I’ve been planning on playing around with some crypto currencies, now that I’ve earned a few Steem Backed Dollars. So today I decided to take some of that money and convert some of it to Bitcoin and some to Ethereum.
Bitcoin because it seems to keep on going up in value, even when it goes down.
And Ethereum because it’s about to be on the Chinese exchange, and in theory, that should make its value go up.
At least that was the theory.
So I transferred SBD 110 to Poloniex (where I already had an account from my first test of removing money from Steemit). Then I tried to sell it for Bitcoin.
I think I should point out at this juncture that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing when it comes to… pretty much everything, but especially crypto and currency trading. At this stage I’m pretty much a ‘point and shoot’ trader.
So I tried to sell SBD 100 for Bitcoin. That didn’t work. It just sat there and no-one bought it. I tried to see if I could swap it for Ethereum, but it didn’t seem to be an option. So I tried again, this time putting up SBD 50. Boom! It sold instantly. So I did it again. Boom! another SBD 50 sold.
“Well that worked”, I said to myself.
The next step was to send it to my Jaxx wallet. That was pretty easy. A bit of a nervous wait for five minutes or so, but no worries. Sure enough there was my Bitcoin in my wallet.
I was feeling pretty good by this stage, so I decided to use the ShapeShifter functionality in the wallet to change some Bitcoin to Ethereum.
I figured it would be instant, since it’s just inside the wallet. I should have read up on tis first I suppose. What happens is this - your Bitcoin gets sent to the ShapeShifter site and they do the converting (maybe on another exchange??) and then send it back. There is a charge for this, which I wasn’t factoring into what I was doing. It’s not huge, but still, it is a cost.
So I sent off a bunch of Bitcoin (0.0522 of a Bitcoin. Ok, so it’s not a lot of Bitcoin. But it’s a start)
And then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. And when I got sick of that, I waited some more. Then I started looking up the help section and forums and stuff. Seems like you can wait for 22 hours or more for the transactions to go through. WTF???
I had made my exchange request TWO HOURS ago and nothing was happening. I had 6+ confirmations, which is supposed to be a good thing. So I did some digging and found out………. Nothing useful to someone who does not live and breathe crypto blockchainy hashiness. It all meant nothing to me.
I did find one bit that said – ‘received’ and it had the amount I had sent and stuff, which looked promising. So I went to the ShapeShifter site and started filling in the help form, hunting down my keys and hashes (I still have no idea if they were the right ones). I wrote a bit of a message explaining what I had done. I copied and pasted some output that had actually changed now to say ‘completed’.
Completed my arse!!
My wallet was still without Ethereum.
It was completely devoid of Ethereum.
There was an Ethereum drought of epic proportions.
Bitcoin I had, but Ethereum I did not.
It was an Ethereum wasteland, filled with nothing Ethereum-like.
It was…. Hang on what’s this?
I had a balance in my Ethereum wallet! It had worked!
So I carefully closed the tab with the irate message to the lovely people at ShapeShifter, making sure not to hit the submit button along the way. Whew! That could’ve been messy.
And so it came to pass that I had a wallet filled to the…. well, a little bit in the bottom, of Ethereum.
That was so much harder and longer than it needed to be.
And this is where crypto currencies are so much like Linux. Those that are into that sort of thing, who like the tiny details and the long keys and holding their left forefinger to their right ear while balancing on one foot and singing ‘Ba Ba sheep of indeterminate colour’ in order to get things done, are going to have a good time.
But for the rest of us who just want to transfer some money and exchange it so we can buy stuff or save it or whatever, this is stupidly arcane and long winded. The technology around blockchains might be magical and death defying, but the bit that meets the people is absurdly complicated and stupid.
The coin that will see genuine mass adoption is the one that takes the Microsoft Windows approach to its human client, base and makes it simple and easy for someone who doesn’t have a degree in quantum computing to manage their money.
So how are my investments going?
I’m glad you asked. About as well as could be expected really.
I’ve lost $7 on the value of my Ethereum so far, and gained $2 on my Bitcoin.
This is quite fun really. I can’t wait to see how much I have lost tomorrow.
Check out my stories here on Steemit
Running Deer
Running Deer - part 1
Running Deer - How legends are born
Charlie Rabbit
Meet Charlie Rabbit
Charlie tides up
Charlie Rabbit and Margery Mouse
Charlie Rabbit and Margery Mouse make music
Little Peppers Adventures
Runaway Rabbit and the hungry fox
Maybe and the land of purple rainbows – A Little Peppers adventure
How Pappa Pepper and Monster Truck the Pepper got their wild hogs - a Little Peppers Adeventure
Dark Angel Regiment of the Space Marines - Mission Files
First Squad Sniper Elite - Zaresith mission
Other stories
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Check out @len.george and find out what other madness he got up to!
