Starting small - my NewLion post

about 1 year ago (Edited)

For a while now, I've been wanting to be more active in the Leo community but have held off because I just didn't know much about finance. I'd tagged a few posts #leofinance in the past but they were written on the main Hive system and weren't dedicated to anything financial - just trying things out as I expanded from blogging about herbs and DIY into learning about all of this token stuff.

Now along comes the #NewLion challenge and as a bonus, today I saw that putting HBD into my savings account can earn me 20% which is not something to be sneezed at!

So, why have I become interested in crypto as a finance option?

A little while ago, we had the opportunity to buy a neighbouring block of land and the bank turned us down. We had a house already that we were willing to refinance and a small, regular income. We hadn't missed a beat on our other mortgage payments and had been good bank customers for 6 years.

The bank turned us down and were not willing to talk about alternatives or even give us the exact reason for turning us down, just 'you don't qualify'. that was all the info we could get.

Of course, that sucked! So I started looking at other banks but then thought 'why not get out of the banking system altogether'. So I started looking at alternative economics and discovered Modern Monetary Theory and DeFi. I also learned how countries that had been slammed by the US were using crypto, especially Bitcoin in Latin America and Bitcoin Cash in Africa to do their monetary transactions.

'Now this sounds interesting' I thought to myself and dove into a couple of generic ebooks on the subjects. Then I got to wondering where I was going to get the money to get a piece of that pie?

I'm not the smartest hammer in the shed and was pretty slow on the uptake but the penny finally dropped. I had a stack of goodies on my Hive account. Some HP and saved HBD. Then I started to play. I started looking at Hive Engine and tokens. It turned out that I had a stack of random tokens that I had accumulated from who knows where, small rewards for past posts and comments, I guess.

The next step was to take a look at these tokens and see which actually had any value. My main criteria was that the tokens had to be active and useful. I learned how to swap tokens for tokens and finally ended up with a small amount of 'good' ones. Then I discovered Splinterlands and a staking system that was paying 37%! I converted a lot of tokens to SPS and even withdrew from my Hive savings and staked every day, returning the earned SPS to the stake several times a day until I was earning 2 SPS a day just from 'interest'. I bought a few low value cards and some packs for keeping for later (I saw how much the early packs were going for). Funnily enough, I don't enjoy actually playing the game itself! It is a gentle way to learn about all of this and the stakes weren't that high at the time.

Splinterlands pays out 'vouchers' based on how much you have staked. I soon discovered that these were quite valuable and that you needed thousands to make them useful. I decided to utilise the value of the fractions of vouchers that I was earning and swap them for more useful tokens on Hive Engine.

The key technique I chose for all of my tokens was frequent staking. I checked my wallet several times a day and staked whatever fraction of my favourite tokens was there. I figure that compounding compounding interest was the way to go.

I'm only a little way into my journey but daily visits to Leo Finance are guiding my path toward independence from the banking system. there's much more to learn - liquidity pools, loans, airdrops - the list goes on and on but its all learning that will help secure my family and hopefully m community from the ravages of the global financial system as it draws its final breaths.

So, I thank this community for all of the knowledge you are sharing and the inspiration I'm getting from you all.

Now, its time to investigte Polycub...wish me luck!