Introducing myself: Zen & Art of Crypto

Hi all! I am about cultivating Zen even when investing in crypto, and this is my first post on Steemit

(Warning! Unlike other Introduceyourself posts, there is no pictures here, it is heavy on words, and it is quite long).

My goal

My goal is to help you cultivate a Zen mindset towards crypto investing. From reading my material, if you find even one useful tool or perspective to apply to be more equanimous in your approach to crypto investing and life, I will be happy.

'That sounds nice, but, who are you?'

I really, really want to put a picture of my beautiful self up, like other introduceyourself posts. But for several reasons (nationality + personal situation), I can't reveal who I am 😇(maybe I'm from the sky!). This, being unable to reveal who I am and connect on personal level, held me from writing on Steemit for months. But I have been thinking, 'I know at least one person will find something useful if I share my experience with crypto investing and thoughts on it.' So here I am, and I hope I can provide some value to you. Again, I am sincerely sorry that I am being anonymous.

'Now what?'

A philosopher I love, Jiddu Krishnamurti, was a master at finding about 'what is' by defining 'what it is not.' So, let me start by telling you what I won't be writing about, so you can save your precious time 😈

What I won't be writing about

1 - No Technical Analysis (TA)

We already have too many people who are experts at TA just because they can draw some lines straight. We have enough of that, and I have no training in this. So I won't bother, and you won't read shit stuff like Hyejin puts up out of his/her god knows what.

2 - No big dive into technology

I wish I had time and energy to study all the details and tech behind my favorite projects, and help others understand them better. But, realistically, with a full-time job and side projects, I can't do that. If you want to dive into details, I think it is best to read whitepapers and listen to interviews of experts and founders of projects. I recommend Andreas and Vitalik. And do that like x10 times. I won't pretend that I understand all the details of tech behind projects I have invested in because I don't and I think no one really does. You can expect that I won't talk much about details of tech behind project (I will talk about social implications of technologies though).

3 - I won't include much of pictures or memes

I want to focus on delivering value through writing only as much as possible. While memes or pictures entertain or help you understand concepts, it takes a long time to find appropriate images and even when you do, pictures sometimes take up too much space and cut off the rhythm. I know, my writing isn't great, but this is the best way for me to get better at it. I might change my mind about this in the future, but I want to focus entirely on writing itself and delivering long-form contents. I will include graphs and tables only if they are useful to clarify my writing.

Okay, now that you know what to NOT expect from me, let's talk about what you can expect from me.

4 - Specific investing advice

Don't let others tell you what to invest in. You should always do your own minimum research (more on this below).

What you can expect from me

1 - Thoughts on decentralization and blockchain

I am most excited about the role decentralization played in human history. Decentralization is one of the core themes that have been driving our history: we've been decentralizing from what we believe in (religion), to how we learn (education), to how we work. Now blockchain comes in and decentralizing money and currency (they are 2 different things). We are living in a very, very exciting time. I will write about how various parts of human lives have been decentralized, starting with Religion (what we believe in).

2 - Personal stories

I am an ordinary person, 27 years old, living on earth. Just like you, I eat, take shit, and sleep. I live in a city and work full-time, and make a bit above average salary. I will write about how I got into blockchain and cryptocurrency investing, how I decided to invest in it, how I invest, lessons I've learned so far, what I do when I feel like I'm being obsessed with looking at charts and Reddit, and so on. Oh, I will also write about how you can stay Zen, not let FOMO take loans or buy coins that whales are pumping. I might run out of topics, or new topics might keep occurring in my head as I write.

3 - Reflections

I will reflect upon and write about what I find to be amusing, interesting or curious in the blockchain and crypto space.

For example, this post, from OmiseGo reddit (yes, I own some OMGs so I hang out there time to time), shows how millennials are treating crypto as a ticket to go above social class. Being another millennial, I share this sentiment to a point and thought about this. I am quite confident that a few projects have potential to have impact like Google or Amazon, but I am sure that most of the projects will fail. We are very early in this thing, and treating it simply as a 'ticket to the moon' is missing out on the long game. I recently met with a friend who works in fin tech, involved with several exchanges and ICOs. We talked about lessons we've learned from investing in crypto, and how it comes down to one truth: Best investment is investing in yourself and people around you.

I will write more about above in one of my future posts. Hope that little snippet helped you see what I will be writing about :)

4 - Dive into seemingly-unrelated stuff

I learned more about blockchain phenomenon from this TED talk by Jeff Bezos than all the YouTube videos that caught my attention. Also, I learned more about the role of tech in the world from this debate by Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen than anything else I read or listened to on the web. There are tons of seemingly-unrelated materials from other sectors that can help us understand blockchain and crypto phenomenon better. So I will be sharing these materials with some notes.

5 - The minimum research you should do before investing

You see a news that IBM is going to use Stellar for their blockchain. You haven't even read their whitepaper yet, but this is a great news. I mean, this is IBM! So you go and pick up some Stellar.

Now, I love Stellar and I think it is one of the projects that have great chance of surviving the bubble (I don't own any though, cuz I like to keep # of coins I invest as small as possible; diversification is for losers, in my opinion). I wrote above scenario just to tell you that's worse than throwing your money into fire; that way, at least, you get to see something burning, which is always cool.

To help you not FOMO and throw your money away, I will talk about minimum things I do before investing. I haven't invested in a new coin since last November so I the list is quite short, but it is effective, considering performance of my portfolio, to my standard.

'Okay, so what are you going to write about in your first post?'

I'm gonna go start writing my first post, 'How I started investing in cryptocurrencies and lessons I learned so far.' My goal is to write the post in 3 days, so I can edit this pot and put a live link to it.

Until then, please ask me any questions or give me suggestions for future topics.
I am all new to this, so I'd appreciate an upvote and a following too :)

Thank you for your time and cheers!

-Zen&Art of Crypto

p.s. Follow me @zennartofcrypto so you can read future posts while they are hot