Axios Crypto: Meet Darragh Grove-White

Today we’re doing something a little different, talking with one of our readers, someone who has come out ahead through crypto investing — though not without some stomach churning reversals along the way.

Why it matters: Cryptocurrency is often referred to as a democratizing opportunity. However, regular people rarely see stories of non-professionals placing wagers in the space. Here is one.

Details: Canadian marketing technologist Darragh Grove-White is ahead, but not without taking some painful hits.

“I made a lot of mistakes, for sure. He tells Axios that he’s had cryptocurrency exchanges take his money.

He was one of many Canadians out of luck when the founder of the exchange QuadrigaCX, Gerald Cotten, died (?) in India.

State of play: Grove White is one of the lucky 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.

Scoreboard: He invested in more than 180 coins. His first three purchases were bitcoin, Monero (a privacy cryptocurrency — that trade is still down), and Verge, which has shady affiliations.

“I have had a few that have done really well and even fewer that I knew would do really well,” he said.

The largest loss was caused by a token that was right in its idea (blockchain financing), but was wrong 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: Although he only became interested in crypto during the bear market year of 2018, he did have some advantages. He is a lot more technical than the average person, given his day job.

It has worked in his favor. He explained, “I’m just super curiosity.” 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.

“This most recent cohort of noobs, their on-ramp was the Wall Street Bets experience,” he said. “A lot of the n00bs go for meme coins. They invest like it’s a bit of a joke.”

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