Intro
My wish is to retire at a reasonable age and this will be my experiment on how to do just that. Welcome to my quest and read all about it below. But first, let me introduce myself and how I decided to start DCA into crypto FIRE.
I grew up in Eastern Europe in a lower-middle-class family. Both parents were employed but I still haven’t grown up with Gameboys, Xboxes, or Playstations. Money wasn’t meant to be for that. I got my first computer when I was 12 years old. Boy, oh boy did I love that computer. I’ve played a ton of video games on it at the beginning. But as time progressed I started thinking I could also make some money with it and so I started creating websites.
But this wasn’t my final career choice. Even the one I have now probably isn’t. See, I’m a jack of all trades and I’m fairly good at many things but I excel at IT and that’s why I stayed there.
Introduction to crypto
I first heard of bitcoin in 2013 when it first surpassed $1000. Some would say late but after that bitcoin was headed for its crash and would need a few years to recover. I remember I didn’t think much of it and also that was the year of my family tragedy and the next years were hard. I forgot about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and focus on the start of my career and getting better mentally.
It wasn’t until February 2017 when my friend T. introduced me to zcash and its mining. We both just bought shiny new computers and we mined zcash for a few months. Later he introduced to me Ethereum and all the tokens (shitcoins) built on it. In June of 2017, the ICO (Initial Coin Offer) craze begin and in August of 2017, I started working for a local ICO company.
I was beyond excited to leave my job where I had zero chance of career development for a fresh new field of blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and what the FIRE dreams are made of. They say things move quickly in the crypto world and I can’t tell you how right they were. In February of 2018, we knew that the crypto world is cooling down and we’re headed for crypto winter. All the crypto toxicity in my job made me leave it in September of 2018.
I stayed in the crypto world for another year at another crypto company but I didn’t trade or buy anymore because I simply didn’t believe that crypto is coming back. I was wrong, of course, because we all know of bull and bear cycles. At the end of 2020 crypto started showing very, very bullish signs that woke me from my slumber and I started to believe again.
Dollar Cost Averaging/Euro Cost averaging/Fiat Cost Averaging (DCA/ECA/FCA)
My investment strategy was always to buy high, sell low. You may think I made a mistake there but I didn’t. I just thought that it’s always my damn luck that when I bought some crypto that it has immediately dipped. I was shortsighted. It didn’t matter if I bought bitcoin or ether at any price between 2018 and 2020 because both surpassed their values from back then. I just didn’t think about the long-term benefits of investing in bitcoin and ether.
So if I started investing in the ether when it was at its peak in January of 2018 and finish on this day I would turn 18.7k € investment into 221k €. This blows my mind. That’s when I read the next lines: Time in the market is more important than timing the market. And I couldn’t agree more. I finally have a job with good pay and it’s time to start saving with crypto!
We all know that interests from banks are so low that they don’t even cover yearly inflation which is about 3%, although it’s getting higher from year to year. DCA strategy works because you don’t have to wait for dips and time in the market. This journey is a lot less emotional if crypto dips for 20% in one month because you’re buying this and in the long run it’ll work out.
My DCA strategy is:
- invest 100€ per week (400€ per month + CEX trading fees)
- use a reputable bot service to smartly buy small increments all week long
- duration of investment should be at least 5 years, possible extension to 10 years
- no selling of invested ether during the investment period
- for every 0.5 ETH invested transfer it to your cold wallet
End goal of DCA investment
For every person their end goal of investment is different. My current end goal would be to pay off the loan I’ll take to buy a house and to retire from my financial investment. I want to achieve FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early). Although this is not as achievable in Europe as is in the USA I think it’s still is if you invest smartly and do not spend every paycheck that you get.
I know this DCA quest won’t be easy for me because I have expensive hobbies and always want to try a lot of different new technologies but I’ll try my best. Nobody else can achieve financial independence for me except me and my wife. This is for us and to enjoy things later in life and to retire around 50 and not 65.