Today we’re doing something a little different, talking with one of our readers, someone who has come out ahead through crypto investing — though not without some stomach churning reversals along the way.

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’s 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 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 lucky ones. By his account, since the Quadriga loss he’s turned around. He’s up around 11x on his principal, though there have been wild oscillations in that number recently.

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.

He said, “I’ve had some that did really well and even less that I thought would do well.”

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. He contends that one must get into crypto to fully understand it.

Be smart: He has been in the business for four years and sees new people arrive in waves. The new investors are easy to spot on Twitter and in the Discord channels — they are always looking for the quick buck.

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

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