Axios Crypto: Meet Darragh Grove-White

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: 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 many mistakes. 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. 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.

“I have had a few that have done really well and even fewer that I knew would do really well,” he said.

The biggest loss was a token that was the right idea (blockchain finance), but the wrong company 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: While he only got into crypto in 2018 (a bear market year), he had some advantages. He is a lot more technical than the average person, given his day job.

It has worked in his favor. “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.

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

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