This is my response to @theycallmedan Leofinance initiative post.
Source
Bitcoin in 2011
I learned about Bitcoin in 2011. I immediately realized that it was something that was going to be big. So, I bought 200 Bitcoins, at US$7 each for US$1400. And I told my wife that it will make us rich. She replied that I was going to lose my money. But she added that if I were to get CAD$10,000 out of it, we would have to go on a cruise. Deal!
Three weeks later, I was in Paris and I told my colleagues about Bitcoin, and they told me that I was dreaming and that it would never be anything of value. As the value of Bitcoin was US$30 at that time, I decided to get my money back and see what will happen later. So, I sold 50 of my 200 Bitcoins and I got US$1500.
So far, this looks like a fairy tale story, isn't it? You may think "if this guy kept the 150 Bitcoins up to December 2017 and sold them then, he got three million dollars!". No, that is not what happens.
In 2013, I sold 10 Bitcoins for CAD$10,000 and I told my wife that she has to decide about the cruise. It is now November 2010, and she has not decided yet.
Unfortunately, I left the rest of my Bitcoins on Mt. Gox, and they all disappeared in February 2014. End of the episode.
Steem and Antshares in 2016
In 2014, I had subscribed to a financial newsletter, The Palm Beach Letter. They started to recommend to buy Bitcoins and Etherum in 2015, but I did not listen. Then, in November 2016, they were talking about 3 cryptocurrencies and recommended to not invest more than US$1,000 in each. Two of them were Steem and Antshares. I don't remember the third one.
I bought 10,000 Antshares at US$0.07 for $700. As you may know, Antshares changed its name to NEO and its value went up to US$200.
I had tried to blog before, but I had no incentive to do so. But, on Steemit.com, I found a dynamic community of bloggers, artists, and musicians. And you could be rewarded! Sign me up!
I invested a little in November 2016 and I wrote my #introducemyself post on December 4th, 2016. It was very well rewarded and my reputation went directly to 50. I just realized to day that 99% of the reward came from @blocktrades.
After 5 posts that went nowhere, I started a series of posts on December 10th: A Brief History of my Family in France. I had more success with this. It was followed by another longer series at the end of January 2017: The Story of My Life so Far, that lasted for several years in 130 episodes, in English and in French.
I decided to invest more in Steems and in March 2017, I had bought for almost US$17,000 in Steem.
Overall, I invested some CAD$47,000 in cryptocurrencies in 2016 and 2017.
At some point, I decided to get my money back, and I sold 2,200 NEO for CAD$47,000.
In January 2018, I sold again 800 NEO for around CAD$100,000. This helped me to buy the apartment where I live currently.
Over the years, usually on the recommendation of Teeka Tiwari from Palm Beach Group, I have bought 30 different cryptocurrencies.
Hive in 2020
After Hive forked from Steem, for a short time I did double posts, on both hive.blog and steemit.com. Then, I decided to abandon Steemit altogether. After a month of power down, I sold all my Steems, bought Hives with the result, and power them up. This almost doubled the number of my HPs that are at 321,000 today. 45,000 are currently delegated.
During the four years that I have been on Steem and Hive, I have not sold any of them. I only used some for crypto gaming.
The value of all my cryptocurrencies today is around US$250,000. The main ones, in decreasing order of values, are NEO, Hive, Binance Coin, and EOS.
I expect 2021 to be a major year in terms of cryptocurrencies.
And I must say that overall Crypto and Blockchain have been very good for my personal finances.
To the moon!
-- Vincent Celier
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Sorry to hear you lost your Bitcoin. Good to see you are not too torn up about it. I really appreciated that you have shown so much confidence in Hive and been able to do so much good with it. I am always grateful to get a vote from you. I think we met in Krakow, but I'll have to buy you a beer next time we can be in the same place.
Have a virtual !BEER for now.
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@vcelier was in Krakow? So many people I failed to meet there 😞
Yes, I was in Krakow.
I drove from France to Krakow, then to Pécs in Hungary.
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I must have seen you at some point.., it was my early days so didn't know as many people as now. I found it quite intimidating at times, and felt more at ease a year later in Bangkok.
Just confirmed I wasn't imagining it. You do have to put yourself about there, but I expect I missed a few too.
Thank you for the !BEER.
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Sorry, you don't have enough staked BEER in your account. You need 24 BEER in your virtual fridge to give some of your BEER to others. To view or trade BEER go to hive-engine.com
What an incredible story @vcelier! It was very smart of you to see the value in cryptocurrency at such an early stage, you were one of only a handful of people who did. Sometimes having that pioneering nature and being open to new ideas really pays off in a big way. What a good lesson your story teaches in that regard!
