Crypto Diary 0002: Bit-ing the Bullet
Second in a series of diary entries about the blockchain and cryptocurrency by Jess Lander.
On August 11, 2021, I finally sat down and did what I’d been putting off for months.
I made my first cryptocurrency purchase — er, investment.
The words “Buy Crypto” have been a constant fixture on my to-do list for a few months and, while I wish I could say there was some significance to the day I finally did it, truth be told, it was on a whim during a rare moment of free time in my workday (I did realize later that it was the 11th and 11 is my lucky number, so surely that’s a good omen, right?). And like most things in life that we procrastinate on, I’m now regretful that I didn’t do it sooner because it literally took less than ten minutes.
The first thing I did was type “Coinbase” into Google. When you purchase cryptocurrency, you do so through a secure exchange platform, like Coinbase, that converts your dollars into crypto and back again to dollars when you’re ready to cash out. Some exchanges (like Coinbase) also enable you to store your crypto in what’s called a wallet.
A “wallet” was the first cryptocurrency term on this journey that immediately made sense to me. Just like the wallet on your iPhone that stores airplane and concert tickets, your crypto wallet is a digital place where you can securely store your crypto assets. There are many, many wallets out there, but I chose Coinbase simply because it was the platform that was most recommended by friends.
It took me all of four minutes to create my account, which required the last four digits of my social and both text and email verification. The next step was to link my bank account (or PayPal). Coinbase recommended the bank account route, so that’s what I did. Once I was all set up, I took a deep breath and clicked the button to purchase $500 worth of Bitcoin, which ended up being $492.67 after Coinbase’s fee. Fees are common and vary based on the exchange and amount being traded.
You can purchase thousands of types of cryptocurrencies via exchanges like Coinbase, but the majority of coins are yet to be relevant or particularly valuable, so I decided to play it safe with the OG coin that’s dominated the crypto market since its birth: the Bit.
After my purchase and a quick pat on the back for finally doing the damn thing, I quickly came to the sad realization that in crypto, I’m actually quite poor. My fortune? A total of .01 Bitcoin.
It sounds pathetic, but owning one Bitcoin is similar to owning one gold brick. A gold brick could buy me a decent house in California (currently, gold bricks are worth about $750,000), but most people don’t own a whole gold brick. Instead, you’re more likely to have a tiny fraction in the form of a gold ring or necklace or maybe even a tooth that’s worth just a little bit of money.
The price of one full Bitcoin literally changes hourly, and as of this writing, it’s hovering at around $47,000, which is why my $500 is only about one percent of a full coin. Back in April, Bitcoin topped out at just under $65,000. If all goes well, in 20-30 years, my small portion of a Bitcoin will be worth a whole gold brick.
The hardest part of this has been resisting the urge to check my Coinbase app daily, as there’s really no point. In the last 24 hours, my portfolio went from being worth $493 to $509 and then back down to $494. In the three weeks since I made my first investment, my Bitcoin has topped out at $533 and bottomed out at $465.
Checking this constantly would surely drive me mad, especially if I had a legitimate pot of money invested. Instead, I choose to think of cryptocurrency as a long game — my ticket to retiring on an Italian island and surviving on a diet of gelato and prosciutto — and hopefully, I’ll be glad I didn’t procrastinate on it any longer than I did.