Dogecoin, Cat Cafés and PoolTogether
PoolTogether Community Interview #24: SmartInvestor
This week’s PoolTogether community interview features a very key member of PoolTogether. He lives in London, and he’s the reason we have a functioning marketing team and this Substack newsletter! Meet: SmartInvestor.
1. Tell us a little about yourself.
I am based in London, England and I’m very keen to learn about crypto and the future. This includes studying Python and Mathematics to develop my Data Analytics and eventually AI/ML skills.
I also love going to Cat Cafés. Here is a picture of my favourite cat - Archibold:
2. How did you get involved the crypto/Web3 world?
In 2018, I learnt about the story of Erica Stanford, who has since written Crypto Wars: Faked Deaths, Missing Billions and Industry Disruption. In 2017, she was working in Sales & Marketing and decided to explore Bitcoin and crypto currency. She really enjoyed this and decided to eventually quit her job and became a very successful investor and became involved in a few projects.
What inspired me was that like me, she wasn’t at all technical and this made me realise I could do this as well.
I ended up buying different tokens and whilst their backstories looked good e.g. AGI and Singularity AI and IOTA with IOT - most of them never really went anywhere. When the market crashed, I sold just about everything and gave up.
However, in early 2019, I decided to buy a token I believed in - Dogecoin. The main reason for this was the community and how this could be used for smaller transactions e.g. tipping. Something stood out to me versus all of the other tokens I had purchased with more “serious” use cases but which ultimately ended up not making much impact..
After this I did very little in cryptocurrency and mostly forgot about what I had until late 2020 when I did some dollar-cost averaging into bitcoin. However, in January 2021 when Dogecoin exploded out of nowhere, I started getting back into more active cryptocurrency investing again.
3. What lessons have you learned about it so far?
A few things:
The most important thing is for you to have an “edge”. Meaning one area of Crypto/Web3 which you know more about than anyone else. We have the legendary Kris Kay who is “DeFi Donut” on Twitter. He’s an expert in that area plus he knows a lot about Decentraland and Decentral Games. We have Oops in the community who knows the card game SkyWeaver inside out. Similarly, on Crypto Twitter, you can find people who specialise in all kinds of areas from Music NFTs to finding the latest yield farms etc. You need to find your own area of mastery
Your edge is basically whatever fascinates you, find easy to research and can easily spend hours exploring the topic. For instance, Oops told us he would play SkyWeaver for hours and time would fly. This is the kind of feeling you need to find for your own “niche” area.
Think about the type of returns you need and therefore what to invest in: I realised that with the limited amount of capital I had available, that I had to go more risky. Yes, I was averaging into bitcoin but even if I invested in “respectable” projects like NEO or VET, if they doubled or tripled it wouldn’t bring me much in return relative to what I could invest in. I needed to invest in tokens with multiple zeroes where I could buy large amounts at a time.
This leads to the core lesson from Bankless - you must be early in crypto. With PoolTogether, the early users and heavy users were rewarded with the airdrop. The same with tokens, NFTs and other projects.
This was the key. I was connecting with people who were getting in early and then getting out quickly from all kinds of crazy projects. I’ve not been able to manage that yet, but to find this kind of alpha, start with Richard in the Random Channel on PT Discord and other places such as the Off-Topic section of different Discords where people talk about various investment opportunities.
4. What was your best cryptocurrency/Web3 moment?
The best was finding tokens relatively early - e.g. Dogecoin which helped me realise there are still possibilities of growth in this area despite missing the launch of Bitcoin and Ethereum. This has kept me going even when it seemed I was too late to the party.
5. What was your biggest failure with it?
Being rug-pulled a few times - which is one of the risks when you go into risky projects. This is why I try to limit how much I put into them to just a small amount. And then put more in as I have more confidence with the project.
Yes, FOMO is a bit of an issue so there is always that challenge to deal with.
6. How did you find out about PoolTogether?
I read the excellent book called How to Defi by Coin Gecko. This book - there are now two versions - Basic and Advanced, introduced many different projects. I loved PoolTogether as it was so simple to understand. It is very similar to Premium Bonds in the UK. Where people deposit money and the interest from all depositors is used as prize money.
