The Apple of Eden: Investing in crypto
The British pound became the official currency of the United Kingdom when England and Scotland united to form a single country in 1707. The British pound has lost 99.571% of its value since 1770.
Shortly,£100 in 1770 is equivalent in purchasing power to about £23,334.70 today. You can have some fun with visuals on here Value of 1770 British pounds today | UK Inflation Calculator (in2013dollars.com)
If you still think that you can trust your local government, that crypto is a scam, that inflation is transitory, that capitalism is the best system we can have, and that we cannot do anything about it, you are wrong. But how can you escape the system? The logical answer is by not being a part of it, but this is often reserved for the wealthy elite with bank accounts opened in tax havens. For us regular folks, the answer is Metamask 🦊.
🚀 Let's oversimplify everything: Metamask can be defined as a multichain application, which makes it quite practical for those using different networks. There is Ethereum Network ⛓️ and non-Ethereum networks (Fantom, Polygon, Cronos, Moonbeam, etc.) Full list can be found here: https://chainlist.org/
Lets explain the difference between "chain" and "network":
A "chain" typically refers to a single, continuous sequence of blocks in a blockchain. Each block contains a set of transactions and a reference to the previous block in the chain.
A "network" refers to the entire ecosystem of nodes (computers) that participate in maintaining and validating a blockchain. It includes all the nodes that are interconnected and work together to secure and operate the blockchain. From now, I will use the term "network" later in this blog post.
So, your money fluctuates, but not as dramatically as Bitcoin. This relative stability in a short term can make it easier to manipulate people into thinking that it's a fixed value in a long term.
🛒 There are three most common ways to acquire tokens on MetaMask:
You can purchase them directly 💳 with your payment card.
You can use SEPA transactions to transfer EUR to MetaMask (which are free of charge and available if you have a bank account in the SEPA area).
Sending the tokens from an exchange (such as Binance, Crypto.com, Kraken, etc.) to MetaMask will not be explained in this text because it would complicate things.
Every system nurtures the fruit of its own destruction.
Shortly, on every network there is a transfer fee, and you typically pay the transaction fee in native tokens. For example, if you want to transfer a token on the Ethereum network ⛓️ to your friend, you will pay the fee in ETH 💰
The first bite
Download metamask from: Download MetaMask | Blockchain wallet app and browser extension
Download link will install extension in your browser and you will be redirected to the new page. Click on "Create a new wallet"
In the first step, you will create a password that will be used to log into your extension. The true 'password,' or more precisely, the 'key' 🔑 to your wallet will be consisted of 12-word seed phrase and will be created in the second step.
In the second step, you will receive the key to your wallet. The key will be displayed only once, so you must write it down. When you log in, you may have noticed the options 'Create a new wallet' and 'Import an existing wallet.' If you uninstall the extension, your computer malfunctions, or for any other reason, by importing these keys, you will always have access to your wallet.
How secure is all of this? The possibility that someone can import your wallet with your key is Probability = (1 / 2048) ^ 12 ≈ 2.04 x 10^(-52). Expressed as a decimal, it is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000204.
MetaMask, like many other cryptocurrency wallets, uses a standardized wordlist called BIP-39 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39), which consists of 2048 words.
In third step you will be asked about to confirm seed phrase
The final result is your newly created wallet. In the context of cryptocurrencies, a 'wallet' is often associated with a specific Ethereum address. You can see that you are on the ETH network and currently have 0 ETH in your balance, along with your ETH address.
Are you curious about how your address looks in public? You can check everything on the Ethereum (ETH) Blockchain Explorer (etherscan.io) by copying the address located below "Account1" in the image above. Specifically, you can view the example address here:Address 0x1755935d3e04Cf6a2a951f5d3642c75cF5bcf01a | Etherscan
Importing new chain
The best part is yet to come. You interact with all websites anonymously from here on. There are no passwords, usernames, emails, etc. Let's make our first interaction with a website.
Go to chainlist.org and click on Connect Wallet. Metamask will ask you which account you want to connect (you can have multiple accounts imported in metamask)
MetaMask will ask you for permission to connect your wallet to the Chainlist website. Click 'Connect'.
Search for a Matic network.
Add a new network to the Metamask
Do you want to switch to your newly created network? This is optional, but let's switch this time
If you go back to Metamask, you can see that you are on the polygon network, with 0 MATIC on your account. Let's add some money.
Canceling the System
If you want to exchange USD for EUR, what do you do? You go to a currency exchange office. The exchange office charges a commission, and you receive your EUR.
On the web, there are exchanges that trade cryptocurrencies. Now, let's consider that we want to exchange USD for MATIC. The web exchange takes USD tokens from our address, charges a fee, and allocates MATIC tokens to us.
Is this activity fast? In a fraction of a second.
How does the exchange perform this token swap so quickly? It's because the exchange already has USD and MATIC prepared in its reserves. This prepared capital is in a pool, similar to a vault.
How does it ensure it always has USD-MATIC on hand? The exchange compensates people who allow it to use their tokens (tokens are borrowed). This is called token farming.
The farming reward is paid in which currency? Usually in a third currency that is neither USD nor MATIC.
But what if I don't want another currency? There is a solution called yield farming and yield optimization services. Such a service automatically converts the third currency into USD and MATIC and continues to farm indefinitely.
As I mentioned earlier, the most cost-effective way to transfer tokens is to open an account on Binance.com, Crypto.com, Kraken.com, or another exchange. There, you can buy tokens with a small fee, and you can also transfer funds via SEPA transactions to your exchange. For the purposes of this example, I will show you how to buy tokens directly on MetaMask
Click on "Buy" button.
Choose MATIC token on Polygon network
Choose the amount, connect MetaMask and click on the "Ramp". After that you will be redirected to the payment gateway
Congratulations on your first purchase of tokens.
Let's farm our tokens. Go to Beefy, connect your wallet, choose the polygon network and select any given vault.
On the next screen, select the token from the dropdown (your MATIC) and choose the amount. Notice that I have 10 MATIC, but I've entered 9. I've left a portion for the "gas fee" that will occur due to the transaction on the network.
MetaMask informs us of how much we will pay for the fee and how many tokens we will invest.
In the next image, we can notice (from left to right) the total amount of staked funds, the annual interest rate, the daily interest rate, the amount we've staked, and when Beefy last reinvested the staked funds from all users.
After all the steps, does a 45% annual interest rate still seem unrealistic to you? Honestly, it doesn't to me. It's too complicated for the average user, and the interest rate itself is a reward for a person's prior knowledge and perseverance in staking their money. There's also a level of suspicion that the exchange might simply disappear along with our funds. My advice is to stake your money across various exchanges through Beefy and also consider purchasing tokens with less drastic fluctuations (e.g., BTC, ETH, MATIC, GLMR, BNB, etc.).
Some of you might be slightly disappointed that I didn't mention Bitcoin. The only reason for this is that the BTC network is not supported on MetaMask. But don't be too disappointed. Many tokens can be wrapped and sent between different networks. In other words, you can buy Bitcoin on the Polygon network, with significantly lower fees than if you were buying BTC on the BTC network. If you are up for that visit Pearl or any other exchange and swap your tokens for wBTC
Conclusion
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