Dear DeFighters,
My crypto journey started exactly 4 years ago, in November 2018.
I was already following my passion by starting my own business as a personal trainer earlier this year, after quitting my job as an engineer after only 2 days.
The business was doing well and the thought came to me that I should take care of my retirement planning, as I could not and did not want to rely on the German pension system.
This thought led me to Youtube, towards videos about passive investing in index funds using savings plans. Very exciting 😂
Fortunately, I also came across videos about economics and finance in general and quickly discovered an unexpected passion.
Cryptocurrencies, first and foremost Bitcoin and Ethereum, had long been a household name to me at the time, but nothing more. The video Bitcoins Erklärung: In nur 12 Min. Bitcoin verstehen! changed this abruptly. It was a good thing that my ETF savings plans had already been set up, because from now on I was mainly concerned with blockchain, cryptocurrencies and everything web3 had to offer. Of course, I quickly came across the channel of u/julianhosp. Thus, I did not get lost in the, even back then seemingly infinite, vastness of the crypto universe, but understood that BTC and ETH are the basis of this universe.
In April 2019, the time had come and I bought my first coin. 1 ETH for a smooth €150. Why ETH? I really wanted a whole coin and 1 BTC was too expensive for me 😄
6 weeks later I sold with 59% profit. As you can see, I did a lot right from the beginning....
- DYOR
- Buy when price < value
- Buy after a trend changes into the new trend
- Take profits
...even if maybe there was more luck than sense.
But I still had a lot to learn
- DCA
- Time Horizon
- Understand the game
- Understand the players
I kept going. Understood for good that it was the best time to learn and invest.
I started DCA in BTC and ETH (50/50 😎) and steadily educated myself. However, I kept my hands off Altcoins for the most part. Getting returns on my BTC and ETH sounded very exciting to me though, which is why I became one of r/cakedefi's first customers as recently as August 2019.
Still, I almost managed to miss DeFiChain. The release of the Pink Paper passed me by, as did the first Lending (then called Lapis) batches at r/cakedefi. Eventually everything fell into place with joining r/Bitcoin Lending Batch 14 and receiving the first r/defiblockchain (DFI) airdrop in May 2020. I wanted to understand what this altcoin, which was gifted to me and also generated 30 % staking returns, was all about. Since there was little other content on it, I read the entire Pink Paper. Honestly, I didn't fully understand it. r/defi was completely new to me at the time.
Only the recording of the livestream of the launch of DFI trading on LaToken and the further videos coming over the summer of 2020 made me completely understand DeFi in general and DeFiChain in particular, understand their potential and buy a good portion of DFI 😁. Since then, I've been following everything related to DeFiChain. I joined every Telegram channel so as not to miss anything, and was also very active there in the beginning until it became too much for me to answer the same questions to individuals over and over again. Fortunately, there are the tireless moderators.
Then, all of a sudden, everything happened very fast. The r/crypto market started pumping, DFI pumped with it and when the DEX incl. Liquidity Mining was launched on DeFiChain in November 2020, I went more or less all-in in the LM pools BTC-DFI and ETH-DFI. At that time, I had to use the Full Node, because the Light Wallet did not exist yet. After only a few days, I pulled out my initial bet and let the rest continue. I played the game like I did when I first bought ETH, but I had learned a few more things.
- DYOR
- DCA
- Understand the game
- Understand the players
- Buy when price < value
- Take profits
- Cashflow is King but compounding beats it all!
- Time Horizon
I spent the year 2021 enjoying the cashflow, staying on the ball regarding Crypto, DeFi and DeFichain, dealing with topics like taxes and emigration but also entrepreneurship, networking with as many people as possible from all these areas and freezing a large part of my DFI for 10 years 😎
As in the previous year, things got exciting again in November. The launch of dAssets including Vaults, Loans and Auctions was coming up. I was well prepared, had all the tools at hand and knew exactly what I had to do in the CLI of the full node to be one of the first to create vaults and use all the new features. I was excited about the new possibilities, but especially about being able to build exposure to stocks on a decentralized blockchain, without KYC, 24/7 and without restrictions. Out of this enthusiasm and the realization that implementation is too difficult for the average guy, the idea for DFSneo was born.
In all the euphoria, I overlooked that I still had at least one big lesson to learn. Numbers don't always go up. At some point, every hype and every "summer" is over. Then in January of this year, when the dBTC exploit came to light and news of BAFIN's investigation of u/CakeDeFi spread, putting a lot of pressure on the DFI price, my leveraged vaults became my undoing and I was liquidated multiple times. This was the worst start anyone could have imagined to my most eventful year in crypto to date:
- Launch of DFSneo with Manu, Aleks and Til.
- Cooperation with DFX
- Several trips to Switzerland, Dubai and Singapore
- Lunch with u/julianhosp
- Burst collaborations with Lord Mark and Balthasar Becker
- Beta development of the DFSneo app with launch in August
- In between the Terra Luna crash and its consequences (again also for my portfolio)
- dUSD depeg
- Bad mood in the community
- The hotly discussed CFP round in August incl. rejection of the CFP for DFSneo
- The futile search for investors for DFSneo
- The birth of the DeFi-Seedfinder
- A community that pulls itself together and achieves more than ever before
- The FTX Crash
- Another exciting CFP round in November with a positive outcome for the DeFi-Seedfinder
- V3 Hardfork, DMC and a community that works harder then ever before ❤️
And that was only a very rough summary ;-)
2022 had ups and downs, was fun but also exhausting, was challenging and instructive.
And now? Time to say Goodbye?
No! I'm still here.
And I’m going double down on DeFiChain.
I'll be much more active in the community again and produce content on top of that.
Besides realizing DeFi-Seedfinder and continuing work on DFSneo, I've been working on the DeFi-Masterclass for some time. The DeFi-Masterclass is a holistic video course in German, which is structured in terms of content and didactics in such a way that it picks up every viewer where he stands, takes him by the hand and doesn't let go until he has really understood DeFi and DeFiChain and can actually use it. For distribution, we're taking a very specific approach to reaching more people than ever before. For this I need your support! Follow me on all channels, like and share what you can.
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Facebook
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Youtube
LinkedIn
Together we can achieve anything! LFG 🚀
Nils
