As I highlighted in "Taking My Browsers with Me," I love Portable App. I carry my browser and dozens of other applications with me wherever I go. While obviously, I got into Portable Apps so that I can take my Firefox or a Chrome browser with me, which was so important when I was a college instructor teaching from dozens of different computers across campus. Now that I am in IT, I have CCleaner, CPU-Z, CrystalDiskInfo, and every antimalware product available. Nowadays, there are over 400 applications available. However, when I went to the Portable Apps directory, I saw something I've never seen before: three cryptocurrency core portable apps.
These portable apps are wallets for these cryptocurrencies. These wallets not only keep count of any of your cryptocurrencies but are replicate the entire blockchain. They are a copy of the distributed ledger![1] The most recent of these wallets was Litecoin, which we mentioned in "Cryptocurrency and Blockchains." Before that was Bitcoin, the iconic cryptocurrency that is discussed at length in "Bitcoin for Beginners."
But the first of these was Dogecoin (DOGE).
Dogecoin is very odd. It was started as a joke in 2013. Its iconic imagery of a Shiba Inu dog was one of the most popular memes at the time. In mockery of the cryptocurrency industry, Dogecoin does not even have programmed scarcity. While there can only ever be 21 million Bitcoin, as of October 14th, 2021, there are 131.6 billion Dogecoin!
Despite this origin, Dogecoin has withstood the test of time. It has one of the most loving and embracing communities that freely give the currency to others as tips or to charities. And that's before celebrities like Elon Musk and Gene Simmons. Dogecoin is that little (crypto)currency that could.
My First Crypto (Part II)
Alright, so this isn't technically true. As you know from my very first article, "Buying Bitcoin," I am the proud owner of 0.00011251 BTC.[2] Despite this increase in value by nearly 150%, these one ten thousandths of a Bitcoin are not very sexy. And the obsessive personality in me longs to not just own some fraction but the entire coin. But since I don't have $66,469 lying around to buy a Bitcoin, we're going to pretend this never happened.
So, for my first ever cryptocurrency, I went out and bought Dogecoin. Purchasing should have been far easier than it was. But for those of you who, like me, want to try out cryptocurrencies, here's the way I did it. By the way, I got into Dogecoin the dumb way, so please learn from my mistakes.
And enjoy!
Visiting the Cryptocurrency Exchange
Have you ever traveled abroad? Do you recall a time when travelers would transfer dollars into foreign currencies?
Cryptocurrency exchanges are similar spaces to change fiat currencies like dollars into cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin. While there are many cryptocurrency exchanges, they can be very different. I tried out a few of these but hit the issue of needing to contact my bank to set up a transfer. This ask was a bigger task than I was willing to commit to.
Then I went to Binance. Instead of requiring me to go through my bank to get money into the cryptocurrency exchange, Binance uses Plaid to create a link with other financial institutions. The minimum cryptocurrency purchase was $20 worth, so I transferred that amount of money and purchased 98 Dogecoins. And Binance only charged a dime for the transaction.
Now I just needed to transfer my Dogecoins to my wallet …
First Wall: Missing the Minimum
Excitedly, I fired up my Dogecoin Core Portable, clicked Much Receive > Request payment, and scanned the QR code to link it to Binance. I then went to transfer my beautiful 98 Dogecoins--and received the message that the minimum for a withdrawal is 100 Dogecoins.
Yes, I was two Dogecoins short.
Damn.
First solution: Reach out to everyone I know. I went around and begged anyone I remotely thought might have cryptocurrencies if I could borrow a couple of Dogecoins. Few had any Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies at all. No one had any Dogecoins.[3]
Second solution: Free Dogecoins from the Internet. Let me start with how truly terrible of an idea this is. The number of advertisements that markets want to subject you to for the amount of Dogecoins they are offering is ridiculous. As I explained in "A Brave (Browser) New World," I use Brave to clean up all the garbage ads that litter the internet. I am not willing to subject myself to an onslaught of these ads for a fraction of a cryptocurrency that is worth 23 cents.
