I remember the exact moment I bought my first Bitcoin. It was 2018, the market had just crashed from its December 2017 peak of nearly $20,000 down to around $8,000. Everyone I knew said the bubble had burst and crypto was over. I thought I was buying the dip. I was partially right and mostly early — within months it dropped to $3,500.
I’m not telling you this to brag or to complain. I’m telling you because I think the honest account of someone’s actual crypto journey — including the dumb decisions, the late nights refreshing price charts, the moments of genuine excitement and genuine terror — is more valuable than any technical analysis or influencer recommendation.
This is my story. It might sound familiar.
How I Got Into Crypto (And Why I Stayed)
My entry point was, like a lot of people my age, through a friend. He was buying Ethereum in 2017 and showing me these insane percentage returns. I was skeptical but curious. I did what most beginners do: I read some articles, didn’t really understand the technology, bought some Bitcoin and Ethereum anyway because “it looked like it was going up,” and then watched it fall for a year.
What kept me in wasn’t the gains — I didn’t have any for a long time. It was the technology. The more I learned, the more genuinely fascinating the space became. Smart contracts, decentralized finance, the idea that you could build financial services without banks — this wasn’t just speculation. This was actually interesting engineering and economics happening in real time.
I spent 2018 and 2019 mostly learning. I read the Ethereum whitepaper. I tried using DeFi protocols before they were called DeFi. I lost a small amount of ETH to a buggy smart contract. I lost some tokens in an exchange hack. These were expensive lessons, but they made me a much more careful and thoughtful participant.
The 2020-2021 Bull Run: When Everything Went Crazy
I was positioned reasonably well for the 2020-2021 bull run because I had accumulated during the bear market. When DeFi Summer hit in mid-2020 — Compound, Uniswap, Yearn Finance all launching and exploding in value — I had tokens that suddenly became worth multiples of what I paid.
I made some good decisions during this period. I didn’t go all-in on any single bet. I kept some stablecoins on the side. I took some profits on the way up, which I’d been told to do but had never actually been disciplined enough to execute before.
I also made some bad decisions. I got drawn into a few yield farming protocols with unsustainable APYs. I held one token way past where I should have sold because I convinced myself the narrative was too strong. I got into NFTs early (good) and then bought some expensive JPEGs that I thought were underpriced but weren’t (less good).
The honest truth about that bull run is that almost everyone who participated looked like a genius. It was easy to confuse being smart with being lucky in a rising market. The market humbles you eventually.
My NFT Chapter: Early Excitement, Late Reality Check
I minted a few NFTs in early 2021, when the space was still relatively niche. I made some money on those early mints — not life-changing money, but enough to feel like I understood something others didn’t.
Then the mainstream NFT boom hit, and I completely misread it. I thought the speculative frenzy would last longer than it did. I bought into projects based on their “roadmaps” and community hype rather than on any fundamental assessment of long-term value. In retrospect, a jpeg of a cartoon character with “utility coming soon” is not a sound investment thesis.
What I did learn from NFTs that I think is genuinely valuable: the concept of digital ownership and provable scarcity is real and has applications beyond profile pictures. Digital artists who found new ways to connect directly with collectors and capture ongoing royalties from secondary sales — that’s a genuine innovation. The infrastructure being built around NFTs for gaming, music rights, and community membership has real potential. The speculative jpeg phase was the ICO moment of NFTs: mostly noise, but the underlying rails are real.
The 2022 Bear Market: What It Actually Felt Like
I’m not going to sugarcoat this. Watching a portfolio that was worth X at the peak become worth X divided by 4 or 5 is psychologically brutal, even when you intellectually understand that cycles are part of the game.
The Terra/LUNA collapse in May 2022 was a specific kind of painful — not because I was heavily exposed, but because I had recommended UST’s Anchor Protocol to some people in my orbit as a “relatively safe” way to earn yield. I was wrong, and they lost money. That’s the kind of mistake that stays with you.
What I’ve learned from bear markets is that they are, paradoxically, the best time to learn. When prices are falling and the hype is gone, you can finally evaluate projects on what they actually are rather than what they claim to be. The teams that keep building through the bear market — without token price incentives, without the easy recruiting of a bull market, without the external validation of rising prices — those are the teams and projects worth watching.
What I Actually Believe About Crypto’s Future
After years in this space, here’s where I’ve landed:
I believe blockchain technology will be important infrastructure for the internet of the future. Not every blockchain, and not every token — most will fail or become irrelevant. But the core innovations around programmable money, smart contracts, decentralized ownership, and cryptographic proofs of various kinds are genuinely useful and will be woven into systems we don’t even think of as “crypto” in 10-20 years.
I believe the speculative layer will persist, because humans are speculators by nature and crypto gives them a 24/7 global casino with near-zero friction. That speculation will continue to create cycles — bull markets of extraordinary gains followed by bear markets of painful corrections. If you’re going to participate, you need to be honest with yourself about which category you’re in: investor, speculator, or builder. Each of those has a different correct strategy.
And I believe the most important thing I’ve learned is this: the best decisions I’ve made in crypto were made slowly, with research, with money I could afford to lose, with explicit exit plans. The worst decisions were made quickly, emotionally, based on FOMO, with money I cared too much about losing.
The technology doesn’t care about your feelings. The market doesn’t care about your feelings. But your financial health and peace of mind very much do. Build accordingly.
Disclaimer: This article reflects personal experience and opinion only. It does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant risk. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.