.

My first thoughts were: I must be missing out, after all I’m a noob, these people surely know more than me. I should probably do the same, after all I’m still learning. Not long after that I sold all my bitcoin and went on to play the shitcoin casino. In retrospect that’s peak FOMO, I just didn’t know it back then.

Relentlessly reading whitepapers was my thing. Each claimed to have solved something no one before ever has. They had Harvard guys in the team, their marketing material was phenomenal, websites looked exciting, they claimed to do a gazillion tps. How could a noob not fall for it? I won’t even try to hide the fact that I was amazed by Vitalik. Boy genius knew everything. I was enthralled watching his interviews. He had every answer, even though I only understood every second word he said, it didn’t matter to me - I was sure eth was the coin of the future.

Next up came the bear market of 2018. That’s normal, nothing goes up in a straight line I thought. Might as well read up and learn a bit about money. After all, crypto is an alternative to the current financial system, so I should probably know a thing or two about that as well.

Thank God I stumbled upon Vijay Boyapati’s article The Bullish Case for Bitcoin shortly after it was published. Finally, something understandable. But why just Bitcoin? It still wasn’t completely clear. I bought dr. Saifedean Ammous’ book The Bitcoin Standard in the Summer of 2018, and immediately read it. That’s when it all clicked. It’s so thoroughly explained you can’t disregard it. For the Tl;DR folks out there, here’s a thread of some quotes from the book by Yorick de Mombynes.

I then decided I have to follow more Bitcoin people on Twitter and unfollow the clowns that got me interested in shitcoins. I used the site Hive along with simply looking at other Bitcoin guys followings, and copying that. My feed was now packed exclusively with Bitcoin content and I loved what I was seeing.

As a big podcast fan I quickly subbed to a bunch of Bitcoin podcasts. I liked and listened to many along the way but the one I would single out is Stephan Livera. I listened to each of the first 100 episodes he put out, and there was no way out of the rabbit hole after that (Fun fact, the first two guests on Stephan’s podcasts were dr. Saifedean Ammous (SLP1) and Vijay Boyapati (SLP2), the two guys who kickstarted my Bitcoin-only journey).

Austrian economics, the history of money, financial markets, anarcho-capitalism, privacy, cryptography, sovereignty, game theory and politics are among the topics I’ve been studying since. 

Bitcoin merges all of them. If you get this far, you’ll pick which ever topic interests you the most, there’s plenty out there.

To Close Out

I’ve been down the shitcoin rabbit hole and it’s a dead end. I’ve been (and still am) in the #Bitcoin rabbit hole, and it’s beautiful. Take that however you wish.

Everyone chooses their own path, good luck!