So i know what you’re all thinking. Who the heck is this guy? Well folks, come follow me on my journey through crypto and you will soon know. Before i start, I am an avid PC gamer and computer nerd through an through. I built my first gaming PC 20 years ago and now am an IT in the Navy. I also collect certifications like Pokémon cards. Moving on. 2010. One of my good friends I met through gaming (yes it was world of Warcraft, shut up) started talking about this magic internet money called Bitcoin, and that all you had to do was leave your computer on and make coins with your graphics card (yes, one graphics card). I thought it was a joke. These things were only worth 5 cents.

2011. My same friend told me that you could farm gold in World of Warcraft and sell it to the Chinese for bitcoin (price was $1 now). The going rate was around 8000 gold for 1 BTC. So we started doing that. We’d then use our bitcoin to buy high end armor that other people didn’t have (fun fact we later found out this was 100% against blizzards EULA). This was also when i decided to start mining. I had 2 Radeon 5970’s that would produce almost 1 BTC a day. July I sold most of my bitcoin i mined when it was on its way up to $31. I used this money to build my first true mining rig. It was a 4 card rig with 4 Radeon 6970’s that produced almost 1.6 g/has. 2012. We had now moved on from world of Warcraft and started playing Diablo 3. We decided to do the same thing with the real money auction house. Except now, not only could we sell gold, but we sold items, and we would even power level accounts and sell them for BTC. At this time BTC was around $13. This was also when I had built my second mining rig. Again selling some of my bitcoin to pay for it. A 4 card rig with 4 7970’s that produced about 2.4 g/hs.

2013. The real money auction house was shut down. This was when I went into full mining mode. End of march beginning of April was the first big rally for bitcoin. The price went up over $200. Again I sold most of my bitcoin, and sold my first mining rig as it was not really profitable anymore since the difficulty shot through the roof during the price run. i built 2 more rigs. They were both 4 card rigs with Radeon 7970’s (these were the kings until the 280x hit the streets).

2014. The Heart Break. So by this point i had mined a few hundred bitcoin. And the price of bitcoin had gone up to almost $1000. this was when i decided, after all these years, to take them off my wallet, and move them all to an exchange. An exchange called Mt. Gox. On February 7th, Mt Gox froze all withdrawals, stating technical difficulties. On February 24th the site went down and on February 28th they announced that they had lost 750,000 bitcoin. Including mine. They were gone. All of it. The party was over. At this point I was so angry, that I was done. I sold all my mining equipment and quit crypto.

2016. A New Beginning. In January 2016 my old gaming buddy randomly gave me a call. He told me about this new thing everyone was mining called Ethereum. At first i told him no way. I wasn’t going to go through this again. Then he kind of explained to me what it was and it sounded pretty cool compared to bitcoin that was just a currency. So i decided to give it a go. At the time I really wasn’t gaming and had a PC with 2 Radeon 290x’s (That are still mining Ethereum) that were just sitting there. So I set up my wallet and miner and let it go. In January 2016 those 2 cards were averaging 2 to 2.5 ETH a day at 50 mega hash. At the time 1 ETH was about $1. In April the price starting moving up. And so did the difficulty. So i sold what was probably around 190ish ETH and built my first 6 card mining rig. 6 Radeon 290x’s. This rig still runs. At the time it gave me around 150 mh/s. With the increased difficulty this new rig gave me about 3 ETH a day. And I mined with this single rig until 2017.

2017. The madness. in June 2017. The price of Ethereum rocketed to $200. In the midst of my euphoria I sold it all to build a bigger mining operation (I would regret this decision later). I built 4 more 6 card rigs. 12 RX480’s and 12 RX580’s. This now gave me a total of almost 900 mh/s. I then watched as Ethereum went to $400 and the difficulty go to the moon. By November the mining craze was in full swing. Prices of graphics cards doubled in price and by December, Ethereum went to $800. This led us into the craziest month in crypto.

2018. The crypto world changed forever. January was pure chaos. I know most of you were there so I won’t go into to too much detail. I did sell a good amount of Ethereum when it hit $1000. Decided to be an adult and pay off almost all of my debt. Bought a few alts when they were cheap, and just held on. And held, and held, until the train derailed and we all sailed into the abyss that was march. Should I have sold? Definitely. But did any of us really see this coming?

So what was the point of this besides talking about myself? Well I’ll tell you. At some point in your crypto career you will get rekt. Weather it be an exchange hack, you buy the top of a pump and dump, you get impatient and sell at a loss, you get scammed on an ICO, it happens. This place is still the wild west. And we are on the ground floor. All I wanted to do was prove that it’s never really over in this space. There is always an opportunity. you just need to find it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been here for 7 years or 7 days. We are all still learning.

Twitter

@Cryptochrisuw

Telegram

t.me/walkenonthemoon