I'm so sorry to hear you lost so much on Mt. Gox. It seems you've handled it in a positive way. That kind of loss can teach you a lot and can also change you in certain ways. I know how it feels, I lost 73 Bitcoin (and other alts) worth nearly $1M on the Bitgrail exchange in 2018. It was more money that I thought I would ever see in my entire life. At the time I was devastated but eventually made peace with it. When something like that happens to you there's really only one thing you can do, move forward. The experience changed the way I view wealth and money in general, it made me realize how transitory it is. The crypto sector, especially in those earlier days, was like the Wild West. Fortunes could be made and lost almost in the same day.
Isn't it amazing to purchase something like the apartment you did with crypto proceeds? That's when it makes it all feel very real. I really enjoyed this post and getting to know more about you. I wish we had more time to hang out in Portugal while we were all there for SF2. I hope we get a chance to share a meal and a glass of wine at some point in the future. Take care of yourself and have a great Holiday!
Thank you very much for your comments, Eric.
Yes, I hope too that we will meet again.
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Oh man thank for this reference you give me the welcome when i came to steem in july 2017 and the way was hard but i am here and continued learning about cripto, thanks to steem right now and hive let mi enter to this wonderful world, i have a little portfolio too specialy in dogecoin hive steem, and hive engine tokens, but we hope the cripto world bless us and the prices of the altcoing grown up.
Fantastic history your with the criptos, sorry about the Mt. Gold a lot of people lose their money but well you are here.
well i amacumulate my cripto to buy a house in the future too, for this reason only uses it to diversify between diferent criptos hope only one of my selectión could go to the moon hope hive do it.
Best Regard.
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@galberto, you are absolutely welcome.
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hellow sr, do you hear about royaltech token coming , i am interested in buy some tokend in this way, if you know about this i am beg the informatión to get little tokens around 50 or 100 of each one.
thanks so much.
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A victim of Mt.Gox 😞. All this was new to me before I listened to an audiobook, 'The History of BitCoin' which opened my eyes to all this. Great story!
I have not thought about Mt. Gox for a long time. And there is no gain to lament about spilled milk.
Thank you for your comment.
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Wow what a positive outcome through it all even though there were pitfalls.
Looking back there was not many outlets for one to know where to safely store their btc before 2014. Over time more people got involved and this cleared up hot wallets cold wallets and never keep crypto in exchanges unless trading them..
What cruise did you and your wife went with that btc you spent? It is so cool to hear that you were still come out ahead with the investments you had in crypto. Congrats!
Hoping 2021 to be a banner year for cryptos.
Thank you.
No cruise, yet.
I am SURE that it will be a bonanza year.
Wow! What an exciting story. It almost makes me feel glad that I didn't invest in BTC at all back then because that way I don't have a heart wrenching Mt. Gox story or something like that. It sounds like you have rebounded really well. I hope to one day have a happy ending story like yours.
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Thank you for your comments.
As I said, this was not really a heart-wrenching story, as I got $10,000 out of $1,500.
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Yeah, for sure, that is nothing to complain about!
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When I saw 200 bitcoins, im like wow and my face lit up with a huge smile but I had all the smile on my face wiped off when I got to this part! So sorry about that loss, I recently watched a bitcoin documentary, it was through it that I heard about the Mt.Gox thing, I feel for everyone who lost through that company.
It is quite different for someone to sell short and for someone to loose all one's investment in such manner, I feel the latter is worse.
But you made some pretty nice choice's afterwards, it is impressive that after such experience you still decided to give crypto another try.
Interesting story, this is somewhat a successful story and a huge motivation. It was nice to read
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Thank you for your comments.
I did not cry too much about my loss on Mt. Gox. After all, I had made CAD$10,000, and my wife was happy.
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Youre welcome.
Ah yeah, fantastic.
Cheers
@vcelier, nice to read your story. Tell your wife: kellemes napot kívánok from my side.
Tell her that you should go on a cruise on the Danube, starting from Regensburg, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Danube Delta and back :)
Was nice meeting you in Aachen @detlev and in Krakow. Hope to meet you again, when this madness is over. Stay safe till then!
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Yes, that is probably the cruise we will go on, as we spend the summer in Europe (France and Hungary).
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View or trade
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BEER.Hello Vincent,
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https://hivewatchers.com/verifications?utf8=%E2%9C%93&verification%5Busername_search%5D=vcelier