Episode #43 - Crypto journal entry #1
When a millennial who thinks he gets tech tries to set up a Coinbase account
Intro:
Welcome back or just welcome! This past week I published this essay in Tablet Magazine (thanks to the editors and my writing coach for the help with it) all about how all I needed to know about New Years resolutions I learned from my 8th grade rabbi.
That essay thankfully led to a bump in subscribers to Winnings and has pushed me to get back on the writing train. In my last note I started to dabble in the world of crypto with the assumption that I could try to explain some of it to you and learn about it myself. I don’t know if I did a sufficient job in that essay, but I still wanted to go through the process of buying some crypto and thought that it was something well worth relaying to you. In the event you’ve done it already, some of this may feel familiar (or you’ll be able to help me understand where I went wrong), please comment below to share with me how it went. If you haven’t done it yet, I hope this is helpful, but it is FAR from the authoritative guide. I’ll share below some resources that have started to help me on my understanding crypto journey and I will share what I anticipate doing next in this process of onboarding into crypto-land.
Background:
While I gave Ben S. credit in my last essay, I’ve got to shout-out my former roommate in Cambridge circa 2017 who was buying crypto cats and we thought, well, he was a little nuts. Additionally, Gaby Goldberg and Kinsey Grant did a stellar episode on web3 on Kinsey’s TiC pod that I recommend.
I’ve now gone down the rabbit hole and still feel like I have a ways to go. This document (WARNING: strong language in doc) shared with me by Josh K. was a helpful onboarding and there are a number of podcasts worth listening to for you to get the knowledge yourself. The journal entry below will likely confuse you if you haven’t listened to any of the background resources, but I still think it’s worth the read to start understanding.
Crypto Journal Entry #1:
In a text dated August 3, 2020 I was sent a follow up message “so this is the best intro vid to bitcoin I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot.”
18 months after I received this video, I finally decided to figure out how to buy a crypto currency. First I needed to download something called Coinbase (link is to my referral link to the site, might as well have each of us profit if you go into it b/c of me). Full-disclosure, I initially thought I could set up this account from my phone. I was wrong.
First of all, my auto-password generator on my phone wasn’t kicking in due to my Safari browser being the default from apps. This led me to powering up the good-ole millennial laptop so I could rely on the Google password generator to hit me with a SUPER SECRET and un-memorizable password. To clarify, you CAN set it up with your phone, but it might be hard to hit the right password security level on your own.
With that ambitious move, I was in Coinbase land:
The process of connecting my Citibank account to my Coinbase was fantastically easy. Yes, I needed my routing number. Yes, I needed to check which part of the check says routing number and which says account number but it was still really easy.
Quick sidebar: What is Coinbase?
Hold on, let me Google that for you:
Coinbase is a well-known cryptocurrency exchange that makes it easy to buy, sell, and exchange cryptocurrency. Coinbase makes buying Bitcoin as easy as buying a stock through an online brokerage, but look out for the fees and poor customer service. - Our grumpy friends at Investopedia
The next thing I needed to do was get a wallet. Yes, a wallet. Why a wallet? Well on Coinbase you can exchange fiat (in my case USD) for Crypto currencies (in my case, I started with some ETH - perhaps I’ll explain in a different note), however, when I want to buy something that isn’t a currency but some sort of digital object, say an NFT, that can only be stored in a wallet.
The wallet I went with is voted by my friends at Upstream as their fave, which is a Metamask wallet (MM).
To zoom out for moment, MM functions as an app on your phone or a plugin on your Chrome browser. If plugins for browsers is a lot to digest, think of it as a layer of code that is BUILT IN to your instance of your browser. It continues to work in the background and you can call it into the foreground when you need it. For example, when you go to OpenSea, which is a marketplace to buy NFTs with the stuff in your wallet, they ask you to “sign in” with your wallet. It’s also relatively seamless. Because I was already at my laptop (#eldermillennial), I set up the wallet there too. The most frightening part of the wallet setup was the introduction of my twelve word “Secret Recovery Phrase.” For all of you who thought this would be something like “open sesame,” but much longer, you are wrong. First of all, you get this ominous message:
The twelve words are random, it feels that way at least, and you need to save them forever. If you lose this phrase, your money in the wallet is lost forever. When they ask you to input it, you need to put in spaces between the words. Also, DON’T GIVE THIS PHRASE AWAY. You will likely not be able to memorize it, but people try to get you to share it with them on the internet ALL. THE. TIME. It’s actually quite wild, and I’ll send out my little exposure to that at some point soon.
And now, we wait:
So, you may be wondering - did I buy anything with the Ethereum that I purchased? Any crypto cats? Or BAYC? Or CryptoPunks? As of now, no. Apparently, it takes a while for the exchange, i.e. Coinbase in my case, to make my transfer that, mind you, is not in my bank account and APPEARS in my Coinbase account, to be MOVED into my MM wallet. Yes, I have a bunch of exciting purchases I’m eyeing. One of which is joining a Collective (or a DAO for the wonky among us) with Upstream.
Interact:
Have you purchased any crypto yet? What exchange did you use? What did you buy? What questions do you have? I think I can help you find the right answers, even if I don’t know them myself.
Gratitude:
I’ve basically shouted out all the people who helped me get here except for Shoshi S. (my bff and spouse) for being cool with me trying this out. Let’s see what happens!
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Please remember, I’m not providing professional advice about personal finance. I’ve got a lot of friends who do that and you can totally hit me up for an intro if you’d like - I don’t get any commission - just the happiness that my readers are taking their financial health seriously.