My Personal Bitcoin Journey

It all began for me back in early 2013, bitcoin was not brand new but it was relatively less known and getting your hands on them was no biggy, though it was in the year that followed bitcoin started to go through the roof as the price jumped from around $20 to over $1000 in less than a year. When I first started the hash rate and difficulties were easily handled by my relatively high-end AMD graphics card, allowing me to turn my computer on for a few hours each day to accumulate a few bitcoin, which now translates to a few tens of thousands of pounds, which for a teenager in his bedroom listening to My chemical Romance and Radiohead isn’t bad.

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Biggest Regret

My biggest regrets are not putting more into it, you see I was worried about ruining my PC gaming ability, you may or may not be aware that after a while the intensive load of mining can wear down your graphics card and I loved my Age of Empires and Total War strategy games so I thought a couple of hours of mining a day to earn $100 or so was as good as I would ever get. This coupled with the fact my mother kept shouting at me to turn my computer off when I go to college in the day has stopped me becoming a millionaire, though she still does not know to this day what she was preventing me from doing, and in all honesty nor did I.

It was early 2014 and the price of bitcoin seemed to have peaked and was starting to drop fast, as many I thought this is it time to bail, so I jumped ship and sold around 80% of what I had left of my bitcoin, which is no small amount of money but not enough to retire me, just a nice house deposit a few great holidays, a nice car and some hefty savings for the future, most of which paid for me to live like a king at University, meaning I spent a lot on alcohol, though it was nice being able to drink the proper branded Vodka and the expensive single malt scotch whilst I watch all my flat-mates fight over 50cent bottles of cheap own-brand lager.

What Happened Next

After accumulating a fair quantity of bitcoin (enough to retire for the rest of my life at today’s price) it finally became too difficult to mine with what I had, I did of course turn to Litecoin as many did to continue to make free money, by this time much of my Bitcoin had already been sold. However I have put much of my holdings onto crypto-currency exchanges where I continue to trade to this day in various alto-coins, but as any coin trader knows if you have been trading since the early days then it is likely you have had your coins stolen at some stage, this happened to me or at least some of my coins were taken, a few Bitcoins, very frustrating but I keep most of my assets in cold storage so mostly I was OK.

The issue with bitcoin that I am facing

I am am still battling to try and turn my bitcoin into actual money, I can use bitcoin in a number of online retailers and even paypal has been accepting which has helped greatly, but only if I want to buy small things such as a TV or any online shopping goods. However I want to buy a house, I cannot really do it at the moment, although there are a couple of sites that sell property for bitcoin it is no good if I want to buy the nice house at the top of Norsey Way Road with the old fashioned indented brickwork and columns either side of the rather larger front door, yes this is what I have been eyeing up. I could sell my bitcoin, however the tax-man is going to get me, I mean a young man suddenly buying a house with cash who works in graphic designs for 3 years since leaving University, it’s just not possible without the tax man noticing.

What am I going to do about it

Not entirely sure at this stage, although about a year ago I gave a fair few to my parents, due to a rather nice loop-hole they may now be able to extract some of these bitcoins whilst paying minimum tax. As of 2014 the IRS accepts bitcoin as a taxable asset for the purpose of investments, and in late 2015 I made my parents put the bitcoin I gave them into an IRA account. The funniest thing is they still don’t know what it is and they do not realise how much it is worth, as far as they are concerned they are stock of some digital online payment company like pay-pal maybe “worth $50 each I think” my father said to a friend when he told them that I had given them some assets. It will be a great surprise for them in just over a year when he retires (probably give the old fart a heart attack), I have thought about telling him but he never believes a word I say as to be honest I really cannot be trusted, and I am always playing tricks on him. I have no plans to take any of this off of them, instead I hope for them to pay off their mortgage and not lift another finger for the rest of their lives, my gift to my fantastic parents, even if my mother stopped me mining millions of dollars more because I left my computer on costing about $1 a day in electricity.

For more Information about Bitcoin IRAs visit http://getthemidastouch.com/bitcoin-ira/