MY EXPERIMENTS WITH CRYPTO

Stepping into deep waters

On June 6, 2021, I was finally bitten by the crypto bug enough to formally buy the minimum 14.5 USDT at WazirX. Post that I have rapidly scaled up my investments, but with healthy trepidation.

Of course, this was also triggered because a recent acquaintance had gifted me BTC worth USD 25 in June 2017, after a lovely dinner in Bangalore — the value of this USD 25 had multiplied to USD 225!! Seeing the power of more than compounding and the heightened press coverage around crypto, I decided to take the plunge :-)

My motivation to join the crypto craze is part FOMO (Fear of missing out), but also part belief that critical mass and market maturity has been achieved and we are at the cusp of a massive leap in commercial use of crypto / blockchain.

Disclaimers & Acknowledgements

As a lawyer, I cannot miss including this section :-) I am not a financial advisor! Please note that no information shared here is to be treated as financial advise, a recommendation or guarantee of any specific outcome. I am still an amateur, so please do bear with me and rely on your own analysis.

I strongly believe in DYOR (Do your own research), and am spending considerable time reading up on the various coins, investing options, safety tips, etc. My research on these topics will be reflected in the sections below.

I will primarily be limiting myself to the selection amongst the top 200 coins on CoinMarketCap. I am slowly acclimatising myself to the universe of exchanges, wallets and the many acronyms (HODL, DYOR, FUD, REKT, etc).

I would like to thank Guy and his fantastic CoinBureau YouTube channel for their very informative videos, and from which I have learnt a lot.

Crypto Fear & Greed Index

The crypto market behaviour is very emotional. People tend to get greedy when the market is rising which results in FOMO. Also, people often sell their coins in irrational reaction of seeing red numbers. Check out the Latest Crypto Fear & Greed Index. There are two simple assumptions:

• Extreme fear can be a sign that investors are too worried. That could be a buying opportunity.
• When Investors are getting too greedy, that means the market is due for a correction.

Setting out some of my thoughts as I embark on this journey, which many others have started many moons back (and a few million USD to their account). I hope this beginner’s kit is helpful for newbies who maybe wanting to start on this wonderful world of crypto.

A rough outline of the topics that I would like to cover in this series are set out below,

1. What is crypto and blockchain? What is the current legal status in India — is it legit? Taxation of crypto (more specific to India)

2. How do you set up your account in crypto (this is more specific to India, but can be generally used worldwide) — P2P, Using a hardware wallet, Safety tips (separate email, etc)

3. My current investment philosophy

4. _______________

5. Apps that I discovered and liked — portfolio trackers, wallets, NFTs, News & Forums, Knowledge (YouTube, DYOR, etc)

6. Jargon — HODL, DYOR, FUD, REKT, etc.

7. Stable Coins — USDT, USDC, BUSD, etc

8. Exchange Coins — BNB, Huobi, SUSHI, KCS and others

9. Joke coins — DOGE, Baby DOGE, SHIB, etc

10. NFT coins — RARI, Chiliz, ENJ etc

11. DeFi — what it is and popular coins — YFI, CEL, COMP,

12. IOT — coins like MIOTA, IOTEX, etc

13. BTC, BTC Cash, Wrapped BTC, BT Gold and Alternatives to BTC — ETH, DOT, LTC etc

14. ETH, ETH 2.0 and ETC

15. ADA, DOT & Kusama

16. _______________

17. MATIC

18. LINK

19. XRP