First Investment In Crypto Currencies - Bought 0.2 ETH for EUR 50

It was in the late evening of July 3d, 2017 when I finally successfully bought my first crypto currency - I paid EUR 50 and get for that - 0.2 ETH. ETH stands for ethereum. Wonder what the heck is that? Don't worry, me neither.

Or let' s say this way - I know there have been bitcoin around for about a decade or something, though I don't see any practical reason for using that, while real money is in power. Right? It was so until about two weeks ago, while sipping freshly squeezed orange juice in rental apartment in Crete, a fellow affiliate marketer contacted me and we started to speak about investments, stocks, peer to peer lending and ... crypto currencies. My buddy told me he is doing some kind of arbitrage day trading stuff with crypto currencies. 

As I'm quite opposite - buy and hold investor, and since the start fo 2017 I've been building my wealth portfolio from scratch by investing in stocks and peer to peer lending, idea of having long term investments sounded very appealing to me and I decided to allocate about 5% space in my portfolio for crypto currencies

Investment Portfolio July 2017

Investment Portfolio July 2017

That small pink pie slice represents investments in crypto currencies, total 0.8%

I opened account at coinbase.com (See: How & Why To Buy Crypto Currencies (bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin) Online - Coinbase) and decided to invest EUR 300 in 3 different crypto currencies, like this:

  • EUR 100  - bitcoin
  • EUR 100 - ethereum
  • EUR 100 - litcoin

those are three crypto currencies currently available on coinbase. As a long term minded investor I decided I should buy three instead of one, for a simple reason - diversification, if two goes down, then one might go up.

Unfortunately I cannot report smooth experience with coinbase, actually at one start I was ready to give up on my idea on investments in crypto currencies at all, as it was just too complicated, I spent about 2 days trying to verify my ID there, once I verified it, I spent another two days trying to verify my bank account without success, somehow I managed to verify my MasterCard and just out of luck I managed to spend EUR 50 + EUR 2 fee to purchase +0.19996802 ETH.

Buying crypto currencies on coinbase

Buying crypto currencies on coinbase

Soon, if converted back to EUR, my precious 0.19996802 ETH lost some 60 cents in value.

My first impressions about coinbase.com are awful, pain in the ass, you name it. Buggy system, unknown errors - ahh...

Right, I'm not here to complain, but if you are reading this and considering to open your account at coinbase.com, think twice- read dozen of negative reviews about them before investing. After reading countless negative reviews about poor customer service, lost money and God knows what else evil stuff on coinbase - STILL the urge to acquire crypto currencies was so huge, I would say even greedy, I still kept with coinbase. As for some reason, I still believe coinbase is one of the most transparent and seems largest crypto currency platforms.  Now writing these lines I hope coinbase will improve their service and system in future.  

Instead of EUR 300 in three crypto currencies I've spent just EUR 50 in one, and that's my initial investment for a long term in ethereum. I still hope to spend at least EUR 50 on bitcoin and EUR 50 on litcoin this month, and in the future I'm planing to use average dollar cost investment by purchasing each month more for fixed, let' s say 50 EUR, price. 

Are you investing in crypto currencies? Could you leave some feedback? Positive or negative. Please comment below!