I liked the fact that PoolTogether was so simple to use and to understand. When I joined the PoolTogether Discord, everyone was so warm and friendly and they tipped me with POOL just for asking some questions. I was blown away that Leighton, the CEO of PoolTogether, Inc. and the person behind the whole concept, was personally answering my questions on the Discord.
7. What made you stick around?
It felt easy and natural. Plus, everyone was very friendly. Then I found out about the PoolTogether Community Calls on Fridays at 2.45pm EST on the Discord Channel. I just started attending and didn’t speak for many months before becoming more and more involved..
I also started to meet all the Community Members from MkKoll who has been on so many committees to the legendary Richard who is the heart and soul of the Community. Plus, we kept getting new ever more engaged people e.g. Tim the host of the PT Podcast and Loitering_Sean who is a marketing whiz.
8. How are you involved in the community?
I set up the PoolTogether Community Substack you are reading right now. My vision is what we eventually built - the weekly PoolTogether newsletter, a weekly podcast and these weekly interviews with community members.
When I first set this up, it was just me. Alongside this, not everyone understood the vision but in Web3, it can be a situation where if you build it, they will come. Tjark heard us talking about the PT Community Substack on a recording of the weekly PT Community Call and started taking on the job of writing the Newsletter. I am sure you will agree just how amazing and detailed these weekly newsletters are.
I started working on the PT Community Interviews and we have interviewed many community members. The beneft is we get to learn more about each member, their background, interests and life stories. It hopefully inspires others who may be new to Web3 or not that technical to get involved with the protocol, the community and Web3 overall. Now, Folgsta has stepped up to run this.
Finally, Tim has taken over the running of the weekly podcast and is doing a fantastic job interviewing people from protocols and Web3 institutions such as AvaLabs, Ledger, Alchemix and many more.
What’s more amazing is how the PT Community Substack has grown organically. We were all doing this for free but the Grants Committee wanted to reward us with a grant.
This was great as I used what they gave me to deposit into PoolTogether and won my first ever prize!
We now have the PT Community Substack in many languages - English, French, Spanish, Mandarin and others. I never asked anyone, they just volunteered to write a newsletter in another language.
I also set up the PT Marketing Working Group. We had Anne and Loitering-Sean join up alongside many others to create a structure and programmes to help grow the protocol.
9. Would you recommend PoolTogether to others? How would you describe it to them?
Yes, it’s a really fun and easy way to start with Web3. Especially because with Polygon, it has very low gas fees.
The best part is how easy it is to understand and use. Plus, it has a warm, friendly community to help you and feel welcome.
10. Are you involved in any other projects or communities? If yes, which ones?
Yes, the main project I’m involved in is the Saitama Token. They have the SaitaMask Wallet available in the Apple and Android Play stores. This is a platform which eventually aims to have tokens exclusively launch on their platform plus having an NFT platform, gaming, education and more, alongside being a more traditional wallet..
Also, I’m also involved in Alchemix. Again, I found this via the CoinGecko How To DeFi book. It was something I understood very easily. People I tell about Alchmeix, especially people I am onboarding into crypto, are blown away. It’s a self-repaying loan! Alchemix has just launched their v2 and it will expand the tokens and chains you can deposit and borrow against, as well as increasing the use cases as it will be easier for external teams and developers to engage with Alchemix and build on top of this.
11. Do you have any other thoughts and comments you would like to share?
Yes, being involved with Crypto and Web3 is a journey. You will find PoolTogether, a warm and friendly community. Even if it seems overwhelming, you can start with little steps, like PoolTogether.
Please always be researching, learning and exploring. Look at what Richard posts on the Random Channel in the PT Discord and join the very latest decentralised Web3 social media PoolTogether Groups at GM and Lenster, as examples. Always be looking at what is coming up whilst investing and contributing to those projects building long-term value.
Explore the areas which fascinate you and remember that sometimes it is not always about just doing things for the money. Contribute as I have done and with a bit of luck you will be rewarded with great friendships, connections and (hopefully), financially as well!
We hope you enjoyed this interview and learned a different perspective on the journeys our community members take to find and get involved with PoolTogether. It always fascinates me to learn about the different paths taken to find this great community. Everyone has a truly unique way of finding our great community.
Please learn more about depositing at PoolTogether.com and join us in the PoolTogether Discord to become a part of our Community!