Junior recounts his involvement in Bitcoin craze

Following its steady increase in popularity over the past decade, cryptocurrency caught the attention of investors all over the world, even attracting attention from junior Abhinav Tumu.

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency in which encryption techniques provides security and makes it immune to government manipulation and interference.

One of these cryptocurrencies has emerged as the leader: Bitcoin.

In its early days, Bitcoin experienced many minor rises and falls in its price. The price of each Bitcoin, from its creation in January 2009 until May 2017, never surpassed the $1,500 mark. However, during the past year, Bitcoin changed from a normal cryptocurrency to hot commodity, increasing its value immensely.

Starting last summer, Tumu began by mining cryptocurrencies on his own. “Mining” allows the idle time of powerful computers to be used to earn a small amount of cryptocurrency by running a certain program for a number of hours.

Tumu said that he has been interested in cryptocurrencies for seven to eight months now. He used to mine a cryptocurrency called Ethereum last summer, which led him into investing into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like Litecoin.

Although he was able to make around $90 through mining, a higher electricity bill to power his computer lowered the actual profit margin. Tumu soon stopped mining cryptocurrencies since he said he no longer had time to “let my computer run and use all the power to mine,” and because mining wasn’t very profitable in small amounts.

Relying on experts’ predictions that a single Bitcoin would be worth $1 million by 2020, Tumu decided to start buying.

“I bought Bitcoin in the November and December of 2017 because I thought it would be a good investment to make, since it was very popular at the time,” Tumu said. “I could make some quick bucks and cash.”

Although his goal was to make profit, Tumu regretted his choice later. The coin soon hit its peak of $19,000 at the end of 2017 and hit a period of decline.

Now, in the aftermath of the cryptocurrency frenzy, Bitcoin’s value has been reduced to around $10,500, as of Jan. 23.

“I would recommend to people: wait until it goes down even more, and then buy Bitcoin because it is a good investment, but be careful and don’t invest recklessly because you don’t want to waste your money and lose it,” Tumu said.