Did I Just Throw Away $61.26 or Buy Into the Future of Cryptocurrency? A bought a Zcash mining contract from this morning. I’m feeling a conflicting mix of buyers remorse and excitement. Did I just throw away $61.26 or buy into the of cryptocurrency? Genesis Mining future What the Heck is Zcash, Anyway? I bought the mining contract without knowing what Zcash is. said it’s what Bitcoin was meant to be all along - One article _Zcash (ZEC) is another Crypto currency like bitcoin but with a few different features. Like Bitcoin it is based on a…_www.cryptocompare.com What is Zcash? Another article said investors were getting excited about it - _"Deafening." That's how market analyst Arthur Hayes describes the enthusiasm ahead of the upcoming launch of a new…_www.coindesk.com Investors Are Going Wild for a Digital Currency Called Zcash (And It's Not Even Out Yet) - CoinDesk I joined the There’s a lot of excitement in the channel. Zcash Slack channel. Zcash is launching on October 28, 2016. That’s tomorrow! Cool, I’m actually early and ahead of the game on something. Count me in! I guess that’s enough for me! Or at least enough to spend $61.26 on a mining contract. It’s Not Like I Have Bitcoin Burning a Hole in my Pocket I wrote an earlier article about has been kind enough to send me a some Ether since then. I thought I’d convert that Ether to Bitcoin. Then I’d use Bitcoin to buy the Zcash mining contract. setting up my first Ethereum wallet. ZeroGox That was the idea. First of all my is taking a long time to sync to the production network. It’s taking a long time. It’s been taking a period of days, since I’m not running my laptop 24x7. Ethereum Mist wallet (Note: I discovered became available as I was writing this article. Maybe that will speed things up!) Ethereum Mist release 0.8.7 That’s OK. I’m still feeling pretty excited about Ethereum. I tried exchanging Ether to Bitcoin using . The transfers didn’t process. Maybe it’s due to some of the recent attacks on the Ethereum network. It could be I did the transfer wrong. Shapeshift.io I need to take some time to make sure I’m executing the transfer the right way. That’s going to take more time than I have right now. I’m also going to wait…and wait…until my Ethereum Mist wallet finishes syncing to the production network. I tried exchanging Ethereum on GDAX too. That’s cryptocurrency exchange. (BTW, , glad to see resolved the ID verification issues!) Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong Coinbase It turns out exchanging Ethereum to Bitcoin on GDAX is a no-go for residents of New York State. (Don’t worry, New York, I still love you…) So I’m Actually Going to Use a Credit Card to Purchase Zcash? Using a credit card to buy a speculative investment vehicle sounds irresponsible to me. Just because I’m doesn’t mean I’m Just Rolling IN It ;) Just Rolling WITH It I’m only going to have to spend $28 to get started though. That feels OK. Nope! Genesis Mining has a $50 minimum for credit card purchases. I had to spend $58, less a 3% discount from a coupon code I found. And there was a $5 transaction fee tacked onto orders under $100. This felt kind of sneaky on the part of Genesis. I was too far in to pull the plug =at this point though! The purchase, discount and fees brought my total to $61.26. That’s more than I wanted to spend. But It’s Zcash, Right! It’s OK, I told myself, because it’s Zcash! Then I remembered I don’t really know what Zcash is. It’s about time I did some research. This is from the — Zcash About page Zcash is a decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency that offers privacy and selective transparency of transactions. Zcash payments are published on a public , but the sender, recipient, and amount of a transaction remain private. blockchain Well, that sounds good to me. Or at least it better, since I’m not getting that $61.26 back any time soon. Or am I? F to stay tuned to this story. I’ll be writing about how this whole thing pans out, one way or the other… ollow me P.S. — If it’s not obvious by now, I’m not a financial professional and this is not an offer of investing advice…AT ALL! This article is an example of a HIGHLY SPECULATIVE INVESTMENT . My investments in cryptocurrencies are experiments. I expect to lose any and all money I invest in them… If after reading all this you STILL want to invest in a you can use my affiliate code to save 3% on your purchase. Genesis Mining Contract, aoFNlU