There is one website I will mention though. Dogecoincoin faucet will give you free Dogecoins. Or rather a fraction of free Dogecoins. A very, very tiny fraction of free Dogecoins. Every three hours, I can enter my email and get all of 0.001252 Dogecoins. At this rate, how long will it take me to get to the two Dogecoins I need?[4]
Third solution: Remember that quote from the movie Contact, "Why build one when you can have two for twice the price"? I was thinking a lot about this line when I was transferring $21 to Binance so that I could purchase 105 Dogecoins. Now with 205 Dogecoins in my account, I sold 100 Dogecoins for a little over twenty bucks and had a little over the hundred Dogecoins I needed for the transfer to my wallet …
Second Wall: Ten Business Days
Apparently, some roguish individuals were laundering money through cryptocurrencies. To address this, Binance implemented a ten-business-day period where nothing could go out. I couldn't deposit my dollars. And I couldn't withdraw my cryptocurrency.
I had to wait.
Damn (again).
Bad Binace! Be a good boy and give me my doggy coins.
This really was just a waiting game. And the only way I could figure out when the block was lifted was just trying to initiate a deposit or withdrawal. Day after day of error messages about needing to wait.
Until, two weeks later, it finally worked.
Losing Half in the Divorce
While I was able to get my full $20 deposited without issue, Binance wanted half my Dogecoins for the withdrawal. Technically, Binance charges a flat rate of 50 Dogecoins for the withdrawal. But with me having only a little over the hundred Dogecoins minimum, this felt like half my money.
However, what other choice did I have? Do I just leave my cryptocurrency in this exchange, as I did with my fraction of Bitcoin? The entire purpose of this experiment was to get some amount of Dogecoins into my Dogecoin Core Portable wallet.
Conclusion: The Circle Is Now Complete
Two weeks after I started this experiment and less Binance's cut, I finally had my Dogecoins. It worked! But, oh, was it a lot of work! All for a cryptocurrency that costs less than a quarter. But I didn't have some fraction. I had entire Dogecoins. Over fifty entire Dogecoins! They were all mine. My precious …
And here it is eight months after I wrote my first article for this blog, that I am finishing my last article for this blog. I started out with "Buying Bitcoin," so it feels only apt that I should finish out with "Depositing DOGE." Along the way, we've looked at everything from browsers to Encryption, and from security to servers. We talked about why you should spend the money on a business laptop, and why you should have Managed Service Providers, like NexgenTec, handle your IT.
To get these 30+ articles out, I owe thanks to some:
- Thank you to Marcel Manning for giving me this opportunity and believing in me.
- Thank you to Manuel Alvarado for helping me out and taking calls while I wrote.
- Thank you to Brooke Chhina for transforming my passion project into a professional blog.
- Thank you to Heather Sigler for your tireless research and foundational outlines.
- Thank you to McKinnon Mitchell for SEO insights to help me share this with the world.
- And most of all, thank you to you for reading my blog. Time is our most precious commodity and spending your time reading my work is a precious gift. As such, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
One Last Thing
At the end of each of these blog posts, I have been putting the following link Book a Meeting. This link is an opportunity to reach out to my friends at NexgenTec. As a member of the National Society of IT Service Providers, I can tell you that NexgenTec is truly one of the finest Managed Service Providers in the industry. The employees here have decades of experience in offering professional IT services. They have computer knowledge from both real-world experience and academic studying. NexgenTec's employees are friendly to work with and care deeply about their clients. They use bleeding-edge technologies like advanced remote monitoring and management software to next-generation antimalware. And they can do everything from setting up your initial network and first server to overseeing disaster recovery, offering assistance remotely from miles away or in-person at your business.
As a quick metaphor, we know that we can represent ourselves in a court of law; however, most of us know that it's better to be represented by attorneys. These professionals just know that world better than we do. And we are all the better for having their expertise on our side.
It's the same with IT.
So do me a favor, Book a Meeting. Your business will be better for it.
[1] As we discussed in "Are Blockchains the Future of Secure File Management?"
[2] By the way, my initial $5 investment in Bitcoin is today worth $7.47.
[3] If any of my friends read this article, please reach out to me. I love you all very much and deeply appreciate each of you putting up with the truly random requests that I've asked of you over the years. And as a small token of my gratitude, I want to send you a couple of Dogecoins so you too can have fun with cryptocurrencies!
[4] By my calculations, it should take only a couple hundred days of doing this every three hours for me to earn the 46 cents worth of Dogecoins I need!