thank you zasad@ for the invitation and the opportunity to exchange some experiences, opinions and thoughts here.
I have already read some interviews from members i know and they were very interesting and good. As i am not an English native speaker, I apologize for my insufficiencies, but i hope and think that you still can understand my answers. So let's finally start
When and why did you become interested in cryptocurrencies?For crypto circumstances very late in the beginning of 2017 I started to explore crypto currencies. Frustrated by system-relevant banks failures, which privatized profits for years and then let us taxpayers pay for their "gambling" losses (crash 2009). And the more I read about it, the more frustrated I became (CumCum and CumEx) and realized that the whole financial system is exploited by bad actors. Another reason was the fact that I couldn't even buy an apartment for my family in the city where we live (100qm 600k EUR and more, just crazy...) with the money I saved over decades. So I looked around for alternative “investment” opportunities and came across the great blog "Der Altcoinspekulant" from our worldcoiner from the forum. I read there about IOTA (wink qwk) and other projects like Tezos, Byteball etc. It seemed to be the possibility to get a financial independence maybe to break out of the "hamster wheel" after all.
When and why did you buy your first bitcoin?On 31th January 2017 i bought my first BTC. BTC was around $1,000 USD. And the main reason was to buy with some BTC-parts IOTA at Yassins Slack Exchange.
How did you get on the forum?Via the blog from "Der Altcoinspekulant" and google
4.1 What prevents mass adoption of cryptocurrencies?nothing, if it is a national/central crypto currency. We will see that the upcoming 3 years... Well, perhaps nevertheless only a national one, we saw that even Telegram didn't make it
Currencies bring great power and responsibility, so states will try to hold on to them. Without hyperinflations they will succeed for a long time, but in some states like Venezuela and others, decentralized Cyrpto currencies will be introduced, why? Because you can buy them with your smartphone or computer "simply over the Internet".
Decentralized crypto-currencies lack transparency, simplicity of operation, risk of total loss through own or external fault. Also purposes and scalability remain questionable and problematic for most projects out there.
So what am I doing here anyway?
We are still in an early phase, in which projects come and go, one hype after the another, 2017 ICOs, 2020 DEFI, 2025 GOOFY, no wait, this will then surely be a Disney NFT. Back to the question... Projects, and here I include BTC as well, where whales manipulate the market or noone knows who is holding major parts of them or the origin/supply of the coins/tokens is unclear, will have to continue to fight for mass introduction/adoption until an appropriate distribution and transparency is achieved. I think in the upcomming 3 years will be many projekts with use cases that will get there adoption in niches or regions, but only as utilities and not as currencies.
4.2 How do you think mass advertising of gambling projects has a positive effect on the development of the forum or harms the community?Gambling is a niche like many others. Everywhere there are good and bad providers/actors. As long as the forum does not exclusively stand for gambling projects, I don't see a problem there.
4.3 How do you consider whether 2-3 years of experience in cryptocurrency is enough to successfully invest or does an investor need to receive special education?That depends. On the one hand, you can invest in BTC for the long-term without a lot of experience, but if you want to deal with all other shitcoins and hypes, 2-3 years of experience alone may not be enough.
5. What do you think of the current Merit system and signature campaigns? Do they harm the forum?I was very skeptical about the merit system in the beginning, but after all i think it was good for the forum.
The signature campaigns are as good and bad as their projects and campaign managers. quality instead of quantity.
The most useful forum topic? Most helpful users?For me as a German the
tax thread, Taxes are such a pain ;-) I read somewhere that 80% of the literature about taxes worldwide is written in German
Since I'm only in the German subs I can only tell for there. And there it's simply the culture and manners that I appreciate very much. Folks are very helpful and mostly respectful with each other, also we some very technical and experienced users there.
7. 3 things you would implement on the forum?1st I think a contemporary technology update would be appropriate.
2nd F2A would be great, but I'm afraid that it would increase the administrative effort for loss and recovery.
8. Do you trade on exchanges or invest in projects?In 2017 I traded far too much. The tax office was very happy with me in 2018 and even 2019.
I was also caught by the ICO FOMO train in 2017, I put my trading profits directly into ICO projects again. I have to mention that I have no idea about trading, but in 2017 you couldn't do anything wrong because just everything went up.
Today I don't trade at all anymore and for the last two years I only put some money into Avalance. How many I sit on shitcoin bags and wait and hope to get rid of them to trade them in BTC and FIAT.
Unfortunately I still have a miserable portfolio balance and hardly any BTC, which I hope to change soon, at least 50% BTC is my goal here.
9. Tell a story about your big profit or big loss?Nothing spectacular here from me...
I had some painful ICO total losses, but the biggest position i had to pay were still taxes for 2017 and 2018
Concerning wins: it remains to be seen if and which projects will bring the biggest wins, at the moment it is too early for that. from most projects i pulled my invest out so far. Or in other words: the profit lies within the purchase.
10. what do you think about the DEFI ecosystem?doomed to failure, at least in this early phase. Towards the end of the ICO bubble, people became careful, there were checklists to see who was behind the project and the team, and DEFI is now completely undoing that. It has never been easier to collect funds anonymously and then make an exit scam. You don't even need a website, whitepaper or anything else like that anymore, you create a Twitter, Telegram and Discord channel, raise awareness, promise crazy APYs and let poeple deposit their money (greed eats brains) and then make a rug pull.
And what should be clear to everyone is that even etablished DEFI system will only be tolerated by state regulators if the transactions of the users are traceable for them.
11. is your anonymity a vital necessity or precaution?in the end both
12. The last cryptocurrency book you read?actually so far no specific crypto currency book. Apart from many whitepapers, theories and opinions, the last book I read about the financial market situation was by Weik and Friedrich "Der Crash ist die Lösung" from 2015, maybe i should read the actual book "Der größte Crash aller Zeiten" from 2019 as well, and that was even without Corona
But in the interviews here I have seen some books that I should really actually read.
13. Recommend 3 crypto currencies/tokens for investments in the next 1-2 years?i can't give any advise here DYOR, cryptos are very high risk and volatile. Only "invest" what you can loose without ruining yourself and maybe your family. don't get greedy and be patient.
i think the best bet is still BTC (risk/reward ratio)
Beside that
my biggest hopes in my portfolio are IOTA, XTZ and AVAX. i may miss ETH, but i can live with that.
14. How much will Bitcoin cost at the end of 2020?hmm in 7 weeks... Wait, I need to see what my crystal ball says...
around 25k USD
Thank you for your time