I’ve always been good with money. At least that’s what my parents would say,

“Thank God, we’ll never have to worry about her!”

I was a saver, not a spender. Saving money for the future was considered to be “good with money” in my family and also in the German mentality in general.

And indeed, in the past — even up until a few years ago — one used to get rewarded for saving. However things have changed drastically in recent years. The rewards — aka interest rates — have been decreasing to almost zero now, and the flip to negative interest rates is imminent.

In fact, for many people with modest bank accounts the flip has already taken place without them realizing it. Have you checked your interest received vs. your banking fees paid, lately?

Our money won’t grow in the bank anymore. On the contrary, the fees and ultimately the negative interest will eat up our money bit by bit.

It’s not smart to save money anymore.

Savers have to become investors

I became aware of this shift in late 2015 and realized, I wasn’t exactly “good with money” anymore, if I wouldn’t wake up and change something.

If the bank wouldn’t help me grow my money, I had to do it myself. So I enrolled in an investment and trading course and learned how to use trading software, study graphs and trends and spot opportunities.

Long story short: after half a year I knew I would only succeed in this if I turned it into a full-time job. And — while I love money — this was not my idea of a fulfilled life :)

Bitcoin?

Through my new community of investors, however, I heard about Bitcoin one day in the Fall of 2016. Someone had asked a question about it and all the “old experts” warned him,

“Way too volatile! No real historical data yet. Stay away from it!”

Hmmmmm… my interest was sparked and I wanted to see this for myself. I had heard about Bitcoin years before but thought it was only gambling money for nerds. So I started studying cryptocurrencies a bit, but stayed away from them, as per the experts’ advice. The moment I learned, though, that the same old experts also had advised people not to invest in Tesla three years earlier, I was off to buy my first Bitcoin in January 2017.

It cost me €876. A month later I had made €200 profit. Something I hadn’t managed to achieve in 6 months of practicing traditional trading/investing.

DASH!

Now I had a little more knowledge and first hand experience and my excitement about my first win made me look into other cryptocurrencies as well. The one that stuck out to me most, was DASH. I had witnessed it shooting from #7 to number #3 on coinmarketcap.com in a matter of days and I identified as DASH’s target group pretty quickly.

The DASH creators realized that most “mainstream” people still find the world of crypto a bit too techy and complicated. They decided to change that and make things user-friendly and accessible for “everyone and their mom”.

Since I had been on that exact journey, trying to onboard myself in this new world, I could totally relate and felt right at home there from the beginning. Especially after going through DASH School and graduating within an hour! At the end of it I was 100% on board with DASH!

I invested €130 of my Bitcoin profit in DASH on February 27.

By March 18, those €130 had turned into €491.

I had just made €361 while I was lying in a hammock in Thailand, doing nothing.

Cryptocurrencies are networks. DASH is a prosperous virtual village.

A big selling point for me was also the fact that DASH seems to attract conscious, grown-up, respectful and mutually supportive people of all ages. The Dash Nation Slack channel feels like a virtual village where people take care of one another. [Update: The Dash community has moved to Discord in the meantime.]

Not once have I felt uncomfortable asking “stupid” questions as a newbie, and yes, also as a woman. It still is a man’s world, let’s face it, but I do feel that the mutual goal of the DASH creators, the DASH community and of course myself, is to change that.

All of the above led me to believe and trust in DASH’s future so much, that I wanted to get more invested.

More DASH coins or a Masternode share?

With DASH being at it’s all time high (until now) of around €100, I wanted to wait and see if the price would drop after that spike, before I invested more. In the meantime I looked into masternode shares.

One masternode costs 1,000 DASH. Even if I could afford that at the current price, I wouldn’t be interested in running a masternode, because besides the financial rewards it also comes with quite some responsibility. See more info here: What is a masternode?

In the Dash Slack channel there are currently two masternode owners who offer shares: @moocowmoo and @splawik21. I learned that I could get shares for a minimum of 25 DASH, which would give me a monthly payout of 0.1908 DASH.

So I did the math:

0.1908 times 12 makes 2.2896 DASH a year. That’s a little over 9% per year. Which bank offers us this kind of interest rate for approx. €2.500 these days??

“Yes, but what if DASH crashes? Then your 2.2896 DASH won’t be worth much!”

Good point! Let’s look at that.

