aimeerivershttps://plume.seediqbale.xyz/@/aimeerivers@fediverse.blog/atom.xml2022-11-19T21:10:28.446242+00:00<![CDATA[Thank you, Elon!]]>https://fediverse.blog/~/ExploringTheFediverse/Thank%20you,%20Elon!/2022-11-19T21:10:28.446242+00:00aimeerivershttps://fediverse.blog/@/aimeerivers/2022-11-19T21:10:28.446242+00:00<![CDATA[<p dir="auto">It’s been over a year since gave up on Facebook and started dabbling in the Fediverse. After the initial excitement of talking to myself on two different Mastodon instances, trying out Pixelfed and PeerTube, and setting up this blog, i soon became bored because nobody i knew had yet come across to the distributed way of doing things.</p>
<p dir="auto">And so i pretty much ignored the entire thing, until a few weeks ago when Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44bn and promptly set about to destroy it. Suddenly loads of my friends on the birdapp were talking about Mastodon, sharing their new identities even though they hadn’t posted anything yet, and asking me what mine was.</p>
<p dir="auto">So it felt like a good time to come back to it. I tidied up my Mastodon profile, added a verified link to my website, installed a new app: MetaText is so much nicer than the standard Mastodon app. And i sort of just started posting again.</p>
<p dir="auto">Slowly and surely, some of my friends also started posting. I’ve had meaningful replies and conversations! Even mainstream media is now talking about Mastodon! It looks like this thing is actually happening for real. And it’s all thanks to Elon Musk!</p>
<p dir="auto">Follow me:<br>
<a href="https://fediverse.blog/@/aimeerivers@queer.party/" title="aimeerivers@queer.party" rel="noopener noreferrer">@aimeerivers@queer.party</a><br>
<a href="https://fediverse.blog/@/aimeerivers@pixelfed.social/" title="aimeerivers@pixelfed.social" rel="noopener noreferrer">@aimeerivers@pixelfed.social</a><br>
<a href="https://fediverse.blog/@/aimeerivers@fediverse.blog/" title="aimeerivers@fediverse.blog" rel="noopener noreferrer">@aimeerivers@fediverse.blog</a></p>
]]><![CDATA[My crypto strategy in 2021]]>https://fediverse.blog/~/ExploringTheFediverse/My%20crypto%20strategy%20in%202021/2021-10-27T21:39:12.999367+00:00aimeerivershttps://fediverse.blog/@/aimeerivers/2021-10-27T21:39:12.999367+00:00<![CDATA[<p dir="auto">I feel so weird, writing a blog post about my crypto strategy, like I know anything about this. I don’t really, I’m just messing around with it, but I’ve come up with a simple, relatively risk-free strategy that seems to work. Maybe it’ll work for you, too.</p>
<h1 dir="auto">History</h1>
<p dir="auto">First off, let me tell you how I got into crypto. Like seemingly everyone else, I got interested in Bitcoin at the end of 2017. Up until then I had been aware of Bitcoin, but thought it was too late, it was only worthwhile if you got in at the start. The tipping point for me was when <strong><em>my little brother</em></strong> was talking about Bitcoin with me <strong><em>and our mum</em></strong> in a pub. I thought, “If even my little brother is doing this, I have to do it!”</p>
<p dir="auto">So I bought some Bitcoin. Then I bought some Etherium too. I even put a little into some alt-coins that were going round at the time, whose names I have long forgotten. And it was fun, for a while. I called it the “uppy-downy game” … and then it went downy-downy, day after day, week after week.</p>
<p dir="auto">I had done exactly what you’re not supposed to do: I got swept up by the hype and bought in at the peak, only to lose it all in a trough. I thought that was it, I’d lost my money. I thought the “Bitcoin bubble” had burst.</p>
<p dir="auto">I bought high, but at least I didn’t make the mistake of selling low. I simply wrote it off as lost money and just forgot about the whole thing for a few years.</p>
<p dir="auto">In early 2021 I started to hear about Bitcoin again and decided to check in on my “worthless” crypto currencies. To my surprise, they weren’t doing so badly. Several of the alt-coins had indeed died, but Bitcoin and Etherium were making up for them. I decided to consolidate, and transferred everything I could back into BTC and ETH. And then I just watched to see what happened.</p>
<p dir="auto">As the weeks went on, the crypto value climbed until it was equal to what I had initially invested. I was delighted! And then I saw it dip a bit, and I panicked. I thought I was about to lose everything again, so I cashed out the whole lot. After fees, it came to a little under what I had initially invested. It felt good to have it back in my bank account, where it felt like “real money” again. At that time, having the money felt more important than the risk of losing it all again.</p>
