The year was 2017. Like every new year beginning, new resolutions are made by individuals around the world to make better decisions, prepare for new opportunities, set new goals to aim at for the new year, dish bad old habits for new ones that will make them better persons than they were in the previous years and do everything possible to start the year on a sound footing.
I wasn't to be left out of the resolution ritual. I wanted to be a better person who could live to my true potentials, impacting lives and be financially free to afford the life I wanted. Crypto was the answer though it wasn't obvious at the time on January 1st, 2017. I had time on my hands on completion of our project then in a Shell sponsored work facility in Nigeria. I did different side gigs from managing construction sites, borehole drillings jobs to working on a few financial empowerment programs.
Even though I heard about bitcoin in 2010/11, I never had the opportunity to buy-in and invest into it as few wallets then - Coinbase never offered their services in Nigeria. It was in mid 2017 that I got the crypto buzz through the now infamous Bitconnect. A friend I met online, code named Wealthlink, introduced me to Bitconnect though I never invested in it. He showed me their savings investment program compounding spreadsheet where $2 could be compounded over a 24 months period to a million US dollar. The maths was okay with used variables but from matrix calculations, I knew it wasn't possible or sustainable as it will require over 10 billion humans at the eight stage of the matrix for those at that level to earn it. With more participants, trillions and quadrillions etc. It was a classic ponzi scheme as it turned out to be but the project was a great mover that created lot of hype, global awareness and sparked a deep genuine interest of crypto in me. I will study for hours to learn more about bitcoin, blockchain technology and its varied use cases.
I bought my first bitcoin in June 2017 using Luno on - ramp (linked to users bank account) wallet service. I actually used purchased bitcoin to buy gold bars from a franchise company. The experience was exhilarating. Spurred on by this, I started searching for crypto investment opportunities. 2017 was the ICO mania age where crypto projects crowdsourced funds for development from the investing public easily free from regulatory scrutiny and rewarded investors with their project tokens or coins for monies invested. Token holders will later sell their public allotted coins at incredible profits, most times in excess of 15X (1500%) profits from public sales price. This staggering profit margin caused a frenzy and sent many wild on the lookout for the next initial coin offering (ICO) project and surely I wasn't left out (laughs). I was in for the hunt as well.
Regal coin launched then and hit a market peak price of ~ $85 in a matter of three weeks from presale / public sales value of under 60 cents. It copied most of bitconect model of using YouTube crypto influencers and having project ambassadors in different countries of the world to drive awareness through juicy referral programs, and build a strong Regalcoin community in the process. I knew Regal at its peak before it dumped hard and so many lost their monies, especially the late investors who bought at the top. As many ICO sprang up daily, so was the risk as many were scam projects who either disappeared with raised funds and never launched like Hotcrypto or launched haphazardly like Bitfinite for a few days with bug - riddled native app exchange with devs / team rugging users. It didn't deter many though as the strong crave for the insane profits successful ICO projects brought was irresistible for many.
My first ICO project I invested in was Electroneum (ETN) for $0.11/ETN. It sought to be a digital smartphone settlement layer where users could buy and sell airtime / internet data of telco operators all over the world irrespective of their geographical location. The ecosystem native token used for transaction was ETN. Electroneum had a handsome referral program and early public sales investors made profits of over 13X. The major exchange which Electroneum was traded with good liquidity pairs was on cryptopia exchange.
With the huge success I enjoyed from my first ICO investment, I participated in dozens of ICOs. The most successful of them being Hextracoin and to a lesser extent Ucoincash. I also experienced some few losses in Bitfinite and Exacoin which were partly due to team's poor handling of the project at the listing phase of the tokens and possible exit scam. This period coincided with bitcoin bull run in December 2017. All in all it was a net gain for me.
My participation in dozens of initial coin / exchange offerings and airdrop campaigns broadened my knowledge of the space. Reading articles, litepapers and white papers of so many crypto projects have greatly improved my research abilities and allow me gain invaluable insights into different projects as I get to understand pain points each tries to solve and how this compares with existing projects and their contrasting solution approach / models. As a whatsapp admin of a crypto community, I consistently introduce people to crypto and do share my knowledge, teaching group members on how to open cex accounts, use dex, research projects and identify good investment opportunities, amongst others.
Been long in the space to see bitcoin tank from $19700+ to $3250ish and getting completely rekt'd in the process, and then watch it pump post halving event to all time highs of $69,020 (binance chart) in November 2021, I would consider myself a Crypto Native. I have witnessed the ICO hype, the IEO madness, the IDOs rush, the DeFi summer boom, the rise of the meme coins and its later implosion, the NFTs evolution and the Bored Ape Yacht Club movement and the metaverse craze. Web 3 just got heated up even though many still find it hard to really explain what it is and how it is different from what we've seen presently in exisiting crypto projects. One thing is certain though, crypto has come to stay; disrupting centralised systems and its points of failure. It offers hope of liberalising many into financial freedom in developing countries. Its mass adoption / acceptance is truly on course and is a massive work in progress.