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. I’ve had crypto exchanges take my money,” he tells Axios.

He was one of many Canadians out of luck when the founder of the exchange QuadrigaCX, Gerald Cotten, died (?) 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 confirmed 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: 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. 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: Having been in for four years, he sees new arrivals come 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.” “A lot of the n00bs go for meme coins. They invest like it’s a bit of a joke.”

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