Today, we are talking to a reader who has made a fortune through crypto investing. However, there have been some stomach-churning reversals.

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: Darragh Grove White, a Canadian marketing technologist, is on the leading edge. But, he took some hard hits.

“I made a lot of mistakes, for sure. He tells Axios that he’s had cryptocurrency exchanges take his money.

He was one of many Canadians out of luck when the founder of the exchange QuadrigaCX, Gerald Cotten, 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. He’s up around 11x on his principal, though there have been wild oscillations in that number recently.

Axios has confirmed the success of his portfolio.

The scoreboard: He has invested in over 180 coins, his first three purchases being bitcoin, Monero (a privacy coin — that trade is still down) and Verge, a coin with salacious affiliations.

He said, “I’ve had some that did really well and even less that I thought would do well.”

The biggest loss was a token that was the right idea (blockchain finance), but the wrong company at the wrong time. His biggest win was a lucky guess about which solution to fix Ethereum’s speed problems would click with users first.

Context: While he only got into crypto in 2018 (a bear market year), he had some advantages. He is a lot more technical than the average person, given his day job.

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. He contends that one must get into crypto to fully understand it.

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.

He said, “This latest cohort of noobs was their on-ramp the Wall Street Bets experience.” “Meme coins are a popular investment option for a lot of the n00bs. They invest like it’s a bit of a joke.”

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