Today we’re doing something a little different, talking with one of our readers, someone who has come out ahead through crypto investing — though not without some stomach churning reversals along the way.

Why it matters: Cryptocurrency is often referred to as a democratizing opportunity. However, regular people rarely see stories of non-professionals placing wagers in the space. Here is one.

Details: Canadian marketing technologist Darragh Grove-White is ahead, but not without taking some painful hits.

“I made many mistakes. He tells Axios that he’s had cryptocurrency exchanges take his money.

He was among many Canadians who lost their luck when Gerald Cotten, the founder of QuadrigaCX, died (?). in India.

State of play: Grove-White is one of the fortunate ones. According to his account, he has made a complete turnaround since Quadriga’s loss. Although there have been some wild fluctuations in that number, he’s now up about 11x over his principal.

Axios has verified the success of his portfolio.

Scoreboard: He invested in more than 180 coins. His first three purchases were bitcoin, Monero (a privacy cryptocurrency — that trade is still down), and Verge, which has shady affiliations.

“I have had a few that have done really well and even fewer that I knew would do really well,” he said.

The largest loss was caused by a token that was right in its idea (blockchain financing), but was wrong at the wrong time. His greatest win was his lucky guess as to which solution to Ethereum’s speed issues would be most popular with users.

Context: While he only got into crypto in 2018 (a bear market year), he had some advantages. Given his day job, he’s considerably more technically sophisticated than most people.

That has worked to his advantage. He explained, “I’m just super curiosity.” In crypto, it’s not enough just to read and watch charts. A person needs to get in to understand it, he contends.

Be smart: He has been in the business for four years and sees new people arrive in waves. The new investors are easy to spot on Twitter and in the Discord channels — they are always looking for the quick buck.

“This most recent cohort of noobs, their on-ramp was the Wall Street Bets experience,” he said. “A lot of the n00bs go for meme coins. They invest like it’s a bit of a joke.”

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