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 is one.
Details: Darragh Grove White, a Canadian marketing technologist, is on the leading edge. But, he took some hard hits.
“I made a lot of mistakes, for sure. He tells Axios that he’s had cryptocurrency exchanges take his money.
He was among many Canadians who lost their luck when Gerald Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, died (?). in India.
State of play: Grove-White is one of the fortunate ones. By his account, since the Quadriga loss he’s turned around. 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.
He said, “I’ve had some that did really well and even less that I thought would do well.”
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. “I’m just super curious,” he explained. It’s not enough to just read charts in crypto. He contends that one must get into crypto to fully understand it.
Be smart: Having been in for four years, he sees new arrivals come in waves. The new investors are easy to spot on Twitter and in the Discord channels — they are always looking for the quick buck.
He said, “This latest cohort of noobs was their on-ramp the Wall Street Bets experience.” “A lot of the n00bs go for meme coins. They make it seem a joke to invest in meme coins.
For more info about grove-white take a look at this useful resource