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: Crypto is often spoken of as a democratizing opportunity, yet regular people seldom see the stories of non-professionals placing bets 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 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. By his account, since the Quadriga loss he’s turned around. 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.

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 greatest win was his lucky guess as to which solution to Ethereum’s speed issues would be most popular with users.

Context: Although he only became interested in crypto during the bear market year of 2018, he did have some advantages. He is a lot more technical than the average person, given his day job.

That has worked to his advantage. “I’m just super curious,” he explained. It’s not enough to just read charts in crypto. He contends that one must get into crypto to fully understand it.

Be smart: Having been in for four years, he sees new arrivals come in waves. You can spot the new investors on Twitter and Discord — they are always looking to make a quick buck.

“This most recent cohort of noobs, their on-ramp was the Wall Street Bets experience,” he said. “Meme coins are a popular investment option for a lot of the n00bs. They make it seem a joke to invest in meme coins.

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