Today, we are talking to a reader who has made a fortune through crypto investing. However, there have been some stomach-churning reversals.
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’s one.
Details: Darragh Grove White, a Canadian marketing technologist, is on the leading edge. But, he took some hard hits.
“I made many mistakes. 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 (?) India.
State of play: Grove White is one of the lucky ones. According to his account, he has made a complete turnaround since Quadriga’s loss. 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 biggest loss was a token that was the right idea (blockchain finance), but the wrong company at the wrong time. His greatest win was his lucky guess as to which solution to Ethereum’s speed issues would be most popular with users.
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. A person needs to get in to understand it, he contends.
Be smart: He has been in the business for four years and sees new people arrive in waves. The new investors are easy to spot on Twitter and in the Discord channels — they are always looking for the 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 invest like it’s a bit of a joke.”
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