I did it. I finally dipped my toe into the cryptocurrency world. After reading, learning, watching and chatting with others who have already bought into the space I decided it was my turn to buy and average into several of these digital currencies.

As with any new venture there was a learning curve and after a lot of reading about the value of cryptocurrencies and whether they are in a bubble, are a currency, have any real value, etc. I came to the conclusion that this is something that is here to stay. While I may not be an early adopter, buying into these currencies today is still akin to the early stages of email and the Internet. Just watch the first minute of the video below and you’ll better understand why I finally decided to invest/speculate.

I truly feel that the cryptocurrency world is finally coming out of shadows and ever so slowly into the mainstream. There is a long, long, long road ahead before any of these currencies really hits a critical mass. I believe in the coming years we’ll see more applications developed to make buying, selling, trading and using these currencies a lot more easier. Cryptocurrencies today remind me of when I first went online in the early 90s as there was no such thing as a browser (at least a mainstream one). All online activities were text based till the Mosaic browser was introduced as “the world’s first popular browser.” Mosaic made an archaic personal computer easier and more functional to use as did the graphic user interface which gave a face to operating systems and made ‘point and click’ the defacto method for interfacing with computers. I really believe it’s just a matter of time before we look back and reflect on a world before cryptocurrencies existed. Just like we look back at a time before email, before the mainstream Internet, before Amazon, Google, Facebook, iPhones and the like, we’ll wonder how we ever got along without these electronic mediums of exchange. In the meantime, I do not plan to be a cryptocurrency trader. As with my dividend paying stocks I plan to buy and hold a portfolio of these digital currencies and stick to the mainstream names exclusively. With that being said, I used Coinbase (referral link) to make my first $150 total worth of purchases in each of the big three cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. As I stated in the beginning, I dipped my toe. I wanted to see how the process works, the ease of funding and buying with these accounts.

The plan going forward it to buy in earnest and average into my holdings of BTC, ETH and LTC with Bitcoin being my largest stake among the three. Ideally, I’d like to own somewhere between two and four Bitcoin and cold store my currencies and forget about them for a few years. I may be very happy with the result or greatly disappointed but one thing I know for sure is that I want to be along for the ride wherever it takes me.

I am also looking into other cryptocurrencies such as Dash, Ripple, Monero and Zcash to further diversify my holdings but you know the saying, “One step at a time.” I realize this post may surprise some of you as my investing style has always skewed towards the conservative side and what would a dividend growth investor like myself want anything to do with digital currencies. However, as mentioned above, I truly believe that cryptocurrencies are here to stay and not some Internet fad. Of course, the question of which currency or currencies will reign supreme remains to be determined. Until then, I’m happy to be a part of the movement and go along for the ride.