<p dir="auto">I soon realised that I’d been too hasty in withdrawing, and with hindsight it turns out if I had just held my nerve I could have tripled my initial investment by now. I guess I was still a crypto beginner, after 3 and a bit years of “negative” experience.</p>
<h1 dir="auto">My current strategy</h1>
<p dir="auto">With that embarrassing, but probably familiar history over with, let me tell you my current strategy.</p>
<p dir="auto">First, I realised that crypto is a <strong><em>long term</em></strong> game. OK, if you’re very lucky, you might invest in an alt-coin just at the right time, just before it hockey sticks with thousands of percent profit, and withdraw right at the peak. Let’s be honest: that isn’t most of us. Instead, I realised that it’s sensible to invest little and often, which kind of spreads out the risk of the fluctuations.</p>
<p dir="auto">When I say “little and often” I mean “not too little” and “not too often”, otherwise transaction fees will eat up a lot of your money. I decided I can afford to invest £100 per month.</p>
<p dir="auto">So at the start of each month, I put £100 into crypto. I’ve been doing this since May 2021, and so far I’ve invested 4 times into Bitcoin, and twice into Etherium.</p>
<p dir="auto">But here’s the thing: whenever the value goes above £50 over what I put in, I withdraw £50. I don’t actually withdraw it to my bank account; I just keep it in Coinbase and it goes towards my next month’s £100 investment. This keeps transaction fees down. August was a good month for Bitcoin: I withdrew twice, meaning I didn’t have to transfer from my bank account to invest in September. The £100 that I would otherwise have paid in from my bank account, I marked as profit in one of my lovely little spreadsheets. (Yes, I love spreadsheets!)</p>
<p dir="auto">Right now, crypto in general is doing really well, and in this month (October 2021) I withdrew £50 three times: twice from Bitcoin, and once from Etherium. So in total, I’ve made £250 out of my £600 investment. Not too bad!</p>
<p dir="auto">This is, admittedly, a low-risk, low-reward strategy: there’s always that thought, <em>“What if I’d have just kept it all in?!”</em> This strategy won’t make me a millionaire overnight, but it does minimise my stress levels. And I think it’s a sensible strategy: at least this way I’m withdrawing while the market is high, and I have it ready to reinvest when the market is low.</p>
<h1 dir="auto">Logarithms are key</h1>
<p dir="auto">We always seem to see crypto graphs over time looking like this:</p>
<p dir="auto"><img src="https://fediverse.blog/static/media/01883430-8E20-5CA9-5897-6E6603B4606D.png" alt="Bitcoin over time"></p>
<p dir="auto">That’s Bitcoin against the US dollar, and it looks totally bonkers and is very hard to see what’s actually going on. Given that graph, you can see why I felt like I’d “lost it all” having invested at the 2017 peak and suffered the downturn of 2018.</p>
<p dir="auto">When we look on a logarithmic scale, suddenly patterns become a lot clearer:</p>
<p dir="auto"><img src="https://fediverse.blog/static/media/CF28284D-E17B-37CA-6123-249136E7BFB3.png" alt="Bitcoin over time - logarithmic"></p>
<p dir="auto">I don’t know we don’t see this scale more often. It made the whole thing make so much more sense for me.</p>
<p dir="auto">See the peak at the end of 2013? That was huge at the time - one Bitcoin was worth almost $200, breaking all previous records. There was a media frenzy! And then came a year and a half of decline. But look again at 2017 - it grew to nearly $10,000 and sparked a huge surge of interest (including me and my little brother) … before the decline that made me feel I’d been rather foolish. But now you can see there is a 4-year cycle, which correlates to the Bitcoin “halving event”, when the reward for mining Bitcoin is cut in half.</p>
<p dir="auto">This is why we’re seeing a huge growth in crypto leading up to the end of 2021, just like we did at the end of 2013 and the end of 2017. Right now, 1 Bitcoin is worth almost $60,000 and it’s hitting new highs almost every week.</p>
<h1 dir="auto">Conclusion</h1>
<p dir="auto">I have learned it is never too late to get started in crypto. But my advice: don’t go all in, don’t trust a hunch, don’t get swept up in the hype and invest on a high. Instead, work out a strategy and stick to it. Unless you don’t … (SHIB, I’m looking at you!) … yeah, that’s gonna be for another blog post!</p>