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Ironically crypto currency trading is REALLY slow...
Our portfolio has been going very well over the past month but I wouldn't like to have to bail out in a hurry.
Here is our portfolio with hoped for projection in green:
Nice.
My projection for my portfolio is the reddish line at the bottom of your picture hehehe.
Awesome story, I use bittrex for exchanging coins. Fast withdrawals and never had a problem in 3 years with them. Good luck with your Ether I can see the value increasing to around 600$ in a couple months time but then again I have no crystal ball and in crypto anything is posible.
Thanks for that.
Well if it goes up to $600 I'll have......... more than I have now i hope hehehe.
I'm just dipping my toe into crypto-land at the moment. It's great to have some STEEM and SBD to play with that have cost me nothing. So from my perspective this is no risk. If I lose it all, then it's no drama.
But if it goes well, i might gain a couple of hundred bucks in a year or two.
Either way it will be interesting to watch. And it is more interesting when you have something staked in the game.
If you want to put NZ$ in (or take them out), we've done that, so can give you some tips. Just give us a yell.
I was discussing this with my wife last night.
If I don't know how to put my own money in, then I can't put it in and lose it.
Likewise if i take it out and put it in my bank account, then I must pay income tax on it.
But.......
If I leave it in my wallet and spend it online, then there is no tax to pay, sp I get to spend all of it :-)
I'm not thinking I'll get rich off this. I'm just playing about and seeing how thing work really. I'm not investing large enough sums of money to get a decent return.
All very good points. I'll keep my mouth shut then. Don't want to get on the wrong side of @skymaiden... ;-)
😂
Nice job my bro! The crypto exchanges are awfully complicated but once you get the hang of it, it gets simple as brushing ya teeth 😁
I dont personally use Poloniex or Jaxx - I use the Bittrex exchange so I dont know how that compares but I know its a lot easier to buy altcoins than it sounds like it was for you.
Well done and good luck on your crypto journey!
Yeah I'll have to set up a Bittrex account and try there, and coinbase too probably.
The big thing that threw me was the ShapeShifting thingy. I thought it would be pretty much instant. So, lesson learned there!
I think next time I'll try selling some STEEM and get some Dash and see how that goes.
Congratulations on your acquisitions! I had fun reading your story.
I agree with you that the coins that become more friendly will have an extra attraction to reach more users. Good investment with Ethereum and obviously with bitcoin, i think ethereum has a lot of potential to hit a few raises soon!
Thanks ;-)
Well, we'll see how things go. If it gets bumpy that's not a problem really.
I understand that this is a very long term investment - one that hasn't cost me a cent :-)
Sorry I did not mean bumps but rather raises hahaha, my english is pretty bad. I think the value will increase in the short/medium term and in the long term even could reach the bitcoin.
No one knows, but it is certainly a good investment ;). And more if you dont pay a cent!
Your English is pretty good. Don't worry. :-)
It's the only language I have (unless you count programming languages) and I'm not all that good at it myself hehhe
Ohh thanks, i still have to improve a lot and Steemit is a nice way to practice.
Hahahaha well I don't know I'm learning that too :D
At least you are in good spirit about it. I have been buying other forms of cryptos on Bittrex, and it also makes me nervous putting my funds out there on the exchange. I expect it will get easier in time.
Congratulations and welcome to the club!!
The recent price action in the crypto's space is where gold bugs want gold to be. It probably will still be the case as the USD may have commenced a structural decline - with Crypto's catching the first sniff of it.
Just might take a little longer for PM's to catch a sniff..
Thanks. :-)
Not sure what a PM is,but it sounds like they have a nose - for sniffing. So they could be some sort of dog?
I'm just interested to see how this all pans out. I don't think I'll be making my fortune at this. But at little light entertainment is always good.
PM's = Precious Metals (Gold, Silver, PGM's), the real anti-dollar assets. Crypto's are good too, and at this point in the cycle performing much better than PM's, however more volatile. PM's could soon have its day - perhaps with significant BO's before the end of 2017..
You could have bought ether directly in poloniex without going through shapeshift( yes it's shapeshift).
Yeah I thought about that afterwards :-)
But I wanted to try out the shapeshift thingy and see how it worked.
I also think it may be faster going from ETH to something else, since the Bitcoin blockchain is so slow.
So more experiments to come ;-)
Btc transactions are very very slow if you don't use a big fee. I bought some ether as well :)