I paid pretty much exactly €100 per DASH, which makes this a pretty easy example, as 25 DASH equals €2.500. Should the DASH remain at €100 forever, my annual profit would equal €228.96

Let’s say the DASH price does indeed crash and is suddenly only worth €50. Then my yearly profit of 2.2896 DASH would of course also be cut in half and “only” equal €114.49. That represents 4.5%.

Again: Which bank offers us this kind of interest rate these days?

And what if the DASH drops to only €25? Then we would still look at 2.25%.

The current interest rates (at least in Europe) are about 0.1%. The DASH price would have to fall below €10 in order for me to lose money. And yes, if that happened, of course my original 25 DASH would also have shrunken to an equivalent of only €250 — a loss of 90% in that case.

What do I do then? I just leave them where they are. Volatility is part of the game. I’m not in this only for the short term (and I honestly believe such a big crash is highly unlikely with DASH).

I’m in it for the long term.

In the long term I believe DASH will keep breaking its own records and keep reaching new all time highs. I believe DASH has only just begun to unfold its potential. I believe my returns will turn out to be much higher than 9%.

I believe I believe I believe — yes, I base my investment in DASH coins and in a masternode share entirely on belief and trust. Just as other people believe and trust in precious metals, in property, or in their favorite cryptocurrency, which is not DASH.

Everyone should do what they believe in. Nobody knows for sure what the ultimate best investment is at any time. As long as we are conscious of what we are doing, we can always react and make changes to our investments when needed. And I can always pull out my 25 DASH again, if I change my mind.

More beliefs and crystal ball predictions

I believe that people will wake up en masse soon and become more and more conscious about how to invest their money. Or — sadly — they will be forced to find ways to bring their money to safety.

Cryptocurrencies (in general, not only DASH) offer this safety, despite their volatility. People will turn to them in time of financial or political instability, as we are already seeing in Venezuela and the Far East.

I believe DASH will be at €300 by the end of 2017 and at around €1,000 before 2020. (Of course I can’t know this. But it feels good to type it anyway! I won’t mind if I’m wrong. But the thought of turning out to be right, wow, I would have proof that I’m “good with money” again!).

So how does one get a share of a masternode?

Well, the actual process takes about two seconds, since all you do is send 25 DASH to the masternode owner.

However this will probably be the biggest leap of faith you’ve ever done in your life. So please, go with what YOU believe, not what I believe.

On this page you can find the three providers who offer masternode shares:

https://masternode.me/ aka @moocowmoo in the Slack channel.

http://dashmasternode.io aka @splawik21 in the Slack channel [Update — sadly this service has been discontinued]

https://node40.com

I suggest you join the Discord channel and start having conversations and build relationships before you take that step.

Bye bye, money!

You probably know this, but as a word of caution: you, me, and everyone should only ever invest an amount of money they can live without. There is always, always a risk involved.

Whenever I invest something, I literally say, “Bye bye, money!” I am very conscious of this fact. But I also always add, “Come back and surprise me!” while waving Good Bye.

One day after my investment, I already received my first payout. That was a coincidence, but indeed a nice surprise.

A perfect bridge between saving and investing.

So as you can see, a masternode share is my new savings masterplan.

It offered a perfect bridge for me to shift from being a saver to becoming an investor.

Now that I am financially invested in DASH, I am of course also emotionally and ideologically invested in the growth and success of DASH. Or wait… was it the other way round?

And since I have been interested and invested in the financial success of women for a long time, too, I can now combine things and share the gospel of DASH through articles like this, and supporting women taking their first steps in the crypto world in my own community.

I want everyone to own DASH and financially benefit from it. And since with every new dashing DASHer the price of DASH will rise, I will benefit in return as well.

What’s not to love about this new economy?

***

Addition, due to many emails and comments from “skimmers”:

If you skimmed the math part and scanned the rest of the article all the way until here, and you feel the urgent need to let me know that my math doesn’t quite add up because my original 25 DASH would decrease in value as well — please read the math part again. Don’t just skim it. Read it. Thank you :)

Read more about masternodes here.

***

About the author:

Anja Schuetz is a Cryptocurrency Mentor for absolute beginners and a Customer Communication & Operations Consultant for Start-ups. She also runs the Conscious Crypto Community, which currently consists only of women. Sign up for her free Crypto-Fitness Museletter here.