<p dir="auto">As I write this, <a href="https://crypto.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">crypto.com</a> and <a href="https://coinbase.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">coinbase.com</a> are both down. There is some serious crypto hype going on right now! The end of 2021 is starting to feel a lot like the end of 2017.</p>
]]><![CDATA[Protocols, not Platforms!]]>https://fediverse.blog/~/ExploringTheFediverse/Protocols,%20not%20Platforms!/2021-10-10T13:47:54.143668+00:00aimeerivershttps://fediverse.blog/@/aimeerivers/2021-10-10T13:47:54.143668+00:00<![CDATA[<p dir="auto">A few weeks ago, my Facebook account got hacked and subsequently suspended. I am waiting for a decision from Facebook on whether I can have my account back. They have warned that they have fewer humans available to look, due to COVID-19, which means they may not get to it during the 30-day window. If they don’t, my account will be automatically deleted with no recovery possible. I didn’t have a backup. It sucks, but I’m kinda coming round to the idea that I’m not going to get my Facebook account back. Without access to Facebook, I went back to Twitter a bit more.</p>
<p dir="auto">A few days ago, Facebook went down for about 6 hours. During that period, I saw someone on Twitter say “Protocols, not Platforms!” The idea resonated with me, but I didn’t really know what it meant.</p>
<p dir="auto">Yesterday, the phrase was still rolling around in my head, so I decided to look up what it meant. I found this YouTube video:</p>
<p dir="auto">Distributed social media - Mastodon & Fediverse Explained</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S57uhCQBEk0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<p dir="auto">Suddenly I was learning about the Fediverse - the Federated Universe. I learned of the existence of Mastodon, Peertube, Friendica and Pixelfed (decentralized alternatives to Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and Instagram). I learned about ActivityPub, the protocol that allows them all to talk to each other. I found out that there multiple instances of all of these, and you can choose which one you want based on their terms and conditions. Or you can start your own! I learned how content moderation works on a local level (moderators manage their own instances) and on a wider level (entire instances can be blocked if their TOCs don’t align). I discovered it’s easy to download all your data from one instance and take it over to another instance at any time.</p>
<p dir="auto">This all sounded amazing to me. So I tried it out. I created not one, but two Mastodon accounts - one on <a href="https://queer.party" rel="noopener noreferrer">queer.party</a> and one on <a href="https://mastodon.social" rel="noopener noreferrer">mastodon.social</a>. I got them to follow each other. I had them send each other replies and saw them pop up seamlessly in each other’s notifications. I tried out the content warning feature and was impressed.</p>
<p dir="auto">Next I made an account on Pixelfed. I chose <a href="https://pixelfed.social" rel="noopener noreferrer">pixelfed.social</a> without giving it much thought, knowing that if I wish to change my mind at any time I can just move across to a different instance. I put up some photos. Then I went to my Mastodon accounts and followed my Pixelfed account. The photos popped up in my stream! I was able to like them, and even repost them!</p>
<p dir="auto">Finally I made this blog, and of course, followed it with my Mastodon accounts, too! This is wonderful. So much choice, so much flexibility, and so many incredible integration possibilities, thanks to them all using the ActivityPub protocol.</p>
<p dir="auto">I’m sold. The social media giants have way too much control over us. They choose what’s allowed on their platforms, they decide when to ban people and whether to allow them back again. We all know they cannot be trusted with our data, but we let them get away with it because we think we don’t have a choice.</p>
<p dir="auto">We do have a choice. It is decentralization. It is freedom. It is protocols over platforms. It is the Fediverse!</p>
<p dir="auto">Follow me:<br>
<a href="//fediverse.blog/@/aimeerivers@queer.party/" title="aimeerivers@queer.party" rel="noopener noreferrer">@aimeerivers@queer.party</a><br>
<a href="//fediverse.blog/@/voleak@mastodon.social/" title="voleak@mastodon.social" rel="noopener noreferrer">@voleak@mastodon.social</a><br>
<a href="//fediverse.blog/@/aimeerivers@pixelfed.social/" title="aimeerivers@pixelfed.social" rel="noopener noreferrer">@aimeerivers@pixelfed.social</a><br>
<a href="//fediverse.blog/@/aimeerivers@fediverse.blog/" title="aimeerivers@fediverse.blog" rel="noopener noreferrer">@aimeerivers@fediverse.blog</a